Strawweight battle on tap at UFC Apex

By E. Spencer Kyte | Posted 1 year ago

Saturday night at the UFC APEX, Mackenzie Dern and Yan Xiaonan face off in a critical strawweight main event that won’t only determine the next steps for each of the ranked competitors, but could also provide insights into how the division will line up in 2023.

 

THE FIGHT AT HAND

 

This weekend’s headlining matchup is both an understandable and curious pairing.

 

On one hand, Dern and Yan are currently stationed next to one another in the Top 15 — the former clocking in at No. 5 and the latter one behind her, making this a reasonable fight to make in terms of the rankings. On the other hand, their current trajectories don’t really line up.

 

Dern enters off a split decision win over Tecia Torres at UFC 273 in April and having won five of her last six, with her lone setback coming last October in a main event tilt opposite Marina Rodriguez. Yan has dropped two straight, suffering a second-round stoppage loss to current titleholder Carla Esparza in May 2021 before dropping a split decision to Rodriguez at UFC 272 in March.

 

While matching fighters coming off wins together (or losses together) is no longer the customary approach it was back in the day in the UFC, putting these two athletes together at this time feels a bit odd, given that Dern is ascending and Yan seems to be in need of a bit of a reset.

 

What really feels off about this pairing is that it doesn’t naturally feel like a bout that elevates either fighter into the title conversation with a win, given their individual losses to Rodriguez, who has won four straight since her split decision loss to Esparza in the summer of 2020. That being said, it’s also what gives this fight a little more intrigue from an overall divisional perspective.

 

DIVISIONAL ALIGNMENT AND UPCOMING SCHEDULE

 

Simply put, this fight feels like it has the potential to unseat Rodriguez from the top of the list of contenders in the 115-pound weight class.

 

She’s slated to face fellow Brazilian Amanda Lemos on November 5, but a victory for Dern — despite her loss to Rodriguez — feels like it could elevate the multiple-time Brazilian jiu jitsu world champion into contention ahead of Rodriguez. She’s a more marketable competitor, with a greater following, and those things often carry more weight and value than actual results, even in head-to-head situations.

 

Esparza is scheduled to defend the title against former champ Zhang Weili in the co-main event of UFC 281 at Madison Square Garden on November 12, but a clear No. 1 contender beyond that contest is not in place.

 

Former champ Rose Namajunas hasn’t made her future plans clear as of yet, while fellow ex-titleholder Jessica Andrade returned to the division with a first-round submission win over Lemos in April, but was scratched from a flyweight fight in Paris at the start of the month due to an undisclosed injury, so her next move is uncertain as well.

 

In terms of wins and losses, Rodriguez feels like the rightful next challenger, but she needs to get by Lemos in order to maintain that spot, and doing so is no easy feat, as she carries big power for the division and has won six of her seven strawweight appearances.

 

If Dern can go out and dominate on Saturday, she’d essentially establish herself as the clubhouse leader in the title chase — the first register a victory and cement their place in the pecking order, and the one who can sit back and see how everything else unfolds from there.

 

Including the champion Esparza, six of top nine fighters in the rankings are due to compete between now and November 12, and how those three contests play out will go a long way to helping determine how things line up heading into 2023.

 

THE GREATER CHALLENGE

 

When it comes to figuring out who’s got next in a lot of these UFC divisions, there are two key issues that often rear their heads: (1) the promotion’s insistence on working former champions right back into the title picture, and (2) the resulting cannibalism that happens within the contender ranks.

 

Zhang being set to face Esparza for the title at MSG is a perfect illustration of the first of those issues, and the other two key divisional matchups that will come before highlight the second.

 

The Chinese athlete won the title on August 31, 2019, and successfully defended it once, beating Joanna Jedrzejczyk in an epic clash at UFC 248. She lost the belt to Namajunas at UFC 261, getting knocked out just 78 seconds into the contest, yet still garnered an immediate rematch, which she lost by split decision at UFC 268.

 

Following those twin losses to Namajunas, she fought Jedrzejczyk for a second time, felling the former divisional queen in the second round at UFC 275 in June, and now after just one victory, she’s fighting for the title again. While various contenders have to work their way through a gauntlet of tough matchups in hopes of securing a championship opportunity, a recent title reign seems to allow fighters like Zhang to skip the line, earn one win, and secure another championship opportunity.

 

The ripple effect of that is that fighters like Rodriguez have to remain active and continue facing daunting assignments just in order to maintain their place in line.

 

You could argue that her three victories in 2021 were enough to move her to the head of the list of contenders, given that she kicked off the year with a second-round stoppage win over highly regarded up-and-comer Amanda Ribas and then earned back-to-back main event wins over Michelle Waterson-Gomez and then Dern.

 

That didn’t come to pass, and instead, she was paired off with Yan, who was coming off a loss, but remains a dangerous and difficult matchup for anyone in the division. She managed to navigate that bout to push her winning streak to four, but a title opportunity still escaped her clutches, resulting in her impending matchup with Lemos, who bounced back from her loss earlier this year to Andrade with a second-round submission win over Waterson-Gomez.

 

So many of these contenders and ranked fighters have already fought each other that if you were to build a “connect the strings, serial killer board” to map everything out, you’d tie yourself in knots.

 

It’s not just strawweight either — these parallel approaches have led to similar situations in various divisions, including featherweight, welterweight, and middleweight, and leads to further strained matchups and additional complications.

 

The UFC is never going to be a strict meritocracy — the entertainment side of things has always and will always have a disproportionate influence on these decisions in comparison to the sporting results, but reconfiguring this process could go a long way towards keeping things fresh at the top of these divisions.


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