Preview: UFC 281 ‘Adesanya vs. Pereira’

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UFC Women’s Strawweight Championship

#4 P4P | Carla Esparza (19-6, 10-4 UFC) vs. #6 P4P | Weili Zhang (22-3, 6-2 UFC)

ODDS: Zhang (-340), Esparza (+280)

Ignoring everything else about how she got here, Esparza finding her way back to the strawweight title is a fun storyline. The reigning Invicta Fighting Championships strawweight titleholder when the UFC added the division in 2014, “The Cookie Monster” lived up to her status as the favorite to win the UFC’s inaugural strawweight title tournament, running through Rose Namajunas in the final to claim the belt. However, Esparza was queen of the division for all of three months. Upstart Joanna Jedrzejczyk obliterated the Team Oyama product for the better part of two rounds, and from there, Esparza fell back to the strawweight pack. Esparza’s success is always a bit amusing to watch, if only for the contrast between her tiny 5-foot-1 frame and the fact that she is at her best as a dogged wrestler. As a result, Esparza has always walked a bit of a tightrope to find her victories and struggled at certain times, but things eventually came together for her with a five-fight winning streak. She was far from the most exciting challenger, but at that point, it was undeniable that she had to face Namajunas for the title in May. The result was one of the worst fights of all-time. Namajunas had all the advantages but did nothing with them. Given that her aggression as a raw prospect led her into the teeth of Esparza’s wrestling back in 2014, Namajunas overcompensated by showing no aggression at all, defending what little offense her counterpart tried to put together while not doing much in return. Esparza won the decision, but the general feeling was that she would be picked off by the next top contender she faced. In this case, that status falls to a former champion in Zhang.

Zhang hit the UFC in 2018 and immediately made herself noticed as someone to watch with wins over Danielle Taylor and Jessica Aguilar, the latter coming via a quick and brutal beating. With the UFC’s want for a Chinese star, one more win over Tecia Torres was all that Zhang needed to jump the line and get named top contender, with the UFC quickly booking her title challenge against Jessica Andrade for a card in China in 2019. For all the hand-wringing about how Zhang had earned her shot, she proved herself to be a championship-level fighter without much question. It took her all of 42 seconds to run through Andrade and become the new titleholder at 115 pounds. Any remaining questions about Zhang as an elite fighter were answered in her first title defense against Jedrzejczyk—a five-round war that ranks among the best fights of all-time. Zhang carried her power through 25 minutes of non-stop action and held her own every step of the way, earning the narrow decision win and affirming herself as one of the top fighters in the world. Her 2021 campaign was a bit of a setback, as the entire year consisted of two losses to Namajunas. The first saw her quickly get knocked out, while the second was an ugly but narrow decision loss that mixed defensive issues and inefficiency with effectiveness through Zhang’s sheer horsepower. Things were much more channeled in a June rematch against Jedrzejczyk that saw Zhang close the show with a spinning backfist in the second round, but there is still a sense that she is somewhere between adaptable and formless, capable of anything but not often at her maximum capability. None of that may matter thanks to her sheer power and durability. Frankly, none of that should be an issue here given the physical advantages she has over Esparza. It would not be a shock to see Esparza get off to a hot start—Zhang’s takedown defense can be a weakness—but with an outright submission looking unlikely, it is unclear what Esparza can eventually accomplish. She is not much of a finisher, and one of the many issues with Namajunas’ slow-paced approach in May is that it allowed Esparza to maintain her gas tank. Even in some of Esparza’s better recent performances, she has found herself absolutely gassed by the third round after trying to control her larger opponents. It seems inevitable that Zhang, who has not shown many signs of flagging, will hit Esparza very hard and very often at some point to regain her title; it is just a question of how much success the champion has before that turn comes. The pick is Zhang via third-round knockout.

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Adesanya vs. Pereira
Esparza vs. Zhang
Poirier vs. Chandler
Gutierrez vs. Edgar
Hooker vs. Puelles
The Prelims