Big Bad Blog Video Theater-Poliana Botelho vs Pearl Gonzalez

Here's the match video of Poliana Botelho vs Pearl Gonzalez from last night's UFC show in Las Vegas. This aired on the prelims. Pearl is a former XFC champ from Chicago. She looked OK there but she may not be a UFC caliber fighter. I guess her chief asset is she's hot. She lost in her UFC debut. Poliana is from Brazil. She was supposed to make her UFC debut last year. They said on the broadcast that she broke her hand twice. She's also a former XFC champ. She's big for a Strawweight but she has fought most of her career at Flyweight so I would expect her to wind up there. She's mostly a striker. Pearl's strategy was to avoid her striking and then take her down. But Pearl wasn't strong enough to take her down. So she pushed her against the fence. Poliana landed strikes from that position and that's how she won the fight. There are some coaches who misguidedly think that cage control counts on the judges scorecards. Like takedowns, cage control only means something if the fighter follows up with offense. All Pearl did was push Poliana against the cage and lean on her. Ref Jason Herzog kept breaking them up but Pearl kept going back to it. So that means her coach came up with faulty strategy based on misguided assumptions about scoring. That's a recipe for failure and a one way trip to Palookaville. Maybe Pearl needs a new coach.