Preview: UFC Fight Night 223 ‘Dern vs. Hill’

Women’s Strawweights

Lupita Godinez (9-3, 4-3 UFC) vs. Emily Ducote (12-7, 1-1 UFC)

ODDS: Godinez (-150), Ducote (+130)

Godinez is among the more frustrating fighters on the UFC roster, even if “Loopy” still has a high ceiling. Born in Mexico and representing Canada, Godinez looks absolutely electric in most of her wins, fighting behind a relentless wrestling game and outworking her opponents to dominant results. However, for every one of those performances, there is a showing where nothing clicks at all for Godinez. Her striking does not work much when opponents can neutralize her wrestling, and there are just fights where Godinez does not look anywhere near as persistent in pressing that part of her game. Everything figures to come together completely for Godinez at some point, as she is still a raw prospect and keeps up the type of schedule to earn plenty of experience. To that end, she steps in on a six-week turnaround for a 120-pound catchweight showcase against Ducote. Like Godinez, Ducote immediately settled in on the fringes of the UFC’s strawweight rankings with the potential to develop into something more. As a flyweight, “Gordinha” hit a clear wall as a rough-around-the-edges submission specialist, but cutting down to strawweight has given Ducote the physical parity to develop a solid striking game. In earning the Invicta Fighting Championships strawweight title, Ducote fought with effective aggression against some smaller opponents, but facing fighters with the same level of size and athleticism in the UFC has caused her to use a much more patient approach. That worked well in a UFC debut against Jessica Penne that was solid but unspectacular, but it did not make much hay against Angela Hill. Faced with a much more straight-ahead opponent, it will be interesting to see if Ducote brings more pace to the table. The initial read here is that Ducote does not bring the level of physicality or power to the table to knock Godinez off track. Even so, Godinez is enough of a wild card at this point that this fight is essentially a coinflip. The pick is Godinez via decision.

Jump To »
Dern vs. Hill
Hernandez vs. Shahbazyan
Godinez vs. Ducote
Buckley vs. Fialho
Ferreira vs. Johnson
Borshchev vs. Hayisaer
The Prelims