Here's my writeup on Aguilar vs Esquibel:
Jessica Aguilar was considering the top WMMA strawweight before Joanna's long reign in the division. At one point she rattled off 10 consecutive victories between 2010 and 2014 before her debut in the UFC against Claudia Gadelha. She was the strawweight champion at WSOF making 2 defenses. Now at age 36, visibly slowing down, and with recent injuries, she's going to test herself against another veteran of the regional WMMA in Jodie Esquibel, who nobody at any time considered a top strawweight talent. So the question is whether or not Aguilar has enough in the tank to at least beat a bottom level UFC fighter.
Before entering the UFC, Aguilar showed she still had it by beating a tough and physical gal in Kalindra Faria with her grappling game. Aguilar is a BJJ brown belt, with numerous grappling tournament wins and placements between 2009 and 2014. There's no shame in losing to Claudia Gadelha in her 2015 UFC debut, but Aguilar looked to be a weight division smaller than Claudia, and was dominated in all aspects of the game. Her striking looked absolute terrible as Aguilar absorbed 111 strikes by Gadelha in an absolute rout.
Clearly in 2015 Aguilar's could not compete at the highest levels anymore and it got worse for her as she tore her ACL in 2016 preparing for a fight with Juliana Lima. She'd need to take an entire year off fighting before getting matched up with Courtney Casey this time last year. If Aguilar couldn't compete with the #1 ranked strawweight, maybe she could at least handle a top 15 strawweight in Casey. Like Gadelha, Casey absolute styled on Aguilar in the striking, this time landing over 100 strikes. '
There's a good reason why both Casey and Gadelha racked up their biggest strike totals against Aguilar. She's extremely slow and stands right in front of you to be hit. Her hands are not accurate, and she's not fast enough on her counters, allowing both her UFC opponents to throw combos with impunity. What Aguilar did show in her fight with Casey, was her ability to take the fight to the ground despite taking numerous punches to the face. It was her toughness and takedowns that eventually allowed her to win her fight against Faria in the final 3 rounds of that 5 round fight, despite losing soundly on the feet prior to that.
Despite her ability to take Casey down (which Casey helped herself by allowing her kicks to be caught and falling into Aguilar's takedown attempts), she mysteriously decided to stand up over Casey and eat upkicks to the face and her legs. This was very perplexing because her only chance of winning after getting lit up on the feet was to get top control and land some GnP (which she was able to do in the first 20 seconds of the fight). As a brown belt and grappling champ, it's very disconcerting to see Aguilar choose not to grapple.
Jodie Esquibel hasn't had the greatest matchups recently either, and has had her share of beatdowns against both Alexa Grasso and Karolina Kowalkiewicz in 2 of her last 3 bouts. Esquibel is an undersized strawweight with almost zero fight ending power. Her first discipline was boxing, although she moved more a hands-only point fighter in the cage. Due to her stature, she has to dart inside to her usually longer opponent to land any strikes. But, because she doesn't have much power or strength in the clinch, she has to do twice the work by quickly slipping away before her opponents have a chance to land.
Against both Grasso and Kowalkiewicz, she got absolutely demolished by the superior strikers both coming in and on the way out. Karolina landed 127 strikes on her in a 3 round fight. Against a much lesser skilled opponent in DeAnna Bennett, she was able to take a split decision with a more careful and lower volume approach, finding a left hook and right straight to the body consistently enough to win razor sharp rounds.
Matching the two up, I feel like both must be licking their chops right now thinking they have the ideal opponent. Aguilar may think that she finally has a gimme fight after two difficult opponents. She's already beaten a much more athletic and better striker in Kalindra Faria, after all. Esquibel, on the other hand, is probably thinking she has the perfect style matchup.
I think Esquibel might get it done here. Aguilar will be the slowest, most hittable, and least accurate striker she's faced in a long time. For all of Esquibel's faults and being too hittable coming in and out of the pocket, there's a good chance that Aguilar may not be good or fast enough to land any counters as Esquibel works her outfighting game. Aguilar has looked like a severely degraded version of herself since that win against Faria nearly 4 years ago. 36 is old, and some gals like Marion Reneau or Lina Lansberg can still compete at that age. But Aguilar's fight age is much older than her actual age, as she's been competing in MMA and grappling for over 12 years now.
Aguilar's best chance in this fight is to go with her strength and takedown Esquibel as she's coming in. She was able to beat Faria with TDs and top control 4 years ago. But I wouldn't be confident in her doing it now against Esquibel. Not because Esquibel has any decent grappling game, but because she may be a bit too mobile for Aguilar to get her hands on. With a bum knee and slowing down, Aguilar can't be good for more than a few power TD attempts at distance. And if she does somehow get on top of Esquibel, there's now that odd chance that Aguilar chooses not to stay on top again.
At the moment this fight is about a pick'em. If you were fortunate to get Esquibel at the +165 opener or even at decent + odds, then I think that's the right side here. This fight seems to also be guaranteed to go the distance (with maybe an Aguilar sub as the only very longshot ITD result). At even odds, there's not much value left but, gun to head, I'd pick Esquibel to win a close decision.
