The third to last fight on the card will feature a pretty good matchup in the UFC's featherweight division. We'll see younger, up and comer Bryce Mitchell take on long time UFC veteran Edson Barboza. This will be a significant step up in competition for Mitchell and a win over someone like Barboza would really make a statement that he is ready for the next level of fighter. This would be the start of a real title push for Mitchell. On the other hand, Barboza has been doing this for a long time and is still a very high level competitor. A win for him would get him back on track to pursue a potential title shot of his own. This striker vs grappler matchup is one to look forward to on Saturday night. I'm pretty interested to see how this goes because the featherweight division is in desperate need of a contender to really separate themselves from the pack besides Max Holloway. If Mitchell does get the win, he could find himself another win or two away from a potential title shot. That would probably be closer to 3 fights for him, but featherweight has been weird so, if he's the hottest contender, he could skip the line.
Mitchell will be in the blue corner for this one, so we'll start with him. He comes in as the number 11 ranked featherweight right now. He's 14-0 overall and 5-0 in the UFC. Those wins have come across Tyler Diamond, Bobby Moffett, Matt Sayles, Charles Rosa, and Andre Fili. That isn't the most impressive resume or anything, but that is a pretty solid start to a career. He's taken a steady progression recently, but Barboza is a significant jump up in competition. I'm honestly kind of surprised he's going from Andre Fili to a top 10 opponent with nothing in between. This will be a huge opportunity for him, if he's ready to capitalize. Mitchell has gotten this far based on his smothering, grappling heavy style. He looks to wrestle his opponents relentlessly and has a really good top control game. He's not the most efficient wrestler, only hitting his takedowns at a 46% success rate, but at over 3 takedowns per 15 minutes, his attempts are high enough to make up for that. Once he's on the ground, he has mostly a control based approached and is more patient in terms of his offensive attacks. Mitchell prefers to look for submissions over ground and pound, and his submission game is pretty good. Of his 14 wins, 9 of them have come via sub, but only 1 of those has been in the UFC. Mitchell is an extremely high level grappler, but I think he relies a little too much on control and his opponent's mistakes to lock in submissions. Adding more aggressiveness in his ground and pound game would really take his game to another level. Landing strikes obviously damages his opponent, but would also create more openings for those submissions. The weaker part of Mitchell's game is his striking and he's going to need to show some improvements in this fight. His striking is very rudimentary and basic in nature, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it is clearly unnatural to him. He doesn't throw his strikes with particularly great power either. He's shown improvement in his striking each step of the way, so I do expect him to be a little bit better, but there's no secret that he's going to need to get this fight to the ground. It may go without saying, but in order to grapple as heavily and relentlessly as he does, Bryce Mitchell's cardio is really good. I wouldn't expect to see him get worn down and gas out at any point in this fight, which could come into play.
Edson Barboza is much the opposite of what Mitchell is. He's a long time veteran of the sport and has fought a murder's row of competition in his time. In his career, he's fought Donald Cerrone, Bobby Green, Paul Felder (twice), Tony Ferguson, Anthony Pettis, Gilbert Melendez, Beneil Dariush, Khabib Nurmagomedov, and Justin Gaethje, just to list some. From 2017 to 2019, Barboza had a bit of a rough go of it at lightweight and that is when he decided to cut the extra 10 lbs to get down to featherweight. He lost his divisional debut to Dan Ige and then won 2 in a row over Makwan Amirkhani and Shane Burgos. He dropped his last fight to Giga Chikadze and that catches us up to present day for him. Brboza's strength is his incredible striking ability. He has an incredible combination of speed and power that, when at it's best, is some of the best in the UFC. What makes him a little unique is that his kicks are his most effective strikes. He kicks to all 3 levels of his opponent (legs, body, head) and does so with serious power. Sometimes you will see fighters who throw leg kicks, but they do so in a controlled fashion just to touch their opponent and score points. That isn't the case with Barboza at all. He throws his leg kicks with the intent to do damage. Both of the Paul Felder fights are great examples of that. Even at the age of 36, Edson still displays really good speed in his strikes and often has the speed advantage, which he will undoubtedly have against Mitchell. He does a good job of mixing up his strikes as well. He will throw a diverse array of strikes to all levels that can really keep his opponents off balance. He isn't afraid to go to the body and used body shots to finish Dan Hooker a few years ago. The main weakness for Barboza is his ground game. With someone who is as high a level a striker as Barboza is, most look to take him to the ground if they can it has proved to be an effective strategy at times. He does have pretty solid takedown defense, so getting him to the ground isn't always easy, but after he's down, he can be controlled, especially by high level grapplers. He isn't particularly prone to being finished down there though as he only has 2 submission losses that came at the hands of Donald Cerrone and Tony Ferguson. Another weakness for Barboza is his ability to limit damage. He actually absorbs more strikes than he lands on a per minute basis, which means he is available to be hit. From what we've seen from Mitchell, he hasn't shown the ability to take advantage of that, but we'll what improvements he's made. The last thing to mention when it comes to Barboza is that sometimes his cardio can start to fade towards the end of the fight. He's a large man for the division and has a lot of fast twitch muscle fibers that take a lot of oxygen to fire with the power that he throws his strikes with. He doesn't necessarily fade horribly and completely gas at the end, but he does start to slow, which against the right opponent, can be taken advantage of. Someone like Paul Felder who has incredible cardio can really put it on him at the end of the fight after he slows. I'll save that discussion for the matchup breakdown, which we'll get into now.
It is sort of obvious that the main key to this fight is whether the fight stays standing or goes to the ground. If Bryce Mitchell doesn't get any takedowns, Barboza will be able to strike his way to victory pretty easily. If Edson Barboza spends the whole fight on his back, Mitchell will ground control himself into a top 10 spot in the rankings. This doesn't strike me as a fight that has the potential to be finished within the first 2 minutes like Islam vs Bobby Green was, so both fighters will probably have to be in the other's realm for some time. One important note is that Barboza will have a nice 5 inch reach advantage. I think the reach is made out to be a bigger deal than it really is most of the time, but once it gets to 4 inches or more, that's when I start to take notice. That much of a reach advantage means that Barboza will be able to hit Mitchell on his way in. He's going to close the distance for a takedown at some point and Barboza has to make him pay when he does. I think the key for Bryce Mitchell will be to limit the kicks from Barboza. They say it on the broadcast all the time, but the easiest way to limit the kicks is to crowd the kicker. That should be no issue for Mitchell as he's looking to close the distance and get in on a takedown attempt anyways. Barboza needs to be careful to not throw his kicks blind because they can provide the perfect opportunity for Mitchell to get in and land a takedown if he can catch on of those kicks. It will be interesting to see if Barboza limits the amount of kicks that he throws for this reason. I think Bryce Mitchell will benefit by pushing the pace in this one too. Even if he can't land his takedowns early, if he can keep grinding on Barboza, he may be able to wear him out and then land the takedowns later. Mitchell probably will have the cardio advantage, so if he can keep the pace high, he may be able to really pull away with this one late. These fighters are so opposite that it is a little hard to get a grasp on how this fight will play out. Whoever can fight their fight is going to win in a fashion that I don't think will be competitive. Barboza will dominate a stand up fight in the same way that Mitchell will dominate a grappling match. One thing that does worry me from Mitchell's side is his lack of activity. I mean that in terms of layoff and during the fight. He's been out for awhile, so he may be a bit rusty, but he also just doesn't throw a ton of strikes during the fight. I think it is possible that he gets 3 minutes of ground control and ends up losing that round because in the 2 minutes that he stayed standing, Barboza would be able to do more damage. I'll also be watching to see how Mitchell takes damage. He hasn't been hit very much at all over his entire career due to his dominant top control, so I'm interested to see how he reacts to being hit. This is a fight I'm really looking forward to and I want to see where Mitchell really stands in the hierarchy of the featherweight division.
What do you guys think? Do you see Bryce Mitchell grounding Barboza all night? Will Edson Barboza put on a striking clinic? What keys are you looking for in this one? Leave any and all thoughts below. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
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