Erin Blanchfield

picks her for nationality alone

Good striker: good punches, good forward pressure and volume, good combinations, strong lateral footwork, and a good head kick thrown at a deceptive tempo. Good grappling too, with a takedown arsenal built mostly on trips that advances her position well, a mounted-crucifix game, good ground and pound, and a knack for pouncing on opportunistic submissions. The analyst explicitly says Jasudavicius would have the edge in a straight cage-push battle.

Says Blanchfield's game has developed a lot since their earlier meeting and calls her the more complete fighter now, backed by a stated pressure/output edge; no hedge on the win itself.

A good striker who leads with forward pressure, good volume combinations and a good head kick, moving her whole body well even without much head movement. Grappling is where she truly excels: a mix of trip and traditional wrestling takedowns, quick to advance position, a specific mounted-crucifix game that she uses to land unanswered ground-and-pound, submissions snatched while threatening a pass, and a good cage push. The analyst says her overall game has developed a great deal since a split-decision loss to this same opponent years ago, when she was a teenager.

Named explicitly and directly, calling her the 'coldblooded one' before stating her name outright. The evidentiary basis recorded here is limited to the technical read -- he gives Blanchfield the clear grappling edge (crucifix position, deceptive submission setups off a pass) while rating the striking even-to-slightly-Barber's-favor, and closes by noting her continued gym work. He repeatedly calls this a competitive matchup in which either woman could reach a title, which caps the grade below clear. Note: one strand of his stated reasoning chain sits adjacent to an excluded aside about Barber (see review_flags) and is deliberately NOT used as evidentiary support here -- the grappling-edge argument and his explicit named declaration are sufficient on their own.

Erin Blanchfield, whose name the audio repeatedly mangles, has solid hands: forward pressure, real volume, combinations that are functional rather than pretty, and a nice head kick, though the analyst wonders aloud whether her forward pressure will hold up against Barber's bullying style. Her real edge is grappling: a very solid grappler who blends conventional and trip-style entries to the takedown, quick to advance position, a specific liking for the crucifix position, and a deceptive habit of snatching a submission while an opponent is distracted defending a position pass. The analyst also notes she has not yet grown into a fully mature physical frame, which has let bigger opponents out-physical her before, though he doubts Barber is as physically overwhelming as that prior opponent.

reads to the end of the chapter rather than stopping at the first hedge: he says he is tempted to skip wagering on this one and that he went back and forth on the pick, but then explicitly states he settled on Blanchfield -- so this is a real, named pick, not a decline. The settled pick is immediately qualified as very tight, and he closes with the root-beer idiom right after the stay-away language -- exactly the idiom-plus-stay-off-advice combination that caps a pick at coinflip even though a winner is named.

An excellent grappler with a large toolbox rare for women's MMA -- mixes traditional and trip takedowns, advances position very well, and her signature is the mounted crucifix, often a fight-ending position. Solid ground and pound, and she snatches submissions while threatening to pass rather than needing a clean entry. Falls back on the cage push against opponents she cannot take down cleanly. Her striking is pre-emptively defended by the analyst: a prior fight without takedowns is attributed to not having enough of a striking threat to set one up against a very physical opponent, not a grappling deficiency. Still graded a good striker on volume and forward pressure, with a good head kick and a willingness to keep coming forward even in losses, though with some defensive lapses. The recurring weakness, matching the board directly, is that her takedowns get iffy against very physical opponents.

He says he feels pretty good about Blanchfield winning, favors grapplers over strikers as a rule, and states directly that it will be competitive but clear who wins at the end via her grappling -- an unhedged outcome read, with only his bet-timing (not placed yet) left open.

Blanchfield's striking is decent -- good volume, forward pressure, and a sneaky good head kick -- but grappling is where she does her real damage: an excellent, very large toolbox including traditional takedowns, trips, a strong cage push, and the crucifix position, from which the analyst calls her ground and pound and submission entries absolutely deadly. If she closes the distance, he says Fiorot is in serious trouble there.

States flatly that nobody beats this fighter, names a finish method and a likely round; the only hedge offered anywhere is on precisely which round, never on who wins.

An elite grappler who advances position the instant the fight hits the mat, carrying a very wide takedown and trip arsenal, strong ground-and-pound, and a crucifix-seeking finishing sequence that snatches up submissions as she passes. Her striking is treated as underrated and still developing -- real volume, forward pressure and sharpening footwork -- though no single overall striking rung is ever stated outright for her.

He repeats his commitment to Blanchfield several separate times across the chapter, framing anything else as a mistake given his own prior public pick of her as a future champion, and weighs Andrade's striking edge against Blanchfield's rated-elite grappling.

A rated-elite grappler with a 'massive toolbox', excellent position advancement and genuinely nasty top control, highlighted by dominant performances over ranked opponents. Our words: she is judged comparatively behind on the feet, and her own ability to force the fight to the mat is only rated as all right, which the analyst flags as the real swing factor in an otherwise one-sided grappling matchup.

Named plainly at seg 13 with a detailed, stand-alone knockout-upside concession for McCann. Capped from a higher grade by an explicit refusal to wager, citing poor value on the favorite, plus a light-hearted sit-back-and-relax line -- wager caution, not doubt about who he's naming.

The analyst's headline reason for picking her is a six-inch reach advantage plus genuinely high-level wrestling and grappling, which he cites as the trait behind most of her UFC wins (including out-wrestling Miranda Maverick). Her acknowledged weakness is getting caught by counters off her kicking entries, which he flags specifically because McCann could exploit it if the fight stays standing.