Preview: UFC Vegas 107 Prelims

Women’s Strawweights

Rayanne dos Santos (14-8, 0-2 UFC) vs. Alice Ardelean (9-7, 0-2 UFC)

ODDS: dos Santos (-265), Ardelean (+215)

Dos Santos could easily be undefeated thus far in her UFC career, but she seems to be fighting an uphill battle that includes some terrible luck on the scorecards. Dos Santos has fought in various weight classes over the course of her career but found her best success down at atomweight after her 2022 loss on the Contender Series. When she got the late-notice UFC call up at strawweight in 2023, there was some worry that the Brazilian wouldn’t have the physicality to hang up a level. There’s something to that, as dos Santos’ offense isn’t particularly impactful and her approach doesn’t have much control, but she still seemingly did enough to outwork Talita Alencar and Puja Tomar, only to lose both fights in controversial split decisions. Perhaps things will turn around against Alice Ardelean, who had much lower expectations heading into her own late-notice UFC debut in 2024. Ardelean’s regional career consisted of a lot of lower-level fights, mostly in her native Romania—she still somehow found herself opposite Weili Zhang at one point—so the thought was that her UFC stint would be a quick one. That might hold true, but she has been a gamer thus far, getting after her opponents with a bullying approach even as she wears herself out. That led her to a nip-tuck loss against Shauna Bannon, though Melissa Martinez was both fast and practiced enough to consistently keep Ardelean at bay. Dos Santos is generally the much better fighter, but Ardelean does seem worth the flier. She appears to be physical enough to at least drag dos Santos into an ugly fight, and that seems to be enough to win over the judges. The pick is Ardelean via decision.

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dos Santos vs. Ardelean