This weekend is UFC 258: Usman vs Burns so I am going to be doing three separate breakdowns for the event:

If you missed out on my breakdown last week of Alistair Overeem vs Alexander Volkov or Miranda Maverick vs Gillian Robertson, here is a little context of what I am doing. To create the following analysis, I watched every fight of both fighters and mixed in my own visual analysis with the statistical breakdowns I created for them. Statistical analytics were drawn from my Judging Model as well as my new Fighter Accumulated Strategy and Tactics (FAST) model (first article coming this Saturday). I will be breaking down each fighter's past high level strategy and specific fight tactics and then investigating their ratings based on their round win percentage as determined by the Judging Model.

I am going to start my visual scouting with Alexa Grasso. Grasso profiles as a technical boxer with a focus on keeping her opponent at distance to steadily whittle them down. She has a fantastic jab-straight combo that she uses largely as a weapon to win points victories. I have not seen next level power out of her in any of my visual scouting fights. In her fight against Heather Clark, she stunned Clark on a high kick because Clark lunged and took a flush knee to the side of the head. Grasso was unable to seal the TKO because her style lacks the power flourish to really put a hurt opponent away. I see Grasso as a highly effective point fighter with limited finishing capability which caps her upside in the loaded flyweight class.

Enough negativity though, where is the potential? Grasso has incredible scrambling skills. I regularly, audibly yelled at my TV in amazement at some of the scrambles she won. I have no one to compare her to because her scrambling skills are just so unique. The problem is that she relies a bit too heavily on the scrambling and sometimes her takedown defense technique suffers accordingly. I do not see that as an achilles heel though. There are a couple of specific improvements that would override this tendency and make her a better finisher. I think that Grasso should metaphorically steer into the skid by leveraging her scrambling skills and turning them into chances for submissions. I specifically kept thinking she could throw killer guillotine chokes a la Dustin Poirier.

Dustin regularly chooses to throw guillotine chokes at the expense of technique in takedown defense to help raise his chances at finishing his opponent. Alexa’s command of the scramble likely means that she has the potential to be an immense guillotine threat. This would dissuade Gillian Robertson-esque fighters from attempting takedowns on her. Adding the guillotine would also make her a superior distance fighter. How you may ask? I, like many others, view MMA fights as a game of chess. The guillotine choke has been used by skilled distance fighters over and over in the past (Poirier and Overeem as two examples) to put even more fear of entering the pocket against them. Grasso’s game is predicated on distance but she lacks the power that someone like Carla Esparza has to scare opponents from entering the pocket and then attempting a takedown. Taking away your opponent's weapons and augmenting your own is the key to winning and moving up in MMA.

Now onto Maycee Barber. My notes on Barber read like a baseball scouting report of a slugging third baseman: "Natural power, does not sell out on strikes", "Power comes naturally", "Can really hear the pop when she hits". Barber is an anomaly when it comes to fighters in her weight class. She has an insanely high finish percentage, ending all four of her victories by KO/TKO. She achieves these finishes through power striking and truly NASTY elbows in the clinch and on the ground. Maycee is a problem for the women’s flyweight division.

The most important thing about Maycee, and I will again reference baseball, is my first quote above: “Natural power, does not sell out on strikes”. Maycee isn’t swinging for the bleachers on every punch; she stays within herself and strikes naturally but turns it up when she smells blood in the water. She stylistically strikes like a point fighter but is able to push her power up two extra gears simply by nature of her natural talent. This is a sign that she has further room to grow as a striker purely by nature of gaining more cage experience. I repeat again: Maycee is a PROBLEM. If her distance management skills improve, her overall striking game will, in my opinion, be top 2 or 3 flyweight tier.

My one specific area of improvement for Maycee is that she needs to throw her kicks at the end of a combo. I saw, in multiple fights, skilled strikers hitting her with a hard jab to the jaw when she would throw kicks with no lead up. If she attempts this against Grasso, she has the opportunity to get hit with clean, flush shots to the head.

What I find interesting above is I essentially can’t draw anything from the efficiency numbers. Why? The only rounds Maycee has lost were against Roxanne Modafferi where Barber tore her ACL in the first round but continued fighting another 14.5 minutes. Outside of that fight, Barber has won every round she's ever fought. I can however draw conclusions on what she is likely to do in this fight. I project she gets into a firefight with Grasso.

By the same token as above, there's not much to discern from these win percentage numbers but let's look at how fighters approach her. All three of the Grappling Heavy rounds were against Roxanne Modaferri so let’s throw those out for now. After removing them, we see that fighters chose to stand and strike with her 75% of the time. Based on Grasso’s tendencies, I expect that number to increase this weekend.

Out of Grasso’s 19 rounds, 18 were either Striking Heavy or Balanced Striking. This, again, tells me this is going to be a full on standup showcase between the two. My models have Grasso winning 62% of her Striking Heavy rounds which statistically leaves her open to losing on points to Barber who wins at a 100% clip (on a much more limited sample size).

Here’s the main takeaway: Grasso is fantastic when defending against Striking Heavy fighters. She wins these rounds at a clip of 83% based on my model. Statistically, the path to victory against Grasso is mixing in grappling and making it hard for her to keep you at distance. Maycee’s clinch game and specifically her elbows will make it tough for Grasso to keep her at distance.

Sample sizes are of course small because Barber is a finisher but she profiles as a balanced all around stand up fighter tactically.

Lots of head hunting against Barber. I believe this is because most of these fighters are coached to try and get Barber out of the cage as quickly as possible. Her power is so overwhelming that you have to find a way to break through and test her chin.

Again, we are seeing statistical backing of Grasso as a distance boxer. She is overwhelmingly a Striking Heavy Head Hunter.

Interestingly, we are seeing a broad approach to fighting Grasso with varying degrees of success. What I am most interested in statistically is that we are seeing fighters attempting volume approaches, most likely trying to tire her out. This seems to be moderately effective because she wins those combined rounds at a rate of 60% compared to 78% against Striking Heavy Head Hunting.

You may notice that I have less statistical analysis in this article. This is largely due to Barber’s lack of cage time (so many finishes) coupled with some specific data cleanliness issues with regard to her fight against Modafferi where she tore her ACL very early on in the fight.

This is, for me, the most exciting fight on the card this weekend. Barber and Grasso are both incredible fighters and I see this being a really competitive and interesting fight to watch. I conclude that Barber has many more paths to victory than Grasso. Similar to Overeem in his matchup with Volkov last week, Grasso has a single path to victory. She needs to thread the needle of keeping Barber at distance while scoring enough points to win a decision victory. I think the more likely outcome is that Barber overpowers Grasso in the clinch, doing more and more damage as the fight progresses, leading to a KO/TKO or a points victory. I never really saw Grasso’s chin tested so I am not sure how she will do against Barber’s power advantage. The previous fact is why I can’t make a definitive call on the method of victory, i.e. KO/TKO or points, so I will just leverage both and say it's one of the two.

I predict a win by Barber via KO/TKO or points.