MMA Fight Night
Main Event Pick:
Dern Sub @10/11
Round 2 Sub @11/2
Dern: Dern is a world class BJJ player who fights out of the orthodox stance. Her gameplan will always be to take her opponents down and submit them. Her striking has come a long way, but is still developing under Jason Parillo. She will open by taking the center and throwing big shifting kicks to cover ground and attempt to enter clinch range. She will enter the clinch behind jabs and shifting overhands to make her connection. She does a decent job of blending her level changes with her strikes, but once it comes to finishing the takedown she runs into problems. If she is unable to get the fight to the ground consistently, her striking starts to fall apart back to her old habits, and it becomes much more telegraphed. However, when she is able to get her opponents to the ground, she can mostly do whatever she wants. She can land damage as well as hunt submissions, and she will seek to do both.
Xiaonan: Yan is an orthodox striker with good bounce, lateral movement, and has a more bladed stance. She has fast hands, and a very fast lead leg kick, which she likes to throw to the inside leg. Her inside leg kick sets up her fast jab-cross, and she likes to show the hook as she leaves punching range. She will sometimes open with a lead leg hook kick to show danger and establish range. She will also put her lead leg up to the head. She has decent TDD.
Prediction: This is very much a striker vs grappler match up. Both are specialists, with decent ability in their opposite arts. Dern has shown much improvement on her feet, and on the ground, she is elite. Yan’s movement is fantastic, and she does a great job keeping her range and sticking her opponents with fast straight punches and inside leg kicks. Dern has shown trouble getting takedowns on her first try, but her pressure and shootboxing creates a lot of opportunities for Dern to get to her clinch and look for her takedowns. Dern will have to go through some fire to get to Yan, and be very persistent in chain wrestling with Yan. I think over 5 rounds, Dern finds an opportunity to get Yan down, and finishes her if she does. Dern by sub any round.
Other Picks:
Davis – KO
Castaneda – Dec
Yosuff – KO
Barcelos – Dec
Brown – KO
UFC returns to UFC APEX with an exciting strawweight contenders’ bout that will see No. 5 ranked Mackenzie Dern clash with No. 6 Xiaonan Yan. An action-packed co-main event will see a showdown between exciting welterweights Randy Brown and Francisco Trinaldo.
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