UFC Vegas 64 Beforemath: Title Shot On The Line
đȘ Marina Rodriguez and Amanda Lemos are fighting for a potential shot at the champ.
This weekend we have a womenâs strawweight bout as our main event between tactful Michelle Waterson and the heavy handed Amanda Lemos. Normally main event for womenâs martial arts is crammed down our throat like a fat kid cramming cake down his gullet. But womenâs strawweight is a treat of a division and this is a great fight. Letâs get into UFC Vegas 64 Beforemath!
UFC Vegas 64: Tale of the Tape
With how clogged up womenâs strawweight is, Marina Rodriguez is sort of the last woman looking in. Her resume is enough for a shot at the title. At 16-1-2, Rodriguez has had four good wins in a row. Her last loss was in 2020 to now-champion Carla Esparza.
But since that loss, Rodriguez has looked great. While her matchup with Esparza saw Rodriguez grappled to death, sheâs faced three opponents who wanted to take her down: Amanda Ribas, Michelle Waterson-Gomez, and Mackenzie Dern. In those three fights, Rodriguez has only given up three takedowns in 14 attempts. She survived the ground with Dern, a rough prospect for anyone in the division. While these three arenât near the level of wrestling Esparza is capable of, Rodriguez has shown improvement in technical know how from match to match.
Her last win was a tightly fought split decision win over the sanda specialist, Xiaonan Yan. There, Rodriguez and Yan put on a fantastic showcase of striking and eliminated Yan from title contention (for now). With a win over Lemos, Rodriguez can eliminate yet another contender and finally get her shot at the title.
On the other side of the octagon, Amanda Lemos is not coming in with quite the momentum as Marina Rodriguez. Her resume isnât quite as strong either. But she can improve that with a win at UFC Vegas 63. Lemos was handed her first career loss in her UFC debut when she was finished by Leslie Smith. But it was mostly Lemos being awesome after that.
She soon notched five straight wins with four finishes. In 2021 she knocked out Livinha Souza with a power jab and ground and pound and then followed that up with a 35 second knockout of Montserrat Ruiz.
That same year, Lemos notched a split decision win over Angela Hill. (Who hasnât had a split decision win over Angela Hill?) and then met with former strawweight champion Jessica Andrade. That fight was meant to be a win over a former champion to put Lemos on the fast track to the title. She started the fight patient and landed good jabs and low kicks before letting Andrade get a standing arm triangle against the fence, snapping her five fight winning streak.
But, Amanda Lemos has since bounced back earlier this year with her win over Michelle Waterson-Gomez. There, she saw an opponent similar to Rodriguez who is content to fight at range. Whatâs different was Waterson-Gomezâs inclination to also wrestle, which both saw Lemos taken down in the first round but also saw her take advantage of with a jumping guillotine in round two for the submission victory.
Amanda Lemos: Heavy Hands
Amanda Lemos was welcomed to the higher level of WMMA against Jessica Andrade. While it wasnât her first career loss, but the method of loss was humbling. Lemos absolutely has that killer instinct and has shown so in her follow up win against Waterson-Gomez.
Getting bullied against the fence and submitted standing with an arm triangle is a great way to show you that you are not invincible. After that loss, Lemos came out against Waterson-Gomez and utilized her low kick very well against an opponent who has a tendency to stay out of range completely. In her other fights, she was happy to let her opponent blitz in while punching and capitalize there.
Against Michelle Waterson-Gomez, Lemos took advantage of a lazy duck under from her opponent and snatched up a guillotine. Combine that with her punching power and you have yourself a dangerous fighter.
At UFC Vegas 64, Lemos is going to want to slow Marina Rodriguez down considerably. Rodriguez is a smart striker and can fight well enough on the back foot to make her opponents pay. Sheâs no Conor McGregor circa-2015 but her skills have got her through some of the best strikers in the division. To land the big shot, Lemos will want to kick the leg of Rodriguez to impair her mobility. Kicking the leg will slow down Rodriguez both advancing and on the retreat. With Marina Rodriguez often exiting exchanges with her hands down, getting that little bit of extra time to connect can help sway the fight in Lemosâ favor.
Amanda Lemos also needs to look to the wrestling against Rodriguez at UFC Vegas 64. We saw against Esparza that the path to victory can lie on the ground against Rodriguez. But what concerns me most about her wrestling defensive abilities is the fact that Mackenzie Dern, who lives or dies by the ability to take someone down, and Xiaonan Yan, a striker, weâre able to get Rodriguez to the ground.
While Marina Rodriguez did manage to survive on the ground against Dern, a tough task, Lemos will likely want to look for ground and pound or take a club and sub approach against her fellow Brazilian. Lemos isnât a technical savant like Dern is in the Jiu Jitsu department, but her wins over Waterson-Gomez and Miranda Granger show that sheâs more than capable at putting opponents away with her grappling prowess.
With a win over Rodriguez, Amanda Lemos isnât looking at a title shot by any means. Her recent loss to Andrade will discount her from that. Thereâs Rose Namajunas watching the outcome of Esparzaâs second-first title defense against Weili Zhang and a possible rematch if the Esparza-Zhang fight is close. But by knocking off the third ranked fighter in the division, Lemos can make a strong case that she is there to fight for the belt and should be at least considered. And if Rose retires and Esparza or Weili blow the other out, she might be next for the title shot.
Marina Rodriguez: A Technichal Approach
Marina Rodriguez is kind of forced into a corner against Amanda Lemos at UFC Vegas 64. With how the rankings fell out, she was the odd woman looking in when it comes to the title picture. Should Namajunas have been handed the decision over Esparza, she would have been next in line. Now, Esparza and Zhang are fighting and Rose can come in and fight for the title next regardless of who wins. Inactivity is the root of downfalls in sport and Rodriguez has to take a fight to remain sharp.
Lemos is a sneaky fight for Rodriguez. While I did say that Marina Rodriguez is good off her back foot, sheâs not completely defensively sound. Often she will enter exchanges with her chin in the air and throw looping shots. Against a heavy handed fighter like Lemos, that could spell disaster.
Some of the best weapons Lemos possesses, aside from her power, is her jab and low kick. Lemos is quite smart fighting at range and can punish opponents who donât deal with these weapons effectively. Luckily for Rodriguez, she has show the proclivity to simply pull back her leg or circle away from the oncoming kick to minimize the damage. She doesnât do the traditional Thai check on low kicks often and here, that could help.
With Amanda Lemos tendency to use the low kick and jab at range, Rodriguez has to walk a tight line against her opponent. Stay at range and she risks getting chewed up by the low kicks. Come in too wild and chin up high and she will eat a power punch that could end her four fight winning streak.
The old adage says, âCrowd the kicker.â But with Lemosâ power in her hands, she canât get too crazy when it comes to crowding. Marina Rodriguez needs to kick Lemos before Amanda Lemos can kick her. But she will risk getting caught with a cross as sheâs often done in the past. Lemos is the hardest pincher Rodriguez has faced and it will be paramount for her to keep her head off the center line as she kicks Lemos and insists on backing her up. Which leads me into the second point of attack for Rodriguez.
Back up Amanda Lemos. Almost every opponent sheâs faced has decided that Lemos has too much power and fought with her at range and paid the price for it. But if we look back to the Angela Hill fight, we can see a chink in the armor of Amanda Lemos: feints. Hill kept active hands to paralyze Lemos and used them to push back Lemos and actually out strike her opponent. Rodriguez feints quite well with all her weapons when she fights and could be another factor to take into account for her bout at UFC Vegas 63. And should Rodriguez keep pushing Lemos back, she might find herself in a clinch situation against the fence and taking some gas out the tank of her opponents should this fight go the distance.
With a win, Rodriguez makes a statement letting the next champion know there is nobody else but Marina Rodriguez. With wins over 5, 6, and 7 in the division you can ask for Andrade or Namajunas as one last proving match. But a title shot with a win this weekend would be even sweeter.