Man this Calderwood/Santos fight is the worst. I looked up several stats prior to doing some taping and let me say that Calderwood is everything on paper you'd want to bet on. That is, until you see how she looks in the cage. Part of what sucks is that sometimes I think some fighters don't understand the part of what comes along with winning a decision is the ability to sell it to the judges. This is obviously when the fight is close. As much as the stats say she lands punches, it doesn't look like she is doing much in there. It's easy to see why she loses these close decisions.
OTOH, Santos is a horrible striker and Calderwood in theory should give her tons of problems (if she didn't tire and actually did more instead of being so flat footed). Santos herself gets tagged a bit and has shown the propensity to get stuck on bottom without trying to get up, as shown some against Robertson and the loss to Borella.
I was thinking I'd drop something on the Calderwood decision line, but this one's a pass for me. Back to the NFL.
I have see a few other posters expressing similar disbelief at the Calderwood/Santos line. Santos fights are boring, repetitive, and one sided; just generally hard to sit through. She is though not only deserving of her current price but I expect she will close near -500 because of her demonstrated ability and the stylistic matchup.
Santos is the significantly more powerful striker? I don't think anyone who has watched her and Joannes fights would dispute that. I find Santos to be a better technical striker than Calderwood despite her low volume, some will disagree, but certainly neither woman has an appreciable technical striking advantage on the feet to sway the fight in their favor.
Santos is a very dominant grappler despite her lack of submissions. She has taken every single one of her opponents down and has an 86% takedown accuracy.
Far and away her best skill though is her ability to control her opponents. She has averaged nearly eight minutes of control time per fight and three of her four UFC opponents have been very strong grapplers (Modaferri, Robertson, Borella).
Santos it goes without saying is very physically strong, a good wrestler, which makes its hard to envision Calderwood (the former SW) not spending the entire fight on her back.
Calderwood is a poor defensive grappler and Santos aggressively hunts the crucifix and has come close to locking it up a few times. I think she gets it this time and potentially KOs Calderwood in the first round.
Calderwood appears outmatched everywhere which is why the line is so high. Obviously anything can happen but in this instance I would say a Calderwood bet is akin to lighting your money on fire. The price is high so I understand not betting it, but betting Calderwood given the stylistic matchup is something that I would strongly implore you or anyone to rethink.