SIZE AND STRENGTH:
Kish is a strong girl and cuts a lot of weight to strawweight. This, along with her durability and toughness has resulted in some success. Moving up to featherweight, and fighting Kim will nullify this advantage to some extent. Kish's strength and athleticism has allowed her to get by with powering through bad positions and possibly not fully learning proper technique.
Kim is moving down from 135 lbs. Although she doesn't look huge at 135 lbs, she's not small either. My friend who trains at the same gym as her says that the fighters there are knowledgable and prepared to cut weight. He says Kim is pretty big walk around weight. Maybe 140-145 lbs. Kim has cut to 130 lbs before, so another 4 lbs may not be too much of a stretch.
Kim has absurdly long arms for a woman. She will have a 1 inch height and massive 7 inch reach advantage. This leads us to her biggest advantage:
STRIKING:
Kim looks to be undoubtedly the more polished striker. I bet against her in her UFC debut because, in her previous fights, she looked very sloppy throwing a bit wild and being aggressive. I thought Pudilova, who I had an eye on after her performance against Landsberg, would absolutely light Kim up with that nice jab and solid fundamentals. I was wrong. Kim showed off her boxing skills in that fight against Pudilova and, after an unbiased rewatch, won the first two rounds IMO. She was lighting Pudilova up with counters despite Pudilova employing a really nice jab. Kim has excellent boxing. Pudilova had to switch gameplans in the 3rd round and just stall against the cage. Apparently she told her corner that she was having problems with those counters. Not sure why Kim looked so much better in her UFC fight but now I'm thinking that he knew she didn't have to be too technical against her previous opponents because she they had nothing for her.
Kish shouldn't have much for Kim in terms of striking unless she's changed up her game significantly. Ansaroff was piecing her up with counters on the way in and easily won rds 1 and 2 of that fight. Kish relied on her toughness to just wade through Ansaroff's punches in order to get close enough to throw volume. Kish is touted as a muay thai talent, but given her lack of defense and footwork, I think she's just used to overwhelming girls and throwing the kitchen sink at them. She is good at mixing in punches and kicks, and can walk through light punchers at 115, but I don't think she walks through Kim's punches. Kim is also good at cutting angles and staying in the pocket to land one or two more in an exchange. This does not bode very well for Kish who moves mostly in a line and does not care much for defense...against a puncher with power now in Kim.
One small thing to note is that Kim can counter kicks. I've only seen her do it once, but she threw a simultaneous counter 1-2 against a naked kick in a fight I watched, something that takes good timing and speed. Kish throws a lot of naked kicks, and they come out pretty telegraphed. With a 7 inch reach advantage, faster hands, *and* if she can take away Kish's kicking game with counters, Kish will have zero tools in her arsenal on the feet. Which leads to us...
GRAPPLING:
A few people are concerned about Kim's grappling as she was controlled (although did not take any damage) in the 3rd round of her debut. Pudilova despite her lankiness is pretty strong in the clinch, and showed it against legit big and strong 135 lber and clinch specialist Lina Landsberg. Kim has pretty solid fundamentals, usually able to get underhooks and at least turn it into a stalemate. Kish has shown good striking against the fence with punches and elbows in her fight against Markos. But Markos put herself against the cage, and really didn't know how to throw anything in the pocket to back Kish off. A size advantage and decent fundamentals should be enough for the clinch not to be a huge problem. We have not seen Kish try to grind out a clinch battle as she's been too aggressive to hold that position unless given to her. Also, if she's getting tagged coming in and then initiates a clinch, the judges will see this as desperation instead of dominance.
As far as takedowns are concerned, we've seen Kish mostly employ a head and arm throw. This might work against weaker opponents, but against a bigger girl in Kim, would be a bad idea. Kim is good at reversing the head and arm throw. In her recent fight against Tao Li, Li tried to throw her 3 times with the head and arm, but failed all three times with Kim ending up on top. The third time resulted in Kim submitting Li. Kim also really does not like spending time on her back and fights to scramble up immediately. In one of her previous fights, she's been able to scramble to a 50/50 position and then use that to climb on top of her opponent's back with strong hips.
Kim is a BJJ purple belt. Kish was outgrappled by Ansaroff, Yoder, and Herrig, all purple belts. While that doesn't necessarily mean Kim will have the same success, Kim is also a lot bigger than those girls. Against Yoder, Kish was losing the grappling exchanges despite being strong enough to reverse bad positions with pure power instead of technique. She may not be able to do the same with Kim. At the very least, she will need to expend a lot more energy to just get out of these positions to a 50/50 position where Kim is also strong, as stated before. Even if Kim loses position, it's back to the feet where Kim will have an advantage.
INTANGIBLES:
On my scorecards, Kish should be 0-3 in the UFC, losing the first two rounds in both Yoder and Ansaroff fights. This isn't just bad judging (although it is that too). Kish is able to create a perception of dominance by always moving forward and not being affected by anything thrown her way (also by just looking super jacked). This led her to winning the first round on ALL three judges scorecards in the Ansaroff fight. A round where she was getting absolutely lit up with clean shots like 2-1. Watch that round again and it's absurd to think that anyone could score it for Kish, but I don't think it's a fluke.
I don't think she can go terminator mode against the counterstriking of Kim, but if she does then Kim has a big liability in HAIR. Yeah I said it. Kim's hairstyle really exaggerates any punches that come her way, despite not getting hit very clean. Kim has good head movement, and rolls with punches. But even punches that just graze her or even miss her completely look like they land hard because her hair shimmies around like a pom-pom. It's quite absurd and I hope she does something about it.
In a somewhat close fight where Kim is winning slightly to a trained eye, she may just lose a controversial decision. Add to this the Asian fighter decision curse, and you're looking at very tense moments if it goes to a decision and you've backed Kim. However, she has the chops to make this a comfortable decision win, either by landing really hard and clean counters, or possibly by getting dominant top control to seal rounds. Either way, at +250 or so, this line is a steal.
