A Bright Light In A Dim Division

Submission ace, Erin Blanchfield, will throw down opposite French striker, Manon Fiorot, this weekend (Sat., March 30, 2024) at UFC Atlantic City inside Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

At 24 years of age, it’s really hard not to see Blanchfield holding the Flyweight belt at some point. Maybe she loses this fight, maybe she even loses a couple more fights along the way, but a “Cold Blooded” title reign feels somewhat inevitable. She’s already beaten a former champion and several top contenders, proving a well-rounded game this early in her career.

Better yet, she’s improving from fight-to-fight. She may be frustrated at The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) for holding up the Flyweight title picture and delaying her title shot, but ultimately, Blanchfield has all the time in the world to make her run at gold.

Let’s take a closer look at her skill set:

Striking

Blanchfield isn’t a master kickboxer, but she’s effective enough at the fundamentals and has a few tricks up her sleeve as well.

Blanchfield’s boxing game is all about the jab and cross. She does a good job of pressuring her opponents with an active one-two combination, pulling back, and then stepping forward once more with another jab or cross. She maintains a high level of activity and seems to hit hard enough for her opponents to take notice. She didn’t necessarily out-strike Jessica Andrade or Taila Santos on a technical level, but her persistence and fundamentals were enough to get the rest of her game going.

Blanchfield’s kicking game is actually quite a bit more interesting than her boxing. There are both pros and cons to her approach, which is remarkably fearless. On the plus side, Blanchfield has good form and power to her kicks. She mixes the inside low kick and outside low kick well, throwing them with relatively little load up. She tends to tie the inside low kick well into combinations, either using it to initiate or punctuate the one-two.

Blanchfield will also take her lead leg switch kick to the body to good effect. When ripping to the body or head, Blanchfield will sometimes stutter step or hip feint forward then throw the kick, which can result in landing with more shin by closing an extra bit of distance. On occasion, she’ll fire the body/head kick on the same side as a straight, which can be seen below.

Lastly, Blanchfield likes to raise her lead leg in a feinted kick then step down into a 1-2. That feinted kick helps close additional distance and ensure the punches land, making it good strategy for a pressure fighter.

Unfortunately, Blanchfield is quite hittable while kicking. She’s quite guilty of the classic flaw of throwing kicks from too close, meaning she’s standing on one leg and there to be hit. In general, Blanchfield doesn’t really move her head much, relying almost entirely on pulls and circling off for defense.

Wrestling

Part of the reason Blanchfield is so effective is because she has a legitimate chain wrestling attack. She is NOT one of those jiu-jitsu aces who just cannot seem to comprehend takedowns.

Often, Blanchfield is looking for the double leg takedown, and her showcase win against Molly McCann was the perfect demonstration. She waited for McCann to fire her right hand, ducked under it perfectly, and then completed her double leg nicely by cutting a small angle and circling around her opponent’s legs.

That shot began in the open, but Blanchfield has shown good form along the cage as well. She’s flashed punches up high to set up the classic double leg along the fence downstairs. In other examples, she’s switched off to the high-crotch, elevated a leg, and tripped her opponent down.

She’s proven herself quite adept in the upper body clinch as well. Blanchfield just applies the fundamentals well, threatening with go-behinds, inside and outside trips, and transitions down into the double leg to consistently keep her opponents off-balance. Against Miranda Maverick, she also demonstrated her reactionary takedowns from the clinch, countering some forward pressure in the clinch with a slick whizzer kick throw.

By having a solid double leg, quality clinch trips, and the ability to chain them all together, Blanchfield is a notch above most wrestlers in women’s mixed martial arts (MMA).

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

Blanchfield is a black belt with submission grappling competition experience. She’s finished four opponents via tapout in the cage, but she’s shown really excellent transitional grappling even in fights where the stoppage didn’t materialize.

There are two really standout aspects of Blanchfield’s top position that lead to dominant spots and potential finishes. Firstly, she’s really good from turtle, a position she commonly scores after dragging foes down from the back clinch.

From that position, Blanchfield makes good use of the two-on-one wrist control (a.k.a. the Dagestani handcuff). She doesn’t exactly maul opponents like Khabib from there, but Blanchfield does hang heavy and continually work to break down her opponent’s posture further. It’s wearing, and eventually, it opens up the full back take without major risk of falling over the top.

Jessica Andrade made the grappling easy for Blanchfield by willing turning her back to stand — a bad idea against an expert grappler (GIF).

More often, Blanchfield is working from inside the guard, and she has a very nice sequence to advance position. After pressure passing her way to half guard, Blanchfield will take her head across her opponent’s body. From this position, she can start to isolate the arm, simultaneously threatening the kimura and full guard pass. If her opponent tries to explode from this half guard position, Blanchfield can reach back to wrap up the neck with a guillotine. If instead her foe tries to dig an underhook and come up on the single leg, Blanchfield has countered with the d’arce choke.

More likely, Blanchfield successfully uses the double threat to pass into side control. In that case, she digs the far side underhook and jacks it up high, keeping her head position tight to the canvas. Then, she sits her hips through and walks them high into the other arm pit. From here, she can start working to trap the near arm in a topside crucifix. This position allows her to drop unanswered blows, and often, transition to the kimura or armbar as her opponent frantically tries to escape (GIF).

Lastly, Blanchfield’s guillotine choke of J.J. Aldrich deserves a shout. As Aldrich scrambled up from bottom position, Blanchfield quickly wrapped the neck and jammed her into the fence. Aldrich tried to defend correctly by reaching overtop the shoulder, but Blanchfield’s high-elbow position meant that defense was no longer in play. By the time Aldrich realized, she was fully trapped, and there was nowhere to go.

Conclusion

Blanchfield has all the tools necessary to be a champion right now, let alone in a year or two. She’s going to be a fixture of the title picture for a long time, and this should be the final step necessary in earning her first opportunity at gold.

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Andrew Richardson, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt, is a professional fighter who trains at Team Alpha Male in Sacramento, California. In addition to learning alongside world-class talent, Andrew has scouted opponents and developed winning strategies for several of the sport’s most elite fighters.

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