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Styles Make Flops: Holly Holm vs Valentina Shevchenko and Strategic Matchmaking
- Updated: July 21, 2016
Holly Holm and Valentina Shevchenko are two of the best in the bantamweight division. Shevchenko’s last fight was a fairly close loss to Amanda Nunes, the current champion. Holm’s last fight was a last-second loss to Miesha Tate, from whom Nunes took the title. Matching these two together makes absolute sense from a rankings perspective.
I suspect, however, that UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby had other aspirations for the contest. Holm and Shevchenko are not only two of the best in the division, but two of the best strikers. In a five round contest, there are likely no two better. Pitting these women against one another, then, seems a surefire recipe for a fun fight. Fans like striking matches, and nothing would vault Holm, who gained serious recognition for dethroning superstar Ronda Rousey, into title contention faster than an action-packed kickboxing battle.
Whether Holm and Shevchenko will turn in such a contest is uncertain, however. In fact, the style matchup here seems to portend a slow, methodical, and quite possibly dull fight.
THE TRINITY
If you compare prospects in MMA and boxing, one thing will become readily apparent: nine times out of ten, the promising young boxer is undefeated, while his MMA counterpart is anything but. The reasons for this are many, but all of them involve matchmaking.
In boxing, promoters have long held to an age-old rule–some call it “the trinity”–and it goes like this: swarmer beats boxer, boxer beats slugger, slugger beats swarmer.
Boxing promoters, you see, have had a long time to analyze the tendencies of their fighters; people have been making money from fistfights for well over 200 years. And the promoters–as well as the trainers and managers, bettors and fans–have seen enough pugs come in and out of the prize ring to know that the vast majority of them adhere to one of three broad styles.
Some of them swarm. We call this pressure fighting, but it isn’t always that pretty. Swarmers can be rugged and reckless, or they can be surgically precise–all that really matters is that they come forward, and keep coming.
Others box. These are the out-fighters, the clever technicians. Where swarmers close the distance, boxers maintain it, using jabs, feints, and evasive footwork to stay away.
Then there are sluggers. These fighters hit, hard. Oftentimes they get hit hard, too, and keep coming. Unconcerned with closing or opening the distance, controlling the ring or dancing around it, these bruisers focus only on doing damage with their fists, forcing the other man to fight them at all costs.
As the trinity ordains, these types match up with one another in certain, predictive ways. The swarmer beats the boxer. His constant pressure is anathema to the out-fighter’s game. The boxer beats the slugger, whose lack of craft and forethought makes him a prime target for the boxer’s lancing, long-range blows. And the slugger, who only wants to trade blows, beats the swarmer, whose aggression puts him right in the power-puncher’s crosshairs.
Slugger vs Swarmer; Diego Corrales vs Jose Luis Castillo I
That is how boxing brass have been matching fights for centuries, and it works. Using this simple, reductive formula, promoters and managers alike are able to protect their fighters, not only giving them easy matchups, but carefully cultivating their skills, giving them more and more difficult tests as time goes on. When a boxer can beat a swarmer, a swarmer a slugger, a slugger a boxer–then the fighter in question is done growing, more or less. All that remains is to prune.
COMPLEXITY
There are other predictive formulas. Boxing promoters have long held to the belief that two southpaws make for an ugly, awkward fight, for example. When removed from the hierarchy of the trinity, fighters’ styles can drastically alter the shape of the fight. Two boxers don’t typically make for an action-packed fight, while two swarmers or …
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