Preview: UFC Fight Night 188 ‘Font vs. Garbrandt’

Women’s Strawweights

#3 WSW | Xiaonan Yan (13-1, 6-0 UFC) vs. #4 WSW | Carla Esparza (17-6, 8-4 UFC)

ODDS: Yan (-125), Esparza (+105)

Even with a relevant main event, this might be the most important fight on the card, as the winner will be in strong position to become Rose Namajunas’ next strawweight title challenger. If Esparza wins here and goes on to challenge for the title, that would bring things full circle for the division. She became the UFC’s inaugural 115-pound champion with a victory over Namajunas in 2014. Esparza was the odds-on favorite to win the season of “The Ultimate Fighter” that crowned a champion, and indeed, she used her wrestling-heavy approach to run through the field with little effort. However, Esparza became a divisional afterthought with shocking speed. Just three months later, she suffered a one-sided beating at the hands of Joanna Jedrzejczyk that made the latter the queen of the division with little public desire for a rematch. Esparza has remained on the fringes of the title mix in the years since but never quite put together enough momentum to get back to top contender status; and after back-to-back losses to Claudia Gadelha and Tatiana Suarez in 2018, the worry was that she was done as a contender for good. Instead, Esparza has quietly put together a four-fight winning streak and looks to make it number five against Yan.

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Yan is fully capable of becoming China’s second UFC champion after Weili Zhang, which would cap off a quiet rise through the ranks for a talented prospect. Zhang’s own rise has essentially left Yan in her shadow. While Zhang was seemingly a readymade title contender upon arriving in the UFC, Yan’s success was nowhere near as guaranteed. Heading into her UFC debut, Yan did not have much in the way of relevant pro experience, save for her last bout—a fight that quickly ended in a no contest due to a clash of heads. Yan’s first few fights showed that she belonged on the UFC roster, and her 2019 win over Angela Hill put her on the map as a prospect to watch going forward. However, her breakout performance came against Karolina Kowalkiewicz in 2020, as Yan outpaced the former title challenger in a one-sided beating that left her with some career-altering eye injuries. After a November win over Claudia Gadelha, Yan has proven herself to be in the upper tier of the UFC’s best female division. Now, it is just a matter of getting a win to put her in the running for a title shot.

This is a difficult fight to call with a clear dynamic and should play out similarly to a lot of Esparza’s recent fights. Esparza has historically been one of the best wrestlers in this division—which remains true—but the margins have been getting thinner for her to pull out her victories. While Esparza has done well to improve her striking over the years, this most recent wave of up-and-coming contenders has been able to cause enough damage on the feet to turn her fights into coinflips. While Esparza’s relentless chain wrestling allow her to control vast swaths of her bouts, that can get nearly negated by opponents who can attack with volume and power. Yan’s takedown defense is not particularly strong, so Esparza figures to have little issue getting the fight that she wants early on. However, Yan has shown some solid grappling and could even be able to replicate parts of Marina Rodriguez’s performance against Esparza. Remember, Rodriguez nearly won the fight by throwing offense from her back. Essentially, Yan should be able to pick her spots with offense and force Esparza to work for 15 hard minutes. Given Esparza’s recent tendency to slow down in the third round, that should lead to Yan being able to clearly separate herself from the Team Oyama standout in the latter stretches of the fight. This has all the markings of a somewhat controversial split decision, but the pick is Yan via decision.

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