Preview: Bellator 233 ‘Salter vs. Van Steenis’

Leslie Smith vs. Arlene Blencowe

Despite winning her last two fights, the UFC released Smith. Many speculate that she was let go from the organization due to her involvement in Project Spearhead, a fighter’s union advocacy group. Smith’s 11-7-1 professional record is deceiving due to fighting top talents like Cristiane Justino, Jessica Eye, Sarah Kaufman among others. “The Peacemaker” is in her second stint with Bellator and has taken care of business in her last three encounters. The California martial artist is an aggressive striker, who fights at an insane pace. She marches down her opponent throwing a tirade of strikes. She has the propensity to lose some technique by throwing wild haymakers, ignoring her defense and trusting her rock-solid chin. This leaves her to get hit a lot as she invites a brawl. She does well to add kicks and elbows into her combinations. The 37-year-old is a student of Cesar Gracie but almost completely ignores the ground game and doesn’t own a single win by submission. She has been taken down in the past, but does well to quickly get back to her feet.

After Blencowe’s failed bid to capture the featherweight title from Julia Budd, which she lost by split decision (a fight I thought she won), she rebounded with back-to-back TKO wins over Amber Leibrock and Amanda Bell. The 12-7 professional has amassed a 5-3 record in Bellator over two stints with the promotion. The 36-year-old is a counter striker, who does well at slipping away from punches and firing off with hard hooks and uppercuts. “Angerfist” also does well to attack the body with hard shots. She fires off accurate combinations, but can fall into a low-output fight if her opponent doesn’t press the action. The Australian showed in her last bout that she packs nice power. She does well in the clinch because of how physically strong she is. While she doesn’t look to take the fight to the ground, she is hard to get down and does well at reversing her foes takedown attempts.

Out of every fight on the card, this is my favorite one and possibly the toughest affair to predict. Blencowe likes when her opponent presses her and she will get everything she asked for from Smith, who might not know it is legal to take a step back in a fight. Both fighters should do damage, with Smith having the advantage in volume but Blencowe the advantage in power. This fight is a toss-up. Give me Blencowe by split decision.

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