The Bottom Line: Youth Movement

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It has been a great week and a half for Erin Blanchfield. The emerging flyweight star was scheduled for her first career main event, an exciting milestone for any fighter. Opponent Taila Santos was then forced to pull out on short notice. This is usually a negative for a main event fighter, a lesser-known opponent and a new game plan to be implemented on short notice. For Blanchfield, the switch from Santos to Jessica Andrade was a fortuitous one.

In switching opponents, Blanchfield went from fighting a dangerous but relatively unknown foe who just gave Valentina Shevchenko her toughest fight in years to a much better-known former champion. She stood to gain more from the win while also taking on what might have been an easier challenge. Even better, she came into the fight with a full training camp while Andrade had peaked for a fight just a month ago. Andrade got a nice new contract from the deal, so everyone came out a winner.

Of course, Blanchfield still had to perform. That’s no easy task against Andrade, who demolished Lauren Murphy in January and was looking to work her way back into another title shot. Instead, it was Blanchfield who thrived, showcasing solid striking and her slick ground game in handing Andrade her first submission loss since 2015. It was a strong enough performance that Blanchfield was jockeying for a title shot after the fight.

A title shot at Shevchenko in the near future doesn’t seem at all out of the question. Blanchfield was already ranked No. 10 and defeated the No. 3 fighter. Meanwhile, Shevchenko holds wins over five of the nine women who were in front of Blanchfield before the Andrade fight. The only other realistic next challengers for Shevchenko are Manon Fiorot and Alexa Grasso. Fiorot is the higher ranked of the two, while Grasso is better known and more popular. Unless the Ultimate Fighting Championship goes back to Shevchenko-Amanda Nunes, the most logical progression is Shevchenko-Fiorot/Grasso, with the other side of Grasso/Fiorot facing Blanchfield in a top contender fight.

Blanchfield is still only 23 years old. If she wins another fight and finds herself challenging for the title before she reaches her 25th birthday, she’ll be in select company. Only 17 fighters in UFC history have fought for a UFC championship at age 24 or younger. Even that is deceptive, as the majority of fighters in that club attained that distinction before she reached kindergarten. Of the 17 fighters to challenge for a UFC title before reaching 25, 11 of them did so from 1998-2004, when the sport was in a much more primitive state.

During that period, there was nothing resembling the depth of talent there is now, when even fighters who show great promise on the regional circuit before making it to the UFC still have waves of talent in front of them. That was also a period when fighters weren’t as well-rounded, so Wanderlei Silva could challenge for the title based on his fearsome muay thai, Jeremy Horn and Carlos Newton based on their submissions or Tito Ortiz based on his wrestling. There were also occasionally more well-rounded prodigies like B.J. Penn, Georges St. Pierre and Josh Barnett.

Since 2004, only six fighters 24 or under have fought for a UFC title, and none since 2017. It’s much more common for fighters over 40 to challenge for the title than fighters under 25—something that would seem downright bizarre to many fans of team sports where the opposite is the case. It speaks to the amount of time it takes to put together all the skills needed to rise to the top of the sport and then to start stringing together top-level wins.

Of course, it’s easier in divisions where the competition is lighter. It’s no coincidence that many of the earlier young challengers came at 170 pounds when that division was still in an embryonic stage, and it hasn’t happened since now that it’s one of the stronger divisions. The most recent 24-and-younger challengers were Ray Borg and Kyoji Horiguchi at men’s flyweight, perpetually the weakest of the men’s divisions. Then, of course, there were the phenomenons like Jon Jones and Jose Aldo, the latter of whom was already defending UFC gold at 24 after shooting to the top of the World Extreme Cagefighting 145-pound division.

It will be difficult for Blanchfield to place herself in the company of the likes of Jones and Aldo, but she’s off to a great start. Her quick victory over cult hero “Meatball” Molly McCann at Madison Square Garden put her on the map and her performance against Andrade in the UFC Fight Night 219 headliner on Saturday was an even bigger jump forward. She’s not too far away from the top of her division, but the challenges will only get more difficult from here.