Preview: UFC Vegas 109 Prelims

Women’s Bantamweights

Joselyne Edwards (15-6, 6-4 UFC) vs. Priscila Cachoeira (13-6, 5-6 UFC)

Odds: Edwards (-300); Cachoeira (+250)

In a division desperate for someone—anyone—to step up and become a contender, Edwards’ attempt to pick up a third straight win is quietly one of the more important fights on the card. The 29-year-old Panamanian joined the UFC as a technically sound kickboxer with decent but not crushing power, and very poor takedown defense. That means her route to victory has always involved a bit of threading the needle: outlanding her opponent on the feet while staying upright, usually for all three rounds.

To her credit, Edwards has worked on those deficiencies, especially since relocating her training to Kings MMA. Perhaps understanding on some level that she will never have a great sprawl, Edwards’s team has adjusted by working on her defensive grappling. She now has a good get-up game and can threaten with her own submissions, as she did against Tamires Vidal last October. She has also become a more willing and able offensive wrestler; while she came up short against Nora Cornolle in Paris, her game plan to look for the takedown herself clearly caught her fellow kickboxer off guard and was effective.

Seven years older and with more high-level experience than Edwards, Cachoeira feels less like a work in progress and more like a known quantity. Unfortunately, most of what’s known is negative: “Zombie Girl” was signed to provide a foil for Valentina Shevchenko’s flyweight debut and received one of the most lopsided drubbings of the last decade, then a few years later, en route to a first-round loss to Gillian Robertson, repeatedly gouged her opponent’s eyes while fighting off a submission, in one of the dirtiest moments in recent memory in the UFC.

Outside of those bad memories, Cachoeira actually has shown a bit of game, and what she has may be better suited to the bantamweight division. Not terribly athletic but big and strong, Cachoeira is a relentless come-forward striker with good power and big volume. When paired with the unbelievable durability and gameness that made the Shevchenko fight a long beating rather than a short one, the approach makes Cachoeira well equipped to overwhelm women who try and trade with her.

Cachoeira’s Achilles heel remains her grappling defense. Four of her six UFC losses have been by submission and at least one of the others, against Molly McCann, hinged on Cachoeira getting taken down and exploited on the ground for most of a round.

Unlike Edwards, who has at least worked around the holes in her game, Cachoeira remains a solved, solvable riddle. Edwards is bigger and faster than Cachoeira and is likely to give as good as she gets on the feet, and of the two, is more likely to have success bringing the fight to the ground. While Cachoeira’s grit makes a knockout or TKO less likely, this might be another lopsided hammering. Edwards by decision.



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Edwards vs. Cachoeira
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