UFC Predictions: UFC Fight Night: Aspen Ladd vs. Norma Dumont
This weekend sees the UFC present its latest event from Las Vegas’ Apex. UFC Fight Night: Aspen Ladd vs. Norma Dumont takes center stage this Saturday.
In terms of name value, this card may be one of the least anticipated of 2021, but hopefully it will still deliver some solid action inside the octagon.
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With that in mind, here are the predicted outcomes for UFC Fight Night: Aspen Ladd vs. Norma Dumont.
#1. Aspen Ladd vs. Norma Dumont - UFC women's featherweight
This headline fight was initially supposed to see Norma Dumont taking on former UFC bantamweight champion Holly Holm. Around a week ago, ‘The Preacher’s Daughter’ was forced out with an injury.
That left the UFC scrambling for a replacement. Thankfully, Aspen Ladd has agreed to take the fight. It was a move that made sense for a number of different reasons.
Firstly, and probably most importantly, Ladd was forced out of a bantamweight bout earlier this month after a botched weight cut, an incident that probably put her in the UFC’s bad books. By bailing the promotion out like this on late notice, she’ll be right back into their good books.
Secondly, though, after such a bad weight miss, the potential for Ladd to claim a UFC title shot at 135 pounds was fading fast, particularly after she missed the entirety of 2020 due to various issues.
The queue for a shot at Amanda Nunes’ UFC featherweight title, on the other hand, is substantially shorter. In fact, the division doesn’t really have a top contender right now and hasn’t since Nunes dealt with Megan Anderson at UFC 259.
With a win over Dumont here, Ladd could easily leapfrog to the front of the queue and take on Nunes in early 2022, assuming she deals with Julianna Pena’s challenge for her UFC bantamweight crown, of course.
So can Ladd pull this one out? There’s no real reason why she shouldn’t.
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Brazil’s Dumont has been with the UFC since early 2020. After a disastrous debut that saw her knocked out by Anderson, she’s won her next two fights against Ashlee Evans-Smith and Felicia Spencer.
Dumont largely outpowered Evans-Smith in their fight, hardly a surprise given she missed weight and was up against a natural 125lber, but her clash with Spencer was more telling. The Brazilian did land some solid strikes on Spencer, but found herself taken down on a handful of occasions and was arguably lucky to walk away with the decision.
The issue she’ll have in this fight is not only the fact that Ladd has far more experience than her, particularly at the elite level, but that Ladd is also an expert grappler with some of the most ruthless ground-and-pound in the UFC. Add in the fact that Ladd won’t be cutting weight coming into the fight and the likelihood is that she’ll come in looking bigger and stronger than ever before, meaning she should be able to overpower Dumont with relative ease.
Unless Ladd is still feeling the effects of the incident that saw her miss weight a few weeks ago, then this should be business as usual for her and should lead her to a showdown with Nunes in the future.
The Pick: Ladd via second-round TKO
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