Anyone think there's good value on Clark to beat Lisboa?
Lisboa looked unimpressive in all of her fights I watched, and all of her wins are against extremely low level girls. The combined record of the girls she's beat is 1-9. She fed on girls who were making their debuts for like her first 3-4 fights.
Clark's not elite in any way, but she's skilled enough in all areas and the level of competition she's faced is so much higher it isn't even comparable.
I get that Lisboa has a stand up background and that's sort of the promotional point for her. She's listed as a 2 time world MT champ, but seriously, at what level are talking here?
In one title winning fight she was fighting a low level girl at what looked like some sort of day event with hardly any people. Couldn't find vid for the other, but the girl she beat doesn't have this fight listed on her record, and hasn't beat anyone.
Other consideration with lower level girl MT is that the thai's are generally a lot weaker. When the skill level is so low like it is at this level, bigger foreign girls find it a lot easier to just impose themselves and take the fight.
The MT angle with Lisboa reminds me a lot of Melly Martinez and how they were touting her as a kickboxing world champ, when all she'd done was won a Wako day tournament against some cans. Lisboa's accomplishment's don't even seem as good as that.
The MT stuff actually leans into my I'd pick Jess over Lisboa. Jess usually has pretty decent gameplans. She doesn't try to prove herself by fighting opponent's at their own game. We saw this against Edwards. She could've stood and traded against a dangerous striker, but knew Edwards can't defend tds and just made it a wrestling match.
If Jess and her team have done any sort of research again, they'll know Lisboa will most likely want to strike. They'll know that Jess is slightly shorter as well. I think they'd be dumb not to plan for Jess to duck under and either td outright or clinch towards the cage and just win a boring fight as she's done in the past.
And even if this Lisboa is somehow miles better at MT, this is an MMA fight. Girls aren't standing in front of you to trade and strikes and wrestling is involved. Jess could make her striking very timid very quick with early grappling.
Also, Jess does fine in grinding fights that go the distance, meanwhile in 7 fights Lisboa has only gone beyond round 1 just twice. In one she lost to the only girl of any skill she's fought outside of Norma Dumont, and in the other she took almost 3 rounds to get a corner stoppage against a girl who was making her MMA debut (she never fought MMA again) and seemed to just be a kickboxer.
This feels like a lay up to get Clark back on track. I mean maybe she's dumb and just tries to strike and gets caught, but otherwise I don't see how she doesn't just grind Lisboa out or finish her on the mat.
Girls like Lisboa with the low quality record and who barely see a second round don't seem to ever do well once they're under the big lights.
Jess is 2.00, which seems wild to me. Coming off 2 losses is a bad look for Clark, but the level of her losses is totally unlike anything Lisboa has faced.
