UFC on ESPN 16 PBP/Discussion

[Sono07]

Just got to watch the GDR fight, sneaky work from the Iron Lady. Anybody else see her sneak that whizzer in and reposition her hips after she called her own time in r3?

 

[PolarBearPaulVarelans]

Yeah, agree. Aldana is young so there's time.

She's 32 years old, has been fighting professionally for 8 years, and shown precious little improvement over her last 5 fights. This is simply what Aldana is.

She's clearly a good striker against someone who will stand in front of her.

A genuinely good striker doesn't go blow-for-blow with Bethe Correia, especially an old and out-of-shape Bethe, or Raquel Pennington. Nor does she go to a 50/50 decision against Lucie Pudilova.

Her TDD also looks like it was a bit of a mirage.

No, that was just another bullshit talking point from the UFC paid shills. Aldana's takedown defense has always been a weakness; it's merely improved from "awful" to "average or slightly below average" in more recent years.

To be fair, them praising her takedown defense was less ridiculous than comparing Aldana to Canelo Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez.

 

[Kamais_Ookin]

In hindsight was Holms an over -500 favorite in this fight? By the end I felt sad that I only went 1.5u on her.

 

[mkess101]

She's 32 years old, has been fighting professionally for 8 years, and shown precious little improvement over her last 5 fights. This is simply what Aldana is.



A genuinely good striker doesn't go blow-for-blow with Bethe Correia, especially an old and out-of-shape Bethe, or Raquel Pennington. Nor does she go to a 50/50 decision against Lucie Pudilova.



No, that was just another bullshit talking point from the UFC talking heads. Aldana's takedown defense has always been a weakness; it's merely improved from "awful" to merely "average or slightly below average" in more recent years.

To be fair, them praising her takedown defense was less ridiculous than comparing Aldana to Canelo Alvarez and Julio Cesar Chavez.

Man, I thought she was like 28. Yeah, not that young at all.

In WMMA, everything is relative. There are precious few "genuinely good strikers". She's certainly well above average vs most of the division, at least if they stand right in front of her. But as we saw last night, there is a MASSIVE gap between the top tier and the next tier down when it comes to striking in WMMA. Or maybe Holly is even 2nd tier now, and Aldana 3rd. Either way, she's better than most but way way off from the ones in front of her.

Her TDD, yeah, kind of what I was saying. She hadn't been taken down in quite awhile I don't think, but that was really about who she was fighting and now an indication of her actual skill.

 

[PolarBearPaulVarelans]

In hindsight was Holms an over -500 favorite in this fight? By the end I felt sad that I only went 1.5u on her.

There were a lot of concerns with her age and her current skill level. Outside of being knocked out by Nunes, we hadn't seen Holm strike for extended periods of time since 2017.

But in terms of how she looked and how badly she dominated Aldana, she should have been a -800 favorite or so.