Sunday, July 27, 2014

Big Bad Blog Video Theater-Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs Juliana Lima

Here's the fight video of Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs Juliana Lima from last night's UFC show in San Jose. The fight aired on UFC Fight Pass so I know a lot of fans didn't see it. As I said when this fight was announced, I've seen Juliana before and was not impressed. I don't know why the UFC bought her contract from Invicta. And then they decided not to use her in The Ultimate Fighter. So they found an opponent for her. Both were Muay Thai fighters before MMA. But Joanna is much more accomplished. The story of this fight was Juliana's very poor strategy. She thought she could psyche Joanna out by mugging. I guess she thought Joanna would get the UFC jitters. But Joanna remained very calm and stuck to her game plan. She showed excellent takedown defense when Juliana tried to take her down and a couple of times they were stuck against the fence. Ref Mike Beltran was forced to break them up twice. All this did was empty Juliana's gas tank. And when Joanna got the separation she wanted, her striking was very effective. Joanna continued to outpunch Juliana in round two. And in round three, Juliana finally got a takedown but did nothing with it. She showed no urgency to finish. I guess she thought she was winning. Joanna was simply more effective. She took what was given to her and won the fight. I scored it 30-27 in Joanna's favour. Two of the judges scored the fight 30-27 for Joanna and the other scored it 29-28 for Joanna. Joanna Jedrzejczyk wins by unanimous decision. Juliana needs to rethink her strategy. When asked about Juliana's mugging afterwards Joanna said that Juliana wasn't nice to her at the weigh ins so she had to beat her up. She also said she has no emotion in the cage. She's all business and can really punch. Her likely next opponent is Claudia Gadelha and her high level BJJ could give Joanna trouble. That would be a very interesting fight. Both women are potential Strawweight Championship contenders. Enjoy the video! Unfortunately the video cuts off before the decision announcement. The other source I use for videos wasn't working properly.

4 comments:

  1. It is my first time to see Joanna. Quite impressive and even more when I took a look at her record. However, she has to work on the groundwork and there are a lot of good ones in her weight class. This weight class may be more competitive than I've expected. I just wish the 135Ibs weight class gets more of the girls like that. Ronda is so far from others unless UFC takes Cyborg to the title fight.

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  2. This was her first fight at 115lb. Previous fights were at 125 and her management had planned more fights for her at that weight until the UFC came calling. Be sure to check out Joanna's KO of Rosi Sexton from a June Cage Warriors show.

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    1. Thank you for the tip! She seemed to have more power at 125Ibs. I do wonder if the drop in the weight class will affect her striking power. Is her walkabout weight at 135Ibs or more?

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  3. She has to work on that. Her next fight against Claudia Gadelha is already set. I'm just waiting for the UFC to announce a date.

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