Big Bad Blog Video Theater-Joanna Jedrzejczyk vs Valerie Letourneau

Here's the match video of Joanna Jedrzejczyk defending her UFC Strawweight Championship against Valerie Letourneau at last night's UFC show in Australia. The match went pretty much as expected. Valerie is a good kickboxer and she started out OK but as the fight went on, she slowed down significantly. She actually got a takedown in round one when she grabbed Joanna's leg off a kick and two of the three judges scored it 10-9 in her favour. Later in the round, Joanna scored with a head kick. I thought the round was close and could have gone either way. But after that, Joanna took over and won an easy unanimous decision. The big difference was Valerie stopped throwing combinations and Joanna continued to score with her own combinations and leg kicks. After round three, Mike Brown tried to convince Valerie to take it to the ground. But that's not really Valerie's game so I'm not surprised she didn't do that. At that point, she was so tired I don't think takedown attempts would have got her anywhere. I noticed that some fans were upset that Joanna didn't finish the fight. But Valerie is much bigger and a much better striker than either Carla Esparza or Jessica Penne. It was going to be tough for Joanna to get a KO. And she said afterwards that she broke her hand. That would explain why she fought a conservative fight. She did what she had to do to keep her belt. So I was hoping that Joanna would defend her title against Claudia Gadelha at the big Brazilian show coming up in February. But that broken hand will delay her return for a few months. Enjoy the video!