A familiar face stands between
Carla
Esparza and her bid to reclaim the undisputed
Ultimate Fighting Championship women’s strawweight crown.
“Cookie Monster” will rematch incumbent champion
Rose
Namajunas—the woman she submitted to win the 115-pound title in
2014—in the
UFC
274 co-feature on Saturday at the Footprint Center in Phoenix.
The resurgent Esparza enters the Octagon on the strength of a
five-fight winning streak. She last appeared at UFC Fight Night
188, where she took care of
Xiaonan Yan
with punches in the second round of their May 22 pairing.
As Esparza makes final preparations for her second encounter with
Namajunas, a look at some of the other rivalries that have helped
shape her career to this point:
Esparza captured the vacant
Invicta Fighting Championships strawweight title with a
hard-earned unanimous decision over the free-spirited Australian in
the Invicta 4 headliner on Jan. 5, 2013 at Memorial Hall in Kansas
City, Kansas. All three judges saw it as a 50-45 clean sweep.
Esparza established her superiority in the first round, where she
knocked her counterpart off-balance with a stout combination,
struck for a takedown and unleashed some effective
ground-and-pound. Eventually, the
Bellator
MMA veteran moved into position to threaten Rawlings with a
rear-naked choke. Those advances were denied. Takedowns were the
story throughout the five-round affair, as Rawlings could not stay
upright long enough to tip the scales in her favor. Esparza
grounded her in all five rounds and rarely strayed from her comfort
zone. Still, Rawlings performed well in her first appearance on
American soil, as she tagged Esparza with a hearty multi-punch
volley in the third round and knocked her down late in the
fifth.
The Polish muay Thai machine took out Esparza with punches in the
second round to claim the undisputed women’s strawweight
championship in the UFC 185 co-main event on March 14, 2015 at the
American Airlines Center in Dallas. The stoppage was called 4:17
into Round 2. Jedrzejczyk denied all but one of the
Team Oyama rep’s takedown attempts, thus trapping her on the
feet. Esparza grew increasingly desperate, as hopelessness and
fatigue set in. By the time the second round arrived, she was
little more than a sitting duck. Jedrzejczyk fired away with grisly
right hands and stinging jabs, slowly wearing down the Californian.
With less than a minute remaining in the frame, she backed up
Esparza with a right hand and swarmed with a brutal volley for the
finish. With that, Jedrzejczyk became the first Polish fighter ever
to win a UFC title.
“Quiet Storm” outstruck Esparza to a split decision as part of the
UFC Fight Night 105 undercard on Feb. 19, 2017 at the Scotiabank
Centre in Halifax, Nova Scotia. All three cageside judges scored it
29-28: Hubert Earle and Don Robinson for Markos, Robert MacAvoy for
Esparza. Markos handled her business on the feet and held her own
in the clinch and on the ground. She countered an Esparza takedown
in the first round, where she trapped the former UFC champion in a
bottom-side crucifix and cracked her with repeated hammerfists to
the side of the head. Esparza made her move late in Round 2, as she
executed a takedown and cinched an arm-triangle choke. However, her
bid for a submission ended with the bell. Markos cut loose with
tone-setting strikes early in the third, delivering a spinning
backfist and a straight right that got her counterpart’s attention.
Esparza landed a pair of takedowns late in the frame but failed to
consolidate them with meaningful damage. Though she appeared to
connect with an illegal knee to the head as Markos returned to her
feet, it did not impact the verdict.
Esparza turned away the previously unbeaten
Team Alpha Male prospect when she laid claim to a three-round
unanimous decision in their UFC 219 strawweight showcase on Dec.
30, 2017 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. All three judges scored it
29-28. Calvillo struck for a takedown inside the first minute,
freed herself from an attempted armbar and passed to side control
before applying her ground-and-pound, knees to the body included.
The two women exchanged liberally in the second round, but Esparza
started to turn the tide with two takedowns of her own. The former
UFC and Invicta champion hit the accelerator in the third, where
she fired tight punching combinations inside Calvillo’s looping
strikes, made a pass at a guillotine and buzzed the Californian’s
tower with a picturesque left hook to punctuate her latest
victory.
Takedowns and top control were enough to propel Esparza to a
contentious majority decision over the Lobo Gym standout in the UFC
Fight Night 159 co-main event on Sept. 21, 2019 in Mexico City. Two
of the three judges—Douglas Crosby and Rick Winter—scored it 29-29
for Esparza, while Brian Puccillo had it deadlocked at 28-28.
Esparza struck for multiple takedowns in the first and second
rounds, managed to neutralize onetime Invicta headliner and kept
the fight in her comfort zone. Everything changed in Round 3, where
Grasso nearly finished it on two separate occasions. She rocked
Esparza with a left hook, flurried with punches and stuffed two
subsequent takedown attempts. However, she did not fully capitalize
on the moment before a crowd of 10,112 at Mexico City Arena.
Esparza snatched a single-leg, scrambled on top and wandered into
an armbar. Grasso rolled to a dominant position and bent the former
strawweight champion’s arm beyond its bounds. Esparza refused to
tap, withstood a final standup exchange and put her fate in the
hands of the judges. The loss was Grasso’s first in seven career
appearances in her native Mexico.