UFC Fight Night 169: Benavidez vs. Figueiredo - Predictions and Picks

#4 Megan Anderson vs. Norma Dumont Viana

Megan Anderson will be looking for a knockout against Norma Dumont Viana

After her losses to Holly Holm and Felicia Spencer, many fans were ready to write off the prospects of Megan Anderson at the very top of the UFC, even in the ultra-thin Women’s Featherweight division. A notable kickboxer who’d won the Invicta Featherweight title with her striking, the Australian was badly exposed as a below-par grappler by Holm and Spencer, knocking her out of title contention temporarily.

The issue with writing her off though is that she’s still young at just 30 with only 6 years of experience behind her, and in truth, she’s still rounding out her overall game. We saw a snippet of that when she showed much-improved grappling to take out Zarah Fairn last October, and the truth is that she could still do a lot of damage to any fighter in the division with her strikes.

At 6’0”, Anderson is very much a “true” 145lber as opposed to a blown-up 135lber like the majority of the division, and so that means that she ought to be a big favorite over newcomer Viana, who has very little experience – 4 fights in a career that started in 2016 – and doesn’t appear to be anywhere near as big as the Australian.

Viana does appear to be a grappler, primarily, and that means she’s a good test to see whether Anderson has truly begun to close that hole in her game, or whether her win over Fairn was more down to the French fighter not being ready for UFC-level competition. I’m confident in taking Anderson to win this one though, as Viana has such low levels of experience that it’s easy to imagine her suffering from severe ‘Octagon shock’ too.

The Pick: Anderson via first-round KO