Preview: UFC Vegas 109 ‘Dolidze vs. Hernandez’

Strawweights

Iasmin Lucindo (17-6, 4-2 UFC) vs. Angela Hill (18-14, 13-14 UFC)

Odds: Lucindo (-190); Hill (+150)
Lucindo will look to get back on track here against the eternally relevant Hill. Still just 23 years old, the burly Brazilian racked up four straight wins before running into Amanda Lemos at UFC 313 in March. She came up short against the former title challenger, but still merited main-card status here, where she seeks to prove that her best days in the division are still ahead of her.

While Lucindo shows signs of developing a more complete, nuanced game, for the moment she remains a hammer in search of a nail for the most part. She favored a wrestling-heavy approach early in her career, seeking to rush her foes, power them to the canvas and overwhelm them there, a bit like a strawweight version of Ailin Perez or early Maycee Barber. At the UFC level, she has shown more of a willingness to swing things out on the feet, with some nice power and good volume, but the results have been some sloppy brawls that have been successful mostly because of her own imposing physicality.

That is the long and short of Lucindo’s game at this point. Whether striking or wrestling, she thrives when she can play the bully and struggles when she cannot. Of her last three wins, Marina Rodriguez, Karolina Kowalkiewicz and Polyana Viana are all tall, willowy women and Rodriguez and Kowalkiewicz were both pushing 40. Against Amanda Lemos in her last outing, Lucindo faced an opponent who was physically stronger, veteran enough not to be fazed by her aggression, and generally impossible to push around. As a result, Lucindo floundered; she was never completely overwhelmed, but also never really had an answer or a Plan B.

Hill is an anomaly. My colleague Devin Tejada of the Check The Kick podcast devoted time on his latest episode to what he called “MMA uncs,” fighters nearing (or past) age 40 who have been experiencing remarkable success this year. He might need to make room for an MMA auntie, if Hill can keep rolling on Saturday against a woman 17 years her junior.

Across two separate stints in the UFC—once as part of Season 20 of “The Ultimate Fighter” and once as the outgoing Invicta FC strawweight champ—Hill is below .500 with the promotion, but that is partly down to absolutely brutal matchmaking and only partly to her limitations as a fighter. “Overkill” has fought just about every woman to pass through the UFC strawweight Top 10 since its inception, some of them more than once, and only when she loses two or three straight does she usually get a break.

Hill is a crisp, technical muay thai striker who does her best work from outside; kind of like Rob Font, she fights taller and longer than the tale of the tape might indicate. She has developed a dangerous clinch game, acknowledging the fact that most UFC strawweights are not content to hang around at kicking range with her. Her Achilles’ heel has traditionally been her defensive wrestling; especially early in her career, her takedown defense was poor, and while she is quite capable of defending herself on the ground—witness her fights with Mackenzie Dern and Virna Jandiroba—it is hard for her to win fights from there.

However, just because the game plan for beating Hill is straightforward and easy to say—crowd her, take her down—does not mean that it is easy and straightforward to do. Hill’s footwork on the feet and inside weapons in the clinch mean that running at her in straight lines without feints or other setups can be like walking into a woodchipper, as fighters like Ariane Carnelossi and even former muay thai world champ Konklak Suphisara have discovered. And without the threat of the takedown, even much younger and more apparently athletic fighters like Lupita Godinez, who mystifyingly abandoned her wrestling in their fight, can struggle to outpoint her on the feet.

Lucindo is understandably the favorite here, as a plus athlete young enough to be Hill’s daughter, but this one has possible upset written all over it. Expect three individually close, competitive, difficult to score rounds—this one also has “another Angie Hill split decision” written all over it—but the pick here is for Lucindo to be frustrated at just how hard it is to get her hands on Hill, and for the veteran to get her hand raised at the end.



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Dolidze vs. Hernandez
Erceg vs. Osbourne
Lucindo vs. Hill
Fili vs. Rodriguez
Johns vs. Matsumoto
Anders vs. Duncan
The Prelims