Big Bad Blog Video Theater-Jessica Andrade vs Raquel Pennington

Here's the fight video for Jessica Andrade vs Raquel Pennington from last night's UFC show in Dallas. We have seen Jessica twice before and she battered Rosi Sexton in her last fight. Raquel was in The Ultimate Fighter 18 and she beat Roxanne Modafferi at the finale. I think Jessica is a more accomplished fighter that Raquel. Raquel is much taller and has a significant reach advantage. So her strategy should be to keep Jessica at a distance and pepper her with punches. Raquel doesn't have much of a ground game. It's a good theory but I didn't think it would work on someone as aggressive as Jessica. She has shown that she is willing to take a few punches to get in close and land her own punches. And she is a lot better on the ground. And that's how things went in round one. Raquel's attempts to hold off Jessica didn't work. Jessica landed significant strikes and won the round with a few takedowns. Raquel needed to be more aggressive. I scored round one 10-9 for Jessica. The other problem for Raquel is her corner was giving her poor advice. She was told that she had seen Jessica's best in round one. It wasn't true. Jessica continued to control Raquel with harder punches. It was similar to round one but Raquel hooked a standing guillotine with 30 seconds left in the round. That could have worked earlier in the round. I scored round two 10-9 Jessica as I do not believe in stealing rounds. But we are in Texas and judges can be very goofy. Again Raquel's corner gave her poor advice by telling her the fight was hers for the taking when most scorecards should have her down two rounds. So she needed a finish but because she was told that, she didn't go for a finish. I thought Jessica ran out of gas in round three and Raquel won the round 10-9. So I scored it 29-28 for Jessica. Two of the judges scored it that way but the third judge scored it 29-28 for Raquel. So Jessica won by split decision. I wasn't surprised because this is Texas and some judges believe in round stealing though I do not. Because Jessica is only 5'2", there is always going to be talk about her dropping to 115lb. I doubt that she will do that but when the UFC inevitably starts a 125lb division, I could see her dropping then. She is very powerful for her size and has a low center of gravity. So as we saw, taller fighters can't really outmuscle her. And she isn't the shortest 135lb fighter I have seen. Rin Nakai is 5'1". Enjoy the video!

Jessica Andrade vs Raquel Pennington - kewego
from UFC

Keywords: female fighters

Video from frankp316