What happened to Jéssica Andrade? Analyzing her recent losses
At one point in time, Jéssica Andrade was one of the most terrifying fighters on the UFC women's roster. She made her career as a multi-weight phenom who fought across three different divisions: bantamweight, flyweight and strawweight. After mounting a three-fight win streak, her career peaked in 2019 in her fourth fight.
The Brazilian faced Rose Namajunas for the UFC strawweight title. What she lacked in technical discipline and a fully realized skill set, she made up for in sheer physicality. She walked through Namajunas' blows en route to slamming her foe on her head for a viral KO win.
She became the UFC strawweight champion, but never successfully defended her title. Instead, she went 4-6 in her next 10 bouts, flip-flopping between strawweight and flyweight as she struggled to reclaim her title. Now, she is on a three-fight losing streak, the worst of her career.
How did Jéssica Andrade go from a 20-6 champion to a fighter with half as many losses as she has wins?
Jéssica Andrade's dilemmas with strategy and tactics
For most of her career, Jéssica Andrade has been a fighter who relied predominantly on her overpowering physical attributes. She is brutally strong and relied on this strength in pursuit of high-crotch single-leg takedowns, which she converts into slams. Unfortunately, her wrestling consists of little else.
She possesses crushing knockout power in weight classes that generally lack hard-hitting women, so she fell into the habit of simply bum-rushing her opponents, certain that her iron chin would protect her, and the power in her looping punches would finish her foes.
'Bate Estaca' also recognized that her combination of Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills and great physical strength could carry her to spectacular submission wins, especially since she rarely tired. For a while, this made her an extremely effective fighter, such that she began defeating high-level competition at 115 pounds.
Cláudia Gadelha, a former title challenger, fell to her fellow Brazilian. Eventually, even the much-praised Rose Namajunas failed to thwart her advance, succumbing to one of the rarest knockouts in MMA history. But the lack of technical growth in Jéssica Andrade's fighting style came back to haunt her.
Her strategic goal is simple. She wants to trap her opponent against the fence to either maul them for a knockout or score a high-crotch single-leg slam. The tactics she employed to realize this used to be simply rushing forward and swinging for the fences, without moving her head off the center line or tucking her chin.
This led to her being knocked out by Zhang Weili in her first and only title defense. Andrade used no lateral footwork to step across 'Magnum' and cut off her angles of escape. Instead, she chased her in a straight line, throwing looping punches, while her head remained stationary.
She was sniped on her way inside by Zhang's counterpunches. This style of engagement eventually caused 'Bate Estaca' to introduce something of a change to her style. She cut back on her tenacity and started moving her head. Unfortunately, her head movement was predictable.
Andrade now moves her head, a lot, but only before she commits to a punch. So she is still easy to time as her foes merely wait for her head to stop moving to catch her. She must instead move her head as she's punching, not before doing so. Her newfound patience has also come at a surprising cost.
Her path to success was her overreliance on being a greater physical specimen than her opponent. She has never been a patient fighter and it's too late for her to start learning how to fight in such a way. She lacks the tools to fight off the backfoot, rendering her offense impotent. A patient Andrade is no good.
So what connection does all of this have to her recent losses?
The Brazilian's three-fight losing streak
Jéssica Andrade always had glaring issues with strategy and tactics, but was enough of a physical force that she could get away with them. But now, she is on the worst losing streak of her career. How have her tendencies factored into her recent performances?
The Brazilian's losing streak began with Erin Blanchfield, a woman already hailed as a future UFC champion. At some point, Jéssica Andrade realized that she cannot afford to simply hang back and be too patient. Thus, she began mixing in her lunges more sparingly.
Unfortunately, her inability to deviate from what is ultimately a predictable tactic of rushing forward, exposed her to Blanchfield's takedown as the American grappling phenom simply ducked under a punch into the clinch, immediately securing double underhooks due to Jéssica Andrade's swinging arms being out of position.
From there, Blanchfield simply turned her away at an angle, hooking her leg on the inside for a quick trip. It was the beginning of the end. Within moments, Andrade exposed her back and was caught by a rear-naked choke. Her second straight defeat came against Yan Xiaonan.
Yan is not known as a powerful puncher, but she didn't have to be, just like Hall of Fame boxer Holly Holm didn't have to be to knock out a lunging Ronda Rousey who kept running into her blows. During their bout, Jéssica Andrade initially exercised some patience and didn't immediately rush forward.
But after being sniped by punches and low kicks from the outside by the faster Yan, 'Bate Estaca' threw caution to the wind and bum-rushed her foe with four consecutive left hooks, with no setup. This left her highly exposed to a counter-right hand from Yan, which caught her mid-lunge, flooring her in a knockout.
When she faced Tatiana Suarez next, she exercised greater patience. However, she still lost, through no fault of her own. Suarez was simply too good a wrestler and too physically strong for even her, which puts Jéssica Andrade's loss to her in a different complexion.
Her recent losing streak is down to the strategic and tactical limitations of her fighting style making her easy to read and counter. Furthermore, the skill-level of opponents she's faced has increased, while she has stagnated and failed to evolve. Jéssica Andrade has plateaued.
She is a creature of habit, and the game plan for beating her is now well-known. Fighters only need to be disciplined enough to carry out their head coach's instructions.