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Official Women's Division Discussion #25
- Thread starter LilMountain
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Unfortunately Roxy couldn't overcome her athletic disadvantage and ran out of time. As much as we all like her, we also need to accept that she's the least athletic fighter in her division, and it's pretty amazing what she's accomplished in her career.
As for Eubanks, the more I see, the lower my opinion of her gets. Dogshit predictable punching, just endless spamming of the 1-2-1-2 with no defence or footwork. And to paraphrase Chael Sonnen, she must've gotten that BJJ blackbelt from a Happy Meal. No awareness of where her legs or hips are, and poor control of the upper body which allowed Roxy to keep moving and attempt sweep after sweep to scramble and get up. A decent grappler with Eubank's strength advantage should've had Roxy flattened out on her back defending strikes with no hope of getting out. And getting tossed and ending up on the bottom when she had a full body lock with double underhooks, lol.
IMO there's a bunch of fighters at 125 who can beat her without too much trouble. Chookagian would easily spam her to death from the outside, Joanna would beat her everywhere, Carmouche out-athletes her, Valentina beats her however she wants, Jessica Eye probably does the same as Chookagian, and Antonina runs a standup clinic on her.
As for Eubanks, the more I see, the lower my opinion of her gets. Dogshit predictable punching, just endless spamming of the 1-2-1-2 with no defence or footwork. And to paraphrase Chael Sonnen, she must've gotten that BJJ blackbelt from a Happy Meal. No awareness of where her legs or hips are, and poor control of the upper body which allowed Roxy to keep moving and attempt sweep after sweep to scramble and get up. A decent grappler with Eubank's strength advantage should've had Roxy flattened out on her back defending strikes with no hope of getting out. And getting tossed and ending up on the bottom when she had a full body lock with double underhooks, lol.
IMO there's a bunch of fighters at 125 who can beat her without too much trouble. Chookagian would easily spam her to death from the outside, Joanna would beat her everywhere, Carmouche out-athletes her, Valentina beats her however she wants, Jessica Eye probably does the same as Chookagian, and Antonina runs a standup clinic on her.
Eubanks can shoot a proper double leg take down, this already makes her one of best grapplers in the WFLW division.
Jessica Eye has dogshit TDD, she got taken down by Bethe Correia easily. I would favor Eubanks against her.
I still remember you hyped up Antonina as a top-5 WBW fighter. Let's wait & see if she can defend proper double leg takedowns.
Joanna has been successfully fighting grapplers smaller than her, we don't know if her tdd will hold up at WFLW division.
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Good analysis. I had no idea what Eubanks was celebrating for at the end of the fight. She looked awful against a very flawed, physically weak opponent she had beaten far more convincingly a little over a year ago. The fight proved that Modafferi, at 36 and 37 fights in, is actually improving more than Eubanks, who is 33 and 6 fights in.
I was going to initially bet on Eubanks winning a decision, but actually gave her too much credit, thinking she would get better at using top position in MMA (literally the first and main thing grapplers improve at) and possibly stop Modafferi.
That's being awfully generous. Her double was fairly slow and telegraphed. It worked on Modafferi, whose takedown defense is the worst in the division and perhaps second worst in all of WMMA in the UFC (Marion Reneau being first), but that's saying little.
More recently, Eye defended Rose-Clark's takedown attempts rather easily. They weren't particularly good attempts, no, but I'm not going to pretend they were much worse than what I saw from Eubanks.
It's slow if you wants to compare to male wrestlers' takedowns. But it's good enough for the WFLW division where most fighters barely know how to defend double leg takedowns.
And if you think Roxy has the worst tdd in the division, then you haven't watch most of fights in the division.
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I don't think anyone will be able to defeat Eubanks at 125 in the future. 127+ yeah, sure, absolutely. But at 125? Fat chance.
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To be fair to both of us, I run into this problem a LOT when I'm watching WMMA and taking notes for the purposes of betting. "Yeah, her jab/takedowns/GnP kind of sucks by a male standard, but is it actually pretty good by a female standard?"
With regards to the specific question, given what I've seen, there is a good chance Jessica Eye can stop Eubanks' shot.
teddy078 said:
Again, to be fair to both of us, there has barely even been much of a 125 pound weight division in the UFC. And while I'm aware that most women suck at defending takedowns, I'm struggling to think of anyone worse than Roxy, outside of Marion Reneau.
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That's even a generous list: Nicco, Maia, Lee should all handle her with striking volume and Davis with better takedowns and wrestling. Even Montana De la Rosa looking good since TUF I'd be 50/50 on who wins it.
Nicco fought a way more closer fight against Roxy than Eubanks.
Maia's grappling skills is overrated.
Lee looked like dogshit in striking exchange in her last fight.
Davis perhaps has the best bjj guard among wmma fighters, but she isn't good at takedowns at all. Otherwise she wouldn't lose a kickboxing match against Chookagian.
Montana has no power in her hands, and she kept trying those shity clinch takedowns without success in her last fight.
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first, styles make fights, and Nicco had a broken foot against Roxy.
Lee struggles against unorthodox fighters. Sarj just throws 1-2s.
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Despite coming in over weight Eubanks did what was needed to obtain the victory. Roxanne's style often makes her opponent look awkward.
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Sijara is just awkward. Even her overhand right is sloppy. Her footwork is forward and back only, no idea how to cut the cage, no ability to mix up kicks and punches, etc. And for someone with her grappling credentials as well as her size and strength advantage, particularly when fighting someone with all of Roxy's disadvantages (too bad as I really like the woman) her performance was spectacularly unimpressive. It would be different if she showed the skill and professionalism to back up the shit she talked, but she showed neither.
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I suspect that at least some of Eubanks’ success in grappling is due in large part to her physical strength. While I have never grappled, I would be shocked if strength doesn’t frequently negate a skill advantage. I haven’t watched a lot of BJJ tournaments, but it seems like physical specimens like her are more rare there than in MMA, outliers like Gabi Garcia notwithstanding.
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Strength is a huge advantage. While my training in BJJ is limited, my few Judo newaza contests were helped out by the fact that I was about the only guy who strength trained seriously at the time.
I am going to give an unpleasant and possibly unpopular opinion.
Most of the superior female athletes, just like in men's MMA, go to other sports. But this is even more so with respect to women. (speaking only for the USA). Many of the women wind up in BJJ or Judo because they wanted exercise and failed at quite a few other sports. The same as women who transition from cardio-kickboxing to striking. There are fewer women who are "truly skilled" strikers than there are grapplers. The largest talent pool in women's combat sports remains Judo, although BJJ is closing the gap. That being said, BJJ is still hugely populated by women who do not seriously strength train, and will have even more difficultly when facing a superior physical specimen.
And if you think that women competing do not suffer from the same idiotic prejudices with respect to strength training that other women do, even Joanna, when asked about lifting, said she did not want "big muscles" as if lifting alone is enough to cause that. There are even more reasons for women to lift, given their lower bone mineral density and increased risk of both fractures and osteoporosis, further compounded by extreme weight cutting.
Hopefully one day things will change.
And yes, I have seen videos of JJ lifting, finally, and a few other women, but really as a general rule, their S&C work could be aimed a bit more at long-term health.
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Tbh who else noticed Ari Emanuel rolling his eyes during Eubanks/Roxy fight. This fight was bad for wmma. At least Roxy was doing some good job while being on her back. Sijara on other hand...
Very low level, especially striking, I would say catastrophic.
Very low level, especially striking, I would say catastrophic.
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She can shoot a double, but I'd hardly call it proper even by WMMA standards. Sijara's double is best described as falling over into her opponents and dragging them down, she is literally on her knees by the time she makes contact. Either that or she bends over at the waist and runs at her opponent. I've often been down on Esparza for her bad posture on shots, Eubanks makes her look like a prime Josh Koscheck. I'm not even exaggerating when I say there were girls on my high school wrestling team who had better technique after a semester of training than Eubanks. There's no drive behind Siraja's doubles, she's essentially bent over running into a clinch and then completing a trip or clinch takedown.
As for Antonina, we need to look at the skill set you need to beat her and how many women at Flyweight have them. You need decent takedowns, preferably a shot double, and a good top control game along with not being completely lost on the feet. That gives you Carmouche and maybe Davis and Maia. For whatever reason, Flyweight has a bunch of grapplers who can't wrestle and fighters who are primarily strikers. Other than Carmouche, there's no equivalent of a Gadelha, Andrade, Zingano, Vieira, McMann, or Suarez. It's the most striker friendly women's division in the UFC.
