Big Bad Blog Video Theater-Joanne Calderwood vs Ariane Lipski

Here's the match video of Joanne Calderwood vs Ariane Lipski from Saturday's UFC show in Brooklyn. Ariane is from Brazil. She is the former KSW Flyweight Champion. So she's new to the UFC but she has a rep as the Queen of Violence. We've all seen Joanne. She is a kickboxer. But the big thing is she is now training at Syndicate MMA in Las Vegas with John Wood. So though Ariane was favored, I wondered if Wood could make a difference. He did. Ariane started out aggressively in round one until Joanne took her down and controlled her for the rest of the round. And she wasn't sitting on her. Joanne was trying for subs. Joanne has never had a ground game so I credit John Wood for that. Two of the judges scored the round 10-8 for Joanne. I scored it 10-9. I didn't think it was a 10-8 round. But what it did was tire out Ariane and put the fear of a takedown in her mind. I didn't think there was any way she could win after that. Obviously she didn't expect that. So the other two rounds went as expected and Joanne won the fight 30-27. One judge scored it the same and the other two scored it 30-26. I thought Joanne's use of front kicks was especially effective. Joanne called out Jessica Eye after the fight. But then Dana White announced that Jessica will get the next Flyweight title shot. I've known about that since Jessica won last month. But White said at the time that he was reluctant to give a title shot to a split decision winner. I expect we will see that in the spring. Enjoy the video!