Germaine de Randamie vs. Aspen Ladd headlines UFC Sacramento this July 13, 2019 at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California.
One sentence summary
David: Fighter vs. Fighter
Phil: It’s a UFC main event, and thus we are previewing it
Stats
Record: Germaine de Randamie 8-3 | Aspen Ladd 8-0
Odds: Germaine de Randamie +130 | Aspen Ladd -140
History / Introduction to the fighters
David: I can’t think of a fighter with a lower reputation than GDR. To the public, she’s one lead pipe, cracked against a kneecap away from being persona non grata. She’s more Jose Reyes than Luis Resto, though. I gotta be honest, though. As someone who despises Dana White’s mafioso tactics, realizes how ridiculously hypocritical it is to highlight Germaine as an “illegitimate” champion given the UFC history, and therefore should be on De Randamie’s side, it pains me to say this—but GDR’s lack of cache is some of her own engineering. The entire concept of fighters being “scared” is moderately-to-patently absurd, but humans gonna human. I don’t think fear was ever a factor[/Goldberg] so much as preservation. De Randamie is older, didn’t even win that fight against Holly Holm (IMO), and I couldn’t even tell you much about her activity after the Holm win. Despite winning a belt only two years ago, GDR doesn’t seem primed for an upswing. But she remains a solid fighter with an unspectacular demeanor.
David: Where the beer flows like wine, and the blood flows like the salmon of Capistrano. I’m talking about a little fighter named Aspen. I think. Well, yes and no. Ladd’s ascent through the UFC ranks is a byproduct of two things: a) Ladd is a decent fighter and b) there’s just a whole lot of nothing below the UFC. There’s barely something in the UFC itself, depending on the division. Simply put, Ladd didn’t have to impress on the lower circuits with singular violence, and superfly skills. She just had to be better. She did that, and now here she is. This is all kind of unfair to Ladd, who has potential. Ladd, after all, is only 24. She’s fought on the amateur circuit and the Amatuer circuit. Now she’s 3-0 in the UFC with some fun, and decisive wins. She’s not ready, but she’s effective and has potential.
What’s at stake?
David: I sat here, looked at this google doc for a good five minutes as I flickered through random youtube videos, and yea, there’s stuff at stake.
Where do they want it?
David: We can sit here and knock De Randamie’s record, or her borderline tactics in the Holly Holm fight all day, but the truth is that GDR is a strong, economic fighter who would be a handful for most fighters. Her ground game offers nothing except the usual reverse lay and pray style trappings. But she’s pretty hard to get down, and if not, there’s a lot to deal with. She has a strong, wide blast template of singular strikes, and eager movement. She’s also hard to pressure because she’s so agile moving backwards with her offense if she has to. All the tools are there for the job on the feet: inside leg kick, left jab, and a one-two. She doesn’t need to overdo one or the other, and so her game plays out like a pop song, with the requisite verse, chorus, verse, bridge, chorus timeline. Violence is involved, and it doesn’t stop even when the bell rings.
David: Where GDR’s game is simple, and effective, Ladd’s game is ineffective but nuanced. Ladd’s striking game is awkward but punctual. Ladd has a lot of ostensible weapons. With a front kick at range, she’s pretty good at probing various strikes from range, and letting an incongruous series of strikes available to counter. She has a nice, slicing left hook, and is extremely agile at sneaking in offense around pressure, and inside the clinch. On the ground, she’s determined as all hell. I don’t think her ground game is good so much as momentous. She’s constantly building her ground attack—even when her positioning isn’t all that great. On a technical level, nothing spectacular is happening, but she manages to control pace extremely well.
Insight from past fights
David: There’s a lot of improvised scrambling in Ladd’s fights. Whether at the amateur level—like against Cynthia Calvillo—or at the professional level, as with Sijara Eubanks. The common denominator is these fights is that Ladd never manages to initiate these exchanges. They’re kind of just a byproduct of the general madness that sometimes happens in her fights. Against someone like De Randamie, who is gonna fight one way, and with her size, I don’t see how Ladd isn’t forced into fighting her upright.
X-Factors
David: Not for nothing, but De Randamie seems in incredibly high spirits with a fantastic attitude to boot.
Prognostication
David: As mentioned above, I don’t see where Ladd provokes GDR into a scramble fest. That’s the key. Ladd has some raw tools to function as an opposing force, but that’s basically saying she has a chance to win, which means absolutely nothing. Even Nunes, with all of her strength, struggled to get De Randamie to the ground. To Nunes’ credit, she made quick work of GDR once it got there. Maybe that’s a good sign for Ladd’s positional chunking of threats. But it’s certainly nothing I would bank on. Germaine De Randamie by TKO, round 3.