Coming off of one of the promotion’s most exciting events in recent memory with UFC 290, the company will be returning to the smaller Apex venue for this weekend's UFC Vegas 77 card. There are currently 13 fights scheduled for the event and it will be headlined by a UFC Women’s Bantamweight matchup between Holly Holm and Mayra Bueno Silva that could have huge implications in the division with the recent retirement of Amanda Nunes.
Holm is 15-6 with eight wins coming via KO/TKO and she enters this fight having won three of her previous four trips to the octagon, most recently a win over Yana Santos in March. She’s a talented striker who doesn’t shy away from the clinch and is pretty solid everywhere. Despite having eight stoppages on her resume, six of her last seven fights have gone to decision. Holm has a ton of UFC experience against some of the biggest names in the sport and has gone 8-6 overall during her time in the UFC.
Bueno Silva is 10-2-1 with an 80% stoppage rate in her wins and she will enter the octagon on a three-fight winning streak on Saturday for her first UFC main event. She’s an extremely talented submission artist with seven of her stoppage wins coming via that method, including four of her five UFC victories. While she hasn’t faced quite the same level of competition as Holm in the UFC, Bueno Silva has put together a very solid 5-2-1 record to start her time with the company heading into her biggest opportunity yet.
While Holm has all of the tools and experience to win this matchup, there are a few red flags that jump out to me with this fight for her. The first, and most obvious, is the age difference: Holm is 41 years old and Bueno Silva will be the younger fighter by 12 years in the matchup. Combine that with the fact that Holm is 1-5 in her UFC career when she has gone past the 15-minute mark in fights and that is far from an ideal scenario considering this a five-round main event. Although Holm has been known largely for her striking abilities throughout her career, she has become increasingly reliant on takedowns in her recent fights, securing four or more of them in three of her past six fight
Using a similar game plan in this fight against the submission skills of Bueno Silva could prove costly for Holm, yet that’s exactly what I expect her to do in this matchup: business as usual. I think she will try to work her striking, rack up control time via the clinch against the cage and look for takedowns, while Bueno Silva will be patient in looking for opportunities to snatch up submission attempts and able to hold her own in the striking exchanges as well. I think this fight will eventually end up on the ground and Bueno Silva will be able to find success securing a submission sometime during the early rounds.
