Karen Alexa Grasso Montes, known professionally as Alexa Grasso, was born August 9, 1993, in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. She is a Mexican mixed martial artist who competes in the UFC’s women’s flyweight division and is the promotion’s former women’s flyweight champion, a biography documented in detail on Wikipedia.

Grasso grew up in a family with deep martial arts roots. Her parents had trained in combat sports themselves, and her uncle, Francisco Grasso, is credited with first sparking her interest in fighting. As a child she was athletic across the board, competing in dance, soccer and basketball before martial arts became her focus, according to her official UFC athlete profile, which also lists her longtime training team as Lobo Gym in her hometown of Guadalajara.

Grasso turned professional in December 2012 in Mexico and won her first five fights inside eighteen months, three by TKO and two by decision, before stepping away from competition briefly to develop further as a fighter, a stretch of her record laid out on her Wikipedia fight record.

She signed with Invicta Fighting Championships, the promotion widely used as a proving ground for future UFC women’s talent, and made her debut there on September 6, 2014, with a unanimous decision win over Ashley Cummins. She went 4-0 in Invicta FC between 2014 and 2016, adding wins over Alida Gray, Mizuki Inoue and Jodie Esquibel, with the Inoue fight earning a Fight of the Night bonus, before the UFC signed her in August 2016.

Grasso made her Octagon debut on November 5, 2016, in Mexico City, defeating Heather Jo Clark by unanimous decision on the TUF Latin America 3 Finale card, according to her official ESPN fighter profile. Her strawweight run that followed was competitive but uneven: a loss to Felice Herrig in February 2017, a split decision win over Randa Markos that August despite missing weight due to a urinary tract infection, and a submission loss to Tatiana Suarez in May 2018.

She rebounded with an improved striking performance to beat Karolina Kowalkiewicz in 2019, then lost a Fight of the Night battle with Carla Esparza by majority decision that September. After missing weight again for a scheduled UFC 246 bout in January 2020, Grasso made the decision to move up to flyweight, a switch that reset her career. Wins over Ji Yeon Kim, Maycee Barber, Joanne Wood and Viviane Araujo through 2021 and 2022 built her into the division’s top contender and set up a shot at champion Valentina Shevchenko.

As a heavy underdog, Grasso submitted Shevchenko with a fourth-round face crank at UFC 285 on March 4, 2023, to win the UFC women’s flyweight championship, a result later named the 2023 Upset of the Year by several MMA outlets and confirmed in the official bout history on Wikipedia. She earned Performance of the Night for the finish and was later promoted to BJJ brown belt that May.

Her first title defense came at the inaugural Noche UFC event on September 16, 2023, where she and Shevchenko fought to a split draw, allowing Grasso to retain the belt. Shevchenko reclaimed the championship on September 14, 2024, at UFC 306 inside The Sphere in Las Vegas, winning a lopsided unanimous decision built on more than sixteen minutes of ground control, as detailed by ESPN’s report from the event. Grasso lost again to Natalia Silva by decision at UFC 315 in May 2025 before rebounding with a first-round knockout of Maycee Barber at UFC Fight Night 271 in March 2026, a Performance of the Night effort that Dana White called one of the best finishes in the sport’s history, and she is scheduled to face Manon Fiorot on September 12, 2026.

Grasso’s title win made her the first Mexican-born woman to become a UFC champion, following countrymen Brandon Moreno and Yair Rodriguez as the third Mexican-born UFC titleholder overall. She has spoken about the significance directly, telling reporters “it’s beautiful” to be the first Mexican woman to fight for a UFC title and that she wants “to open the door for all the Mexican women who are coming up behind us,” comments carried by Yahoo Sports.

Her rivalry with Shevchenko became the centerpiece of the UFC’s Noche UFC series, a card built around Mexican Independence Day weekend that the promotion has framed as a showcase for its Mexican stars, as covered in the UFC’s own retrospective on the history of Mexican fighters in the UFC. Grasso held the UFC’s number one pound-for-pound women’s ranking for a stretch following her title win, and her public following has grown alongside her profile, with more than 1.6 million Instagram followers tracked by social analytics site Hafi.

Earlier in her UFC run, Grasso fought under the promotion’s Reebok uniform deal, the standard outfitting arrangement for UFC fighters before the UFC switched its official kit partner to Venum in 2021, a transition covered at the time by ESPN. Like every roster fighter, she now wears Venum gear for UFC bouts as part of that standard promotional arrangement rather than a personal endorsement she negotiated individually.

Beyond her UFC kit deal, Grasso has been reported as carrying personal sponsorships from betting platform Stake and Mexican marketing outfit Pegaduro Media, according to a financial profile from ClutchPoints. Full financial terms of those arrangements have not been made public, consistent with how most individual fighter sponsorship deals are handled outside marquee UFC champions.

Grasso’s activity outside the cage has stayed closer to media than commerce. She works as an on-air analyst for UFC Español, the promotion’s Spanish-language broadcast coverage, drawing on her fluency to break down cards for Latin American audiences, a role noted in a profile from Elite Sports.

Unlike some UFC champions who have launched apparel lines, coaching platforms or other consumer-facing businesses, no such public venture has been documented for Grasso. Financial profiles of her career, including one from MMA Fanatic, note that her income has come almost entirely from fight purses, bonuses and sponsorship rather than any separate company or product line.

Grasso has not publicly disclosed ownership of any specific home, property or vehicle, and no purchase price or address for real estate has been reported. A dedicated financial profile of her career from MMA Fanatic notes that details of her personal assets remain private, consistent with the limited financial disclosure typical of UFC fighters outside the sport’s biggest pay-per-view draws.

What is publicly known is that she remains based in and trains out of Guadalajara, Jalisco, her home city, at Lobo Gym, according to her official UFC athlete profile. That long-standing hometown base, rather than any disclosed real estate portfolio, is the clearest public marker of her living situation.