UFC fighters have celebrated victories hundreds of different ways, but GiGi Canuto thinks she may have broken new ground.
The Ultimate Fighter 34 strawweight contestant scored a dominant victory on the latest episode of the long-running reality show, needing less than 30 seconds to finish Anita Karim with a pair of devastating body kicks. Canuto’s performance earned Team Michael Bisping it’s first win of the season.
Prior to the contest, Canuto made a $500 bet with opposing coach Daniel Cormier that she would win via knockout and after doing just that, Cormier paid up right after. That’s when Canuto decided to make it rain in the octagon, possibly becoming the first fighter to ever celebrate in that manner.
“The producers actually told me that I might be the first person to make it rain in an octagon,” Canuto told MMA Fighting. “Because they were like, people are usually not allowed to take money or anything, like they leave their stuff in the warmup room and then they walk out and they have the bucket and gloves. … DC had his money in his pocket and I was even saying, ‘You’re already ready, you had that thing ready.’
”When he gave it to me I was like, how funny would it be for me to make it rain in front of Dana White? Even Dana was just looking at me and he was like, ‘Holy shit. Congrats, kid.’ It was a great experience.”
Cormier’s willingness to accept the wager may have been gamesmanship on his part. Still only 23, Canuto is a highly respected Brazilian jiu-jitsu champion who has already flirted with the big show, taking part in a UFC Fight Pass Invitational event in March 2024 when she submitted UFC fighter Denise Gomes with a heel hook. It’s likely Cormier—who was familiar with Canuto due to her training with Andrew Cejudo (a friend of Cormier’s and former UFC star Henry Cejudo’s brother)—thought Karim would have a better chance of beating Canuto in the standup.
In fact, Canuto heard a Team Cormier coach doubting her striking skills, which prompted her to make the $500 bet on the spot.
“[Cormier is] talking to me like we know each other basically and he thought that we were having a buddy conversation like, ‘Hey GiGi, maybe don’t take her down. Let’s make this exciting and I think it will be a really good fight if you guys stay standing,” Canuto said. “That was just us having a conversation in the back [before shooting] and the moment that they’re like, ‘We’re live,’ I immediately go, ‘Hey, he was just telling me in the back’ and I kind of just say it out loud and ‘DC’ you can see him in the episode and he was like, ‘Are you going to tell?’ I’m like, ‘Hell yeah, I’m going to tell.’ It was just very funny.
“I think there was one of the coaches, they were like, ‘If she doesn’t take you down, she’s f*cked,’ something along those lines. I was just like, ‘OK, let’s make a bet.’ He’s like, ‘What do you want to bet?’ I’m like, ‘500 bucks that I knock her out.’”
The outcome could not have gone better for Canuto who scored an impressive knockout in front of UFC CEO Dana White, advanced to the TUF 34 semifinals, and left the cage $500 richer.
However, she does have one major regret.
“DC has money, I should have bet more than that,” Canuto said, laughing. “I genuinely was super confident and then I won, so I was like, I should have bet way more. … I was like, f*ck, I should have bet more.
“When I bet, I didn’t know that it would maybe be something that was one-sided because I thought if I lose, I have to pay him, so I was thinking about a price that I could afford because I’m not just going to bet $5,000 and I don’t have it. So I was like, $500, and it just so happened that it worked and I was just like, f*ck, now I should have bet more.”
Regardless of the underwhelming wager, Canuto can only be happy with her first fight on the show. Canuto improved to 7-1 as a pro with a submission win over Janaina Silva at LFA 224 this past January, and she was bristling with confidence that this would be the year she received a UFC call-up. However, Canuto first needed to establish a stable training situation. Returning to Las Vegas, one of the U.S. cities she grew up in after she moved from Brazil as a child, Canuto had an uneasy feeling and was initially even more put off when the possibility to join the TUF 34 cast arose.
“I was so negative towards it,” Canuto said. “It’s uncomfortable. I’m going to have to live with people. I almost thought it was a little below what I could do because I was like, I could just go [into the UFC] straight. It was kind of just my ego speaking. A lot of people would say no because it’s just like a risk, kind of. You’re being filmed to the whole world and fighting with no crowd, you’re fighting right in front of Dana.”
“It was weird because two days later, I’m standing on the couch, and I start almost panicking,” she continued. “My husband’s like, ‘What’s wrong?’ I was like, ‘Oh f*ck, I think I have to do it.’ He was like, ‘What changed your mind? That was a crazy drastic change.’ I was like, ‘I don’t know, I’m just being told to do it now. I don’t know what it is, but I have to do it because it’s uncomfortable, because I don’t want to do it, I have to do it.’ I talked to my friends and I talked to a lot of people that I consider my mentors and they were just, like, ‘Gigi, if I could make a show for you, it would be TUF.’”
Once the casting was done, Canuto decided she wasn’t going to hold back in front of the cameras, which explains the emotional celebration that also saw her throwing up her middle fingers and even shouting at White cageside.
Canuto was determined to unapologetically be herself on TUF even when it comes to dealing with the most powerful man in MMA.
“Even before the fight [White] was like, ‘Good luck, kid,’ and I looked at him and I literally said, ‘I don’t need luck,’” Canuto said. “I don’t think that he didn’t like it, I think that he genuinely likes when you show your personality, so I looked at him and I said, ‘I don’t need luck and you’re about to see something.’ He was genuinely, like, ‘Oh f*ck. This is real for her.’ Obviously, he watches so many fights, and I think he could feel the energy and I was genuinely there ready to go to war.”
“I kind of was trying to tell myself he’s just another human, like he just so happens to have power,” Canuto added. “I’m like, dude, I’m not going to let him affect my performance. Once I had the performance that I wanted to have, I’m like, ‘That was 2 percent of what I can do.’ Because in my head, in that moment, my message was ‘Independent of what happens on the show, you see something and I want you to remember it.’”
