Paige VanZant Is a Rising Star, but Can She Hang with Her Division's Best?

It didn’t take long, following her November 2014 debut, for the UFC to decide wholeheartedly that the promotion wanted to be in the Paige VanZant business.

She got a main-card slot on Fox in just her second fight, a decision win over Felice Herrig. Before her third UFC fight, a submission win over Alex Chambers in September 2015, VanZant made the media rounds in Los Angeles, a privilege even well-regarded veterans haven’t been afforded.

Rose Namajunas torched VanZant for the better part of 25 minutes before submitting her in the fifth round, and for most fighters, a one-sided defeat in the first headlining bout would lead to a step backward in visibility. Not VanZant: The UFC immediately made the call to get her on Dancing with the Stars, and she got another main-card slot on Fox in her return fight.

On Saturday, December 17, VanZant’s pre-ordained rise to the top continues with a headlining bout on Fox against Michelle Waterson.

The UFC’s priorities are clear and have been from the beginning. The real question is whether VanZant can be a credible competitor on the level at which the UFC would like to promote her.

Bleacher Report’s Steven Rondina and Patrick Wyman break through the promotional side to discuss how VanZant stacks up in the cage against the elite of the strawweight division.

Steven: Normally, Patrick, when we talk about Paige VanZant, we talk about her promotional ceiling. The UFC has poured a great deal of effort into transforming her into a faux-celebrity and that, more than her actual in-cage success, is what will determine her value to the company.

Personally, I don’t think all those media spots will amount to much. I know you disagree. But ultimately, we can play the “told you so” game after the ratings come back for UFC on Fox 22.

Today, we should talk about her competitive ceiling.

The UFC, as with Conor McGregor’s rise, has been very particular about whom they match VanZant against. After a strong debut against a game Kailin Curran, the UFC has kept her away from anyone particularly athletic or anyone with genuinely heavy hands. That has led to some wins that looked a lot better than they actually were.

Still, there’s no question that VanZant has some legitimate talent. So I ask you, Patrick, where does VanZant stack up in today’s strawweight division?

Patrick: VanZant isn’t a bad fighter, and those who take that line of reasoning either haven’t watched enough raw, young fighters to place her in the right context or have decided a priori that they dislike her. Fair enough, nobody's saying you have get on board, but that’s not an accurate assessment of her skills.

So what is VanZant?

She’s an athletic, durable, aggressive fighter with a great gas tank and a relentless style that drowns her opponents in offense until they quit or the final bell sounds. We know she has heart and won’t quit in the face of adversity.

She’s also a genuinely subpar defensive fighter who gets hit way too much. Her footwork is lacking. She’s not a great wrestler and relies far too much on her ability to scramble to get her out of trouble on the mat.

That’s not a bad foundation to build on. She trains in a gym full of wrestlers. Defense and footwork are another story, though, and Team Alpha Male isn’t exactly churning out the next Jose Aldo, Anderson Silva or Dominick Cruz in those departments.

At this point, VanZant isn’t going to challenge for a title, but she’s also 22 years old and still improving.

Does that sound like a reasonable assessment, Steven? Since she has yet to defeat a ranked opponent, are there any fighters in the top 10 you’d favor her to beat?

Steven: For the most part, I agree with you. I’d nitpick with you over whether or not she really qualifies as “athletic,” but that’s another discussion for another time.

She has the tools to outwork a lot of competition, and she has the toughness to keep going if things go sideways, but she also has plenty of obvious technical shortcomings that could be exploited by high-end fighters. Heck, the fact that her best highlight to date came from her spamming flying kicks says it all.

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The question of whether she can beat top-10 competition hinges on which top 10 you’d be referencing. When it comes to the UFC’s official top 10, I’d say she’s about right where she should be. She’d get destroyed by Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Jessica Andrade, Claudia Gadelha and Rose Namajunas (again). A handful more would probably be able to shut down her clinch work.

Valerie Letourneau, though? Maryna Moroz? Sure, I could definitely see her taking a win over either of them, especially in a five-round fight.

When you look to one of the less official (but way more accurate) non-UFC rankings, things get a bit hairy on whether she could beat top-10 competition. I’d pick VanZant to lose to basically anyone in the Invicta FC title picture, and Asia is actually starting to produce some really interesting female talent.

At this point, I think she’s on the high end of the middle tier of the strawweight division, which isn’t a bad position for a 22-year-old with 9 fights on her record. The real question, though, is whether she can grow past that. Maybe I’m missing something but at this point, I’m not entirely convinced she can.

Patrick: Leaving aside the inherent contradiction between you doubting her athleticism and then mentioning her landing a jumping head kick against Bec Rawlings two sentences later, I’m not going to disagree with the broad outlines.

I’m a bit more optimistic.

A polished 22-year-old fighter is a rare commodity, and it’s not reasonable to expect her to match lifelong competitors with deep backgrounds in striking, wrestling or jiu-jitsu. It’s going to take her a bit longer to pull everything together, which is something Team Alpha Male head honcho Urijah Faber echoed earlier this year when he and I discussed VanZant in depth.

With that said, VanZant has been a professional for four and a half years. It’s time for her to start showing some real gains.

One thing that stands out about every potential opponent in the top 15 is that, given her in-your-face style, none of them would be an easy fight. VanZant could probably pressure her way through Letourneau and Moroz, and that kind of approach would likely trouble Joanne Calderwood as well, but each could also put a hurting on a defensively suspect fighter like VanZant.

Everyone ranked above her can match or exceed her physicality while exceeding her skills in one or more areas. I shudder to think about what Jedrzejczyk, Gadelha or Andrade might do to her right now if the demonstrably less dangerous Namajunas could dominate her so thoroughly. Tecia Torres beat her once before, and that’s still a fight VanZant is likely to lose, if likely in less violent fashion.

Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Getty Images

Even some of the up-and-comers currently ranked behind her, like Alexa Grasso, are rough stylistic matchups. Top Invicta fighters Angela Hill and Livia Renata Souza would probably put a beating on her, based on what we’ve seen to this point.

On one hand, this is as much a commentary on the strength of the blossoming strawweight division as it is on VanZant’s shortcomings. On the other hand, these are her peers, and she’s going to have to face them.

I’ll ask one more question to finish things up. Even if VanZant can’t get over the hump that fighters like Waterson, Torres, Calderwood and Moroz represent—that middle tier of the strawweight elite—does she still have value for the UFC as a promotional piece?

Steven: I’ll quickly mention that, at 22 years old and with a few years of taekwondo under my belt, I was capable of landing jumping flying head kicks, too. Let me assure you that I'm far from athletic.

As for her promotional value to the UFC, it completely depends on whether or not she sticks with the public.

When you and I discussed the UFC’s general star-making efforts, I bluntly pointed out that being a runner-up in a season-long game show doesn’t do all that much for a person’s career. That applies to Dancing with the Stars as much as it applies to The Voice, American Idol or The Bachelor.

That’s more than Stephen Thompson has going for him, sure, but will that translate into moving the box office, ratings or PPV needle? We’ll know come Monday.

If UFC on Fox 22 does 3.5 million domestic viewership on Fox? Then she’s a big hit, and the UFC is vindicated in promoting her more than actual elite-level fighters, even if she plateaus as a mediocre in-cage talent. If it bombs, though? I expect she goes the way of Erick Silva (which is to say, slowly and steadily down).

Patrick: More people watched VanZant at the Dancing with the Stars finale than have ever watched a UFC on Fox event. Even a D-list celebrity coming out of one of those reality shows is infinitely better known to the general public than most UFC champions.

Whether VanZant can translate that baseline level of notoriety—she has 1.2 million followers on Instagram, more than any UFC fighter except Conor McGregor, Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, Holly Holm, Jose Aldo and Anderson Silva—into TV ratings is the real question.

If she can, then we can expect her top-notch bookings to continue. My guess is that she’ll turn in a respectable performance in the ratings; how she performs in the cage against Waterson seems far less certain.