CAREER NOTES

Jena Bishop is an American women's flyweight and one of the most credentialed grapplers competing in the division. She fights out of San Diego, California, and trains at Alliance. Before mixed martial arts she built a championship career in Brazilian jiu jitsu, and she is a black belt, a former IBJJF No Gi World Champion and a competitor for the United States at the ADCC World Championships. She has also collected IBJJF titles at the World, World Masters, Pan American and European Open level. She arrived in the cage as a specialist whose ground game was already elite and has spent her MMA career adding to it. Within PFL she has twice advanced into the late stages of World Tournament competition at women's flyweight, and she sits firmly inside the division's top ranks.

Bishop grew up in St. Charles, Missouri, where she ran track and cross country before combat sports found her. She earned her Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt under JW Wright and represented Gracie Humaita before moving west to Alliance in San Diego. She won an IBJJF world championship while still a brown belt and kept winning once she reached black belt, adding no gi world honors along the way. She came to mixed martial arts late by the standards of the sport and moved quickly, building her professional career through Legacy Fighting Alliance before signing with Bellator and then joining PFL. She still trains jiu jitsu daily, which is why the submission game has kept sharpening even as her striking has developed. Working alongside established fighters at Alliance has accelerated the rest of her game.

Bishop is a submission fighter first, and she hunts finishes from positions most fighters treat as purely defensive. She has closed fights with the rear naked choke and with the armbar, and she attacks from her back as readily as she does from top position. Her two most recent wins both ended inside the opening round, one by rear naked choke and one by armbar, which is the clearest measure of how fast she finds a finish once the fight reaches the mat. She has also shown more on the feet than her pedigree suggests, working combinations and volume rather than rushing to grapple. She has beaten Kana Watanabe, Ekaterina Shakalova and Ilara Joanne inside PFL and Bellator, and she has done it in both phases of the fight. Opponents who survive her first submission attempt tend to discover she never stops looking for the next one.