Preview: UFC 219 ‘Cyborg vs. Holm’
Cyborg vs. Holm
The Endeavor-led
Ultimate Fighting Championship puts its inaugural year in the
books with UFC
219 on Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. It is far from
the best event the company has waged in its fraught first year, yet
somehow seems appropriate, for better and for worse.
The UFC is still the premiere ticket in MMA, and whether or not it can be a major pay-per-view success, UFC 219 is still headlined by a women’s featherweight title fight with immediate and historic resonance, as Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino takes on former UFC bantamweight titleholder and boxing world champion Holly Holm. The fact alone that the Brazilian is merely a -360 favorite as I write this is a reminder that this fight feels like something different, as “Cyborg” has spent nearly 13 years undefeated while thrashing her opposition and routinely coming in as a -1000 favorite and often double that.
At the same time, it is a bout marred by its very circumstance.
Germaine
de Randamie was crowned the inaugural UFC women’s featherweight
champion just 10 months ago, when she beat … Holm. Where was
Justino? Fighting to get a retroactive therapeutic use exemption --
which she was eventually granted -- after testing positive for the
banned diuretic spironolactone, at which point de Randamie called
her a PED cheat and was stripped of her title, preferring to focus
on rehabbing her hand and her job as a police officer in her native
Netherlands. “Cyborg”-Holm has historic relevance, but the way into
which the contest has been stumbled has been embarrassing.
It is not just some of the queasier parts of “Cyborg”-Holm that make UFC 219 an apropos goodbye to the year. Would it be 2017 if we did not have a major fight fall apart? Rising contender Jimmie Rivera lost out on a bout with John Lineker due to an infected wisdom tooth during fight week. This, of course, was after he lost a showdown with former two-time UFC champ Dominick Cruz due to “The Dominator’s” broken arm.
ODDS: Justino (-360), Holm (+325)
ANALYSIS: While “Cyborg” is a healthy and righteous favorite, there is legitimate currency to the idea of Holm being uniquely equipped to deal with the Brazilian bomber, at least in a way at which no one has been able to sniff over the last decade and change. It is not just that Holm was a pound-for-pound boxing standout and multi-division world champion that has subsequently found MMA success, but that she has a diversified MMA standup game and overall striking competence that gives her at least a more realistic chance of landing a counter to short circuit “Cyborg.”
It seems largely unimportant to discuss the grappling angles of this bout. While she is the same height and gives up an inch of reach to “The Preacher’s Daughter,” Justino will have strength advantages in close and positional advantages on the ground. However, in spite of her jiu-jitsu chops, “Cyborg” prefers to just beat foes into the floor and then ride them while pounding them out, so Holm need not worry as much about a submission surprise on the ground, like the one to which she fell prey in her UFC title loss to Miesha Tate at UFC 196.
Based on both women’s recent and evolving tendencies, it is fair to imagine the bout characterized by Justino stalking forward behind the jab and low kicks while Holm darts to her left, looking to maintain distance and find avenues down the middle to surprise her encroaching opponent with counter crosses. Holm will have to be especially clever in her countering, too, as so much of her MMA offense has been based around her low and body kicking attacks setting up head kicks; if she relies on her usual brand of lateral movement while kicking too aggressively, “Cyborg” will eventually plow her with a counter of her own or simply knock her off-balance and initiate the kind of morbid punching sequences that wreck so many of Justino’s victims.
As I referenced earlier, both women have evolved their attacking styles. Holm, as mentioned, turned from a volume-heavy, attrition-based boxer to a tactical kick fighter as a mixed martial artist; “Cyborg,” however, is not the same kind of unbridled animal she has been in the past. Since coming under the boxing tutelage of Jason Parillo, she has developed that slow-creeping striking pressure where she uses minimal jabs and low kicks to establish range and position, then explodes on her targets, typically trapping them against the fence before unloading with her brutal barrages. Holm might well have the ability to kick off Justino’s dome, like she did to Ronda Rousey and Bethe Correia, but the progression of both women’s games informs a dynamic that actually favors “Cyborg,” who has become more disciplined in a capacity directly threatening Holm.
It is worth considering that Holm had her best success at UFC 208 late in the contest against de Randamie but more vital to realize that she kept a tired de Randamie off-balance by threatening takedowns. If the Jackson-Wink MMA product shoots the sort of singles she attempted on “The Iron Lady,” Justino will pulverize her. No, the Brazilian is not any sort of insurmountable ruler -- we have watched Holm upset an unconquerable queen before -- but it is not enough for Holm to stick and move for the first half of the bout and hope to outlast the champion if it is “Cyborg” dictating a comfortable pace to trap her challenger and then unload at will.
Holm is tough, tactical and technical enough to make this a fight, or at least more of a fight than we have gotten out of a “Cyborg” challenger in quite a while. However, her kick-heavy offence is exposing unless she can frame a head kick for the ages; and the titlist’s quiet boxing improvements should afford her the ability to move Holm around the cage much more easily than she would have been able to previously. Holm has been clobbered before as a boxer, and 25 minutes against the unyielding, swarming power of “Cyborg” is too much to bet against. Look for the champion to retain her title by a mid- to late-round stoppage.
Next Fight » Barboza vs. Nurmagomedov
The UFC is still the premiere ticket in MMA, and whether or not it can be a major pay-per-view success, UFC 219 is still headlined by a women’s featherweight title fight with immediate and historic resonance, as Cristiane “Cyborg” Justino takes on former UFC bantamweight titleholder and boxing world champion Holly Holm. The fact alone that the Brazilian is merely a -360 favorite as I write this is a reminder that this fight feels like something different, as “Cyborg” has spent nearly 13 years undefeated while thrashing her opposition and routinely coming in as a -1000 favorite and often double that.
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It is not just some of the queasier parts of “Cyborg”-Holm that make UFC 219 an apropos goodbye to the year. Would it be 2017 if we did not have a major fight fall apart? Rising contender Jimmie Rivera lost out on a bout with John Lineker due to an infected wisdom tooth during fight week. This, of course, was after he lost a showdown with former two-time UFC champ Dominick Cruz due to “The Dominator’s” broken arm.
As I write all of this, Khabib
Nurmagomedov is on track to make weight. I may be tempting fate
to continue. I suppose we should go deep on UFC 219 before I jinx
anything:
UFC Women’s Featherweight Championship
“Cyborg” Cristiane Justino (18-1, 1 NC) vs. Holly Holm (11-3)ODDS: Justino (-360), Holm (+325)
ANALYSIS: While “Cyborg” is a healthy and righteous favorite, there is legitimate currency to the idea of Holm being uniquely equipped to deal with the Brazilian bomber, at least in a way at which no one has been able to sniff over the last decade and change. It is not just that Holm was a pound-for-pound boxing standout and multi-division world champion that has subsequently found MMA success, but that she has a diversified MMA standup game and overall striking competence that gives her at least a more realistic chance of landing a counter to short circuit “Cyborg.”
It seems largely unimportant to discuss the grappling angles of this bout. While she is the same height and gives up an inch of reach to “The Preacher’s Daughter,” Justino will have strength advantages in close and positional advantages on the ground. However, in spite of her jiu-jitsu chops, “Cyborg” prefers to just beat foes into the floor and then ride them while pounding them out, so Holm need not worry as much about a submission surprise on the ground, like the one to which she fell prey in her UFC title loss to Miesha Tate at UFC 196.
Based on both women’s recent and evolving tendencies, it is fair to imagine the bout characterized by Justino stalking forward behind the jab and low kicks while Holm darts to her left, looking to maintain distance and find avenues down the middle to surprise her encroaching opponent with counter crosses. Holm will have to be especially clever in her countering, too, as so much of her MMA offense has been based around her low and body kicking attacks setting up head kicks; if she relies on her usual brand of lateral movement while kicking too aggressively, “Cyborg” will eventually plow her with a counter of her own or simply knock her off-balance and initiate the kind of morbid punching sequences that wreck so many of Justino’s victims.
As I referenced earlier, both women have evolved their attacking styles. Holm, as mentioned, turned from a volume-heavy, attrition-based boxer to a tactical kick fighter as a mixed martial artist; “Cyborg,” however, is not the same kind of unbridled animal she has been in the past. Since coming under the boxing tutelage of Jason Parillo, she has developed that slow-creeping striking pressure where she uses minimal jabs and low kicks to establish range and position, then explodes on her targets, typically trapping them against the fence before unloading with her brutal barrages. Holm might well have the ability to kick off Justino’s dome, like she did to Ronda Rousey and Bethe Correia, but the progression of both women’s games informs a dynamic that actually favors “Cyborg,” who has become more disciplined in a capacity directly threatening Holm.
It is worth considering that Holm had her best success at UFC 208 late in the contest against de Randamie but more vital to realize that she kept a tired de Randamie off-balance by threatening takedowns. If the Jackson-Wink MMA product shoots the sort of singles she attempted on “The Iron Lady,” Justino will pulverize her. No, the Brazilian is not any sort of insurmountable ruler -- we have watched Holm upset an unconquerable queen before -- but it is not enough for Holm to stick and move for the first half of the bout and hope to outlast the champion if it is “Cyborg” dictating a comfortable pace to trap her challenger and then unload at will.
Holm is tough, tactical and technical enough to make this a fight, or at least more of a fight than we have gotten out of a “Cyborg” challenger in quite a while. However, her kick-heavy offence is exposing unless she can frame a head kick for the ages; and the titlist’s quiet boxing improvements should afford her the ability to move Holm around the cage much more easily than she would have been able to previously. Holm has been clobbered before as a boxer, and 25 minutes against the unyielding, swarming power of “Cyborg” is too much to bet against. Look for the champion to retain her title by a mid- to late-round stoppage.
Next Fight » Barboza vs. Nurmagomedov
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