Dominant strawweight champion Joanna Jedrzejczyk will attempt to make the fourth defense of her title against fellow native of Poland Karolina Kowalkiewicz in the first of three title bouts to grace the stacked UFC 205 card on Saturday. The two actually met once before in an amateur MMA fight back in 2012, which Jedrzejczyk won by submission, and Kowalkiewicz will get a chance at revenge.
Aside from a contentious first meeting with Claudia Gadelha, Jedrzejczyk has been dominant in her six UFC outings. Gadelha faded hard in their July rematch with the belt on the line, and the champion left no doubt; prior to that, Jedrzejczyk ran through Valerie Letourneau and Jessica Penne. The beating she put on Carla Esparza to win the belt in March 2015 was one of the most vicious ever suffered by a reigning champion.
Kowalkiewicz is undefeated but enters the bout as a heavy underdog. She has won all three of her UFC appearances by decision, beating Randa Markos, Heather Jo Clark and finally Rose Namajunas to secure a shot at the belt.
Jedrzejczyk is a rising star both in and out of the cage, and this is her chance to dominate the spotlight in front of an enormous audience.
Joanna Jedrzejczyk
Record: 12-0 (4 KO, 1 SUB, 7 DEC)
Height: 5'6"
Reach: 65"
Jedrzejczyk is one of the cleanest, most technically sound strikers in MMA. She's a veteran of 70 amateur and professional kickboxing matches and a former pupil of the great Ernesto Hoost, and that deep well of experience and time spent drilling with outstanding coaches shows in her perfect fundamentals, calm under pressure and adaptability.
The jab is the foundation of Jedrzejczyk's game. She fires it off early and often, using it to establish her range, set her rhythm and score points. Everything else the champion does builds on this single strike, which she moves between the head and the body with varied timing.
Once she has her opponent reacting to the jab, the full flower of Jedrzejczyk's striking game comes into the open. She can pepper her opponent with hard, forward-moving punch-kick combinations that utilize all three levels in a single sequence: The jab-cross-left hook to the liver-right low kick is a particular favorite.
She can also stick and move against a pressuring opponent, using the jab and a vicious front kick to the face or body to enforce distance and then picking her spots to sit down on a hard combination when her opponent overcommits.
When necessary, Jedrzejczyk can pressure, using her jab and kicks in conjunction with slick footwork to force her opponent toward the fence. Once there, the champion flurries like few in the sport, sticking together head-body sequences of up to 20 strikes at a time.
In each of these potential approaches, Jedrzejczyk's fundamentals shine through. The economy of motion in her strikes is exceptional, and there's no wasted energy at all. Her pivots and footwork are exceptional; she never moves an inch more or less than she should, and it's difficult to pin her against the fence. Counters are a specialty, and overaggressive opponents have to eat three or four shots just to land one.
Jedrzejczyk pushes one of the best paces in the sport. Three things contribute to this: her clean fundamentals, which mean that she's efficient with every technique; her command of range, which means she's always close enough to land strikes; and finally her combinations, because she's always throwing three or more strikes at a time.
It doesn't matter how good a striker a fighter might be if she can't stuff takedowns, and Jedrzejczyk has developed some of the best defensive wrestling skills in the sport. Her command of distance makes it hard to get a clean shot at her in the first place, and she knows how to respond when her opponent does grab ahold, using the cage well to help her scramble back to her feet.
What's even more impressive is how Jedrzejczyk punishes her opponents for trying to shoot on her. Every time she can create space in these transitions, the champion slashes away with elbows and knees. She has even added a few takedowns of her own as a complement to her defensive skills in recent fights.
If that weren't enough, Jedrzejczyk is also a monster of a clinch fighter who puts her long frame to good use on the inside. She's a master of elbows and knees and needs only a tiny bit of space to land something devastating.
There aren't many weaknesses to the champion's game. She hasn't shown much as a grappler, though she seems to be defensively sound from her back and throws with power whenever she gets on top. Defense in the pocket isn't her strongest suit, and she could stand to move her head a little more. These are minor concerns, though.
Karolina Kowalkiewicz
Record: 10-0 (1 KO, 2 SUB, 7 DEC)
Height: 5'3"
Reach: 65"
Kowalkiewicz is a tough, durable and hard-nosed fighter who has made consistent improvements in her brief MMA career. She's not a great athlete and doesn't hit particularly hard, but she has built a reliable, effective game based on constant movement and offensive output.
The weight of volume Kowalkiewicz puts on her opponents is what allows her to win. She circles and circles, picking her spots to dart into range with a few punches and a kick, and then she exits. As soon as she's back in open space, she starts circling again and repeats the process.
The sheer pace at which Kowalkiewicz does this is staggering: She routinely throws 25 or 30 strikes in a minute.
To keep her opponent at distance and out of the pocket, Kowalkiewicz flashes a consistent jab that gives her just enough room to pivot and move. It's rare to see her get caught against the fence, and in general she has a great sense of how to use the space of the cage to her advantage. She doesn't have the crisp, perfect footwork of Jedrzejczyk, but it's good enough, and she understands the big picture of ringcraft.
There are a couple of problems with this approach, though. The first is the utter lack of anything resembling power in Kowalkiewicz's punches when she's working this kind of high-volume, movement-based game. She never sets her feet under her, and this means she's throwing nothing but arm punches. It's clear this is the issue, because when her feet are actually under her, she has some pop.
The second is defense. Like many outside fighters, Kowalkiewicz depends on distance and angles to avoid her opponent's strikes. When she is in range, however, it's not at all hard to put leather on her. She's especially vulnerable to counterpunches as she enters with one of her combinations, as she rarely pulls her head off the center line as she throws and doesn't use much head movement in general.
The best facet of Kowalkiewicz's game is actually the clinch, not her outside striking. It's why she doesn't particularly mind overshooting when she darts into range; if she winds up in the clinch, she's happy to be there so long as she doesn't get stuck in punching distance.
While she's not large, Kowalkiewicz's technique in the clinch makes her a handful to deal with. She gets great leverage on her double-collar tie and gets her hips into her knee strikes. She needs only a tiny amount of space to land a slashing elbow. There's real power in her clinch strikes compared to her punches.
Once she has her hands on her opponent, Kowalkiewicz is a whirling dervish of offense and brings the same kind of pace she prefers at range.
Kowalkiewicz looks for the occasional trip in the clinch and knows what she's doing in terms of passes, control and strikes from top position, but that's only a minor part of her game. She has outstanding takedown defense, especially against the fence, and she is a competent defensive grappler.
Betting Odds
Jedrzejczyk -400, Kowalkiewicz +325
Prediction
It's hard to imagine a worse matchup for Kowalkiewicz on every level, from the broad outlines of strategy to the specific manifestations of technique that will play out from exchange to exchange.
In the big picture, Jedrzejczyk can match or exceed Kowalkiewicz's pace, her best asset, while landing with substantially cleaner technique, more variety and more power. Moreover, the champion is every bit the clinch fighter Kowalkiewicz is and much more, with greater size and better leverage on the inside. Kowalkiewicz doesn't have the takedown game to threaten an outstanding defensive wrestler, either.
Things don't get any better when we break down the specifics. Jedrzejczyk is an outstanding counterpuncher, and Kowalkiewicz is vulnerable as she enters and exits with her combinations. The champion's jab will make it difficult for Kowalkiewicz to find the range she prefers when she circles.
Kowalkiewicz's path to victory revolves around frustrating the champion with her in-and-out game, and that seems unlikely. Jedrzejczyk will slowly break her down with combinations and finish with a flurry of strikes in the fourth round.
Odds courtesy of Odds Shark and current as of Monday.
Patrick Wyman is the Senior MMA Analyst for Bleacher Report and the co-host of the Heavy Hands Podcast, your source for the finer points of face-punching. For the history enthusiasts out there, he also hosts The Fall of Rome Podcast on the end of the Roman Empire. He can be found on Twitter and on Facebook.
