Preview: UFC 300 Prelims

Women’s Strawweights

#11 P4P | Jessica Andrade (25-12, 16-10 UFC) vs. #6 WSW | Marina Rodriguez (17-3-2, 7-3-2 UFC)

ODDS: Andrade (-135), Rodriguez (+114)

Seeing as though 2023 was an odd year for Andrade, it’ll be interesting to see how her career carries forward into 2024. One of the most prolific women in UFC history, Andrade has been a three-division terror. A solid bantamweight prospect, “Bate Estaca” cut down to strawweight shortly after that option was available, at which point she was an absolute bulldozer against consistently overmatched opposition. Andrade has never been a technical marvel, but her strawweight run from 2016 to 2019 showed how little that can matter at times. Andrade was content to keep marching forward and wreck shop, and only Joanna Jedrzejczyk had the chops to keep Andrade at range and coast out a decision win. But after that loss to Jedrzejczyk, Andrade climbed right back up the division with three more wins—including an absolutely brutal knockout of Karolina Kowalkiewicz—and then took the title from Rose Namajunas in perfectly Andrade fashion, lifting Namajunas in the middle of a clinch exchange and dropping her directly onto her head for the knockout. That was the peak of Andrade’s career, as she quickly lost the title to Weili Zhang shortly thereafter, but she consistently remained relevant from there in two divisions, making her way to an unsuccessful title shot against Valentina Shevchenko at flyweight, then ping-ponging between both divisions as necessary to stay busy and provide some violence. Andrade started 2023 with an impressive win at flyweight over Lauren Murphy, stringing together 15 minutes of effective offense to take the one-sided decision. It seemingly set the former strawweight champion up for another big fight, but instead, Andrade completely lost the plot for a few fights. A quick turnaround to face Erin Blanchfield saw Blanchfield eat Andrade’s offense and tap her out, and a return to strawweight didn’t do much to turn Andrade’s fortunes around. She was over-aggressive and quickly got knocked out by Xiaonan Yan, and she had little answer for the wrestling of Tatiana Suarez. Andrade was able to bounce back with her own one-sided win over Mackenzie Dern, though it’s a bit hard to know exactly what to take from that fight. Andrade did look in better form, but it was against a particularly poor version of Dern, who’s been consistently inconsistent throughout her career. This fight against Rodriguez should hopefully provide some insight into whether or not Andrade’s gotten back over the hump and returned to her championship-level ways.

With that said, Rodriguez has been a bit hard to parse at times, as Andrade’s Brazilian countrywoman has put together a strong resume with a game that’s always felt like more than the sum of its parts. A striker by trade, Rodriguez isn’t a standout athlete and can be a bit messy at times, but her willingness to keep pressure and throw out offense has proven problematic for a lot of opponents, even as her takedown defense has remained quite inconsistent. That latter issue even led to Rodriguez having two draws among her first four UFC fights. Rodriguez was able to win two rounds of each handily, only for Randa Markos and Cynthia Calvillo to blow Rodriguez out when they actually looked to take her to the mat. Rodriguez finally got handed her first loss by Carla Esparza—though she did manage to land enough offense from her back to make the decision close—but she rebounded in impressive fashion. Her takedown defense locked in a bit better from her previous standards, and the result was a four-fight winning streak that had Rodriguez firmly in the title picture. But just as Rodriguez started getting championship buzz, she suffered two rough losses. Power puncher Amanda Lemos knocked her out in what had been a slow-paced fight up to that point, while Virna Jandiroba sold out on her wrestling enough to neutralize Rodriguez for the better part of 15 minutes. Those results seemed to close Rodriguez’s championship window for the time being, which made it a good time for her to regain some momentum with her best performance in years last September—an absolute shellacking of Michelle Waterson-Gomez that should’ve been stopped earlier than its second-round finish. This is essentially a coinflip and mostly seems dependent on Rodriguez’s approach. If she brings some aggression to the table, a firefight is winnable against Andrade’s defensive flammability, but her patient approach against Lemos in particular does raise the worry that she might not get after things against another of the rare knockout artists at 115 pounds. This should hopefully be a fun fight, and the call is that Rodriguez lets Andrade into this fight enough to land the more effective offense. The pick is Andrade via decision.

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