Preview: UFC Fight Night 217 ‘Strickland vs. Imavov’

Bantamweights

Ketlen Vieira (13-2) vs. Raquel Pennington (14-8)
Odds: Vieira (-115), Pennington (-105)

Ketlen Vieira remains in a strong position as a fresh potential challenger for Amanda Nunes, but she's forced to hold serve here even after some big wins. "Fenomeno" made it to the UFC in 2016 and had a surprising amount of success; her game didn't seem particularly deep, but she was successfully able to bully opponent after opponent with grinding pressure and rack up wins. A victory over Cat Zingano in 2018 seemingly put the Brazilian on the shortlist of potential title contenders, but that win didn't turn into much of a launching pad towards success; instead, Vieira's career was derailed for about two and a half years. A lot of that was due to injury, with Vieira's only fight during that time being a surprisingly knockout loss to Irene Aldana; Vieira was putting together her usual type of ugly but consistent win until Aldana suddenly put her lights out with a left hook. Since Vieira's full-time return in 2020, she's seemed obviously affected by suffering her first loss in such a brutal fashion; her pressure hasn't been quite as unshakably confident and she's tried to add some more well-rounded technical depth to her game. That cost her a close loss to Yana Kunitskaya early in 2021, but even as Vieira is still going through some growing pains, she's strung together main event wins against Miesha Tate and Holly Holm, the latter in the rare fight where the judging didn't reward Holm's neutralizing style. It's hard to say Vieira's been overwhelmingly impressive, but she's the rare contender in this division that's consistently improving and should be quite good once she's fully worked things out; maybe she'll show some new wrinkles here against Raquel Pennington.

Meanwhile, Pennington's been as quietly consistent as ever, even if it doesn't figure to lead to another title shot. Even going back to when she was signed as a raw prospect back in 2013, "Rocky" was a reliably tough out that could drag her opponent into a grimy fight, if nothing else. Eventually she made enough improvements to establish herself as a contender with a win over Tate in 2016, though like Vieira, her career was almost immediately derailed upon achieving her greatest success; in Pennington's case, she missed over a year of action due to an ATV accident that almost cost her a leg. Even with the layoff, the UFC immediately threw her to the wolves against Nunes in a title fight upon her return, an extended beating that showed Pennington's physical ceiling even without factoring in the injury layoff. Fights like that have altered the careers of some fighters, but thankfully Pennington has bounced back to look as solid as ever and beating everyone but the bantamweight elite; it's gone a bit under the radar, but Pennington's now strung together four straight wins against some solid opposition. This figures to be a bit of a grind that could go either way, as Pennington's a consistently solid fighter in the clinch, but this improved and improving version of Vieira should be able to take this; Pennington's overcome physical disadvantages before, but Vieira's extremely strong herself in a grind and is building enough craft to find some big moments of offense as a striker. The pick is Vieira via decision.

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Strickland vs. Imavov
Ige vs. Jackson
Soriano vs. Kopylov
Vieira vs. Pennington
Nurmagomedov vs. Barcelos
The Prelims