After only one UFC bout, Jessica-Rose Clark confidently predicts she will be Australia's most successful female fighter yet.
Admitting to aggression issues as a youngster, 30-year-old Clark appears to have found the perfect conduit.
She scored a points win over compatriot Bec Rawlings in her UFC debut on last month's Sydney card after taking the fight with less than two weeks notice.
The Las Vegas-based Queenslander has now been booked to fight well-known American Paige VanZant in St Louis on January 14 in a flyweight bout.
VanZant is a personality outside the octagon, having appeared on the American version of Dancing with the Stars and she has already beaten two Australians, Rawlings and Alex Chambers.
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"I know who she is, because everyone in MMA knows who she is, but I don't know a whole lot about her," Clark told AAP.
"It's great, commercially it's an amazing opportunity."
Clark is among a handful of Australian women to have appeared in the UFC, but none have had the impact of Sydney's interim middleweight world champion Robert Whittaker.
"The other girls, like especially Bec and Alex Chambers have been fighting in the UFC for two years now, but I firmly believe that I will be the most successful," Clark said.
"I'm still such a baby in time put into this sport, but I feel like I've been working really hard to get to that level where now I'm being recognised for the work I've been doing.
"I think you'll see in the next couple of years the Aussie MMA fighters are going to just grow a lot more, we'll be seen on the international level a lot more."
Clark tried plenty of team sports as a child but ultimately gravitated toward single combat.
"Growing up I had a lot of aggression issues. Coming from a broken family, I was very angry and that carried over into my early adulthood," she said.
"I liked to lift weights in my early 20s and I wanted to compete in powerlifting.
"The guy I was dating at the time said 'hey, why don't you go to kickboxing to drop a little bit for your powerlifting comps?.
'After the first day I was just hooked immediately. It was an instantaneous thing from the minute I walked in the gym."
Originally from Innisfail, Clark hasn't been seduced by the bright lights of Las Vegas.
"I have really bad allergies in Vegas and I got real sick when I moved out here," Clark said.
"In terms of the actual culture I honesty don't see a lot of Vegas. All I do is train."
