Women’s Bantamweights
Aspen Ladd (8-1) vs. Yana Kunitskaya (12-4)Advertisement
Let us try this again. When the UFC announced that Ladd and Germaine de Randamie would headline an event in Sacramento in July, it made sense but was a bit of a surprise. Ladd had quickly established herself as a top prospect in a thin bantamweight division, but up until that point, the promotion had done little to feature her, as her three previous UFC bouts had been on the prelims. Having flipped the switch on promoting Ladd, the game plan seemed obvious: Get her a hometown-ish main event win over a former UFC champion -- no matter how non-existent de Randamie’s featherweight title reign was -- and set her up as a top contender to Amanda Nunes. Instead, things went sideways, with de Randamie scoring a finish in just 16 seconds and most of the talk afterwards centering around whether or not it was an early stoppage. It was firmly on the line of questionable -- Ladd was obviously stunned as she hit the mat but also quickly recovered -- but the fight, brief as it was, did outline a lot of the issues with Ladd’s fighting style. Ladd has the ability to bull most of her opponents around in the clinch and has some absolutely devastating ground-and-pound, but she does not set up those skills with much more than aggression and sheer force of will. Ladd constantly presses forward while relying more on self-belief than any sort of defense, which has worked well enough against every other opponent to date. However, as the de Randamie fight suggests, it gives her a clear ceiling against the few fighters in the division with knockout power. Ladd is still somehow just 24 years old, so there is hopefully a lot of development ahead of her, but it would be nice to see her learn some lessons and get back on track as a contender against Kunitskaya.
Kunitskaya is an odd fighter who has had an odd albeit successful career. After retiring due to pregnancy, the Russian staged a comeback in 2016, and by the end of the year, she had come out of nowhere to seemingly take the Invicta Fighting Championship bantamweight title from Tonya Evinger, snapping the champion’s nine-fight winning streak. However, the win was quickly overturned, as it was ruled that the referee had wrongly forced Evinger to move from a legal position to defend the fight-ending armbar. After dropping the rematch, “Foxy” soon found herself in the UFC, challenging Cristiane Justino for the promotion’s featherweight title. As expected, that resulted in a one-sided loss, but Kunitskaya has rebounded well enough, winning both of her fights since. Kunitskaya is still a bit of a hard fighter to peg, since she has gotten by mostly on size and aggression rather than any sort of technical skill, but in a division as flawed as women’s bantamweight, that has been enough to get by and should make for a fun fight against Ladd.
This may not be a technical showcase, but it is a surprisingly important fight in this division; and watching these two women smash into each other should provide some entertainment. As mentioned, the de Randamie fight reaffirmed a lot of questions about Ladd, namely her lack of defense and lack of a structured approach, but this rebound contest against Kunitskaya does not figure to answer many of those concerns. Kunitskaya is not much of a knockout artist, and her own hard-charging approach means that Ladd will get the type of close-quarters fight in which she excels without having to put in much effort. The pick is Ladd via second-round stoppage.
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