This should be another entertaining war involving Marquez, even if
it is now a bit unclear where his career is headed. “The Cuban
Missile Crisis” set a tone immediately upon his UFC debut—a
back-and-forth battle with Darren
Stewart in 2017 that was the best fight of the night. Marquez
is not always the technically deepest fighter, but he is willing to
leverage his durability into aggression and eat plenty of damage in
the hopes of finishing his opponent. However, Alessio
Di Chirico neutralized Marquez enough to take an uninspiring
split decision, and then Marquez suffered a cascade of injuries
that kept him out of action for two and a half years. Upon
Marquez’s return, he was once again able to turn violence into
victories over Maki Pitolo
and Sam
Alvey but fought a much smarter fight than usual in terms of
picking his spots. That gave way to another year-plus injury
layoff, this time taking Marquez out of action until his June fight
against Gregory
Rodrigues. That figured to be a fight where Marquez could
leverage his durability once again, but instead, it turned out to
be a flat performance that saw Rodrigues quickly damage and knock
out the Dana White’s Contender Series graduate with shocking ease.
If that was a sign that Marquez’s career has caught up with him
sooner than expected, it could be a worrying sign going forward,
even in this matchup. Winn is an obvious talent, a standout
wrestler who has put in plenty of work to build out a solid
striking game that can bring an impressive amount of volume.
However, the issue for Winn will always be that he is a 5-foot-6
middleweight, roughly the height of a typical bantamweight but so
thickly built that a cut down to welterweight or lower appears
entirely out of the question; Winn has even had issues making it
down to 185 pounds. That has left Winn stuck when it comes to
mounting an effective level of offense against most opponents.
Striking is difficult given his typical reach disadvantage, and
while Winn can usually find some early success with his wrestling,
that process is laborious enough to leave him gassed by the later
rounds. There is a chance he could thread the needle here,
particularly with Marquez being more willing than ever to cede
initiative to his opponent and having some potential durability
issues. With that said, this is another matchup where it is hard to
favor Winn and his size deficit in a war of attrition. The pick is
Marquez via second-round submission.
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