As strikers go, Jessica Andrade is crude. If Joanna Jedrzeczyk owns a striking toolbox that can be wheeled around like a suitcase and opened up to reveal shelf after shelf of well ordered kit for specific situations, Jessica Andrade swaggers through the halls of the strawweight division with a claw hammer hanging from a piece of yarn, and the yarn is also her belt. In the lofty pursuit of striking knowledge it is all too easy to pretend that winning on grit and toughness and monstrous power counts for less than winning on anticipation, timing and economy of motion—it doesn’t. Jessica Andrade has a left swing, a right swing, and an occasional inside low kick, but it hasn’t stopped her from running riot at 115 pounds.

When Joanna Jedrzeczyk swung at Rose Namajunas’ feints in their first fight, she worried that she had given something up, shown her hand. A great striking mind can lead to a degree of paranoia and a level of perfectionism, fighters like Jedrzeczyk don’t like being made to swing at nothing and don’t like wasting their best looks. So when Namajunas feinted Jedrzeczyk into a tizzy in their first fight, Jedrzeczyk took her finger off the trigger and suddenly became a sitting duck for Namajunas’ attacks. Jessica Andrade is not worried about letting the opponent know what she’s going to do—anything you throw at her she is going to reach to parry with her right hand or lean straight back away from and then come in swinging with her left. She is completely honest about what she intends to do, and everyone seems capable of dealing with it, until she’s made a few dozen attempts and it has become apparent that there will be no ebbs and flows to the pace of this fight, it will be all Andrade unless you can stop her.

In her best performances Andrade is an attrition fighter and one of the changes that most improved her as a fighter was her adoption of body work. Andrade used to be a Wanderlei Silva clone, all windmilling for the head and reaching for double collar ties, but by lowering her sights a few inches she has found far more success. You will have read it a thousand times before but nobody in this game is hitting the body enough, except maybe Andrade. There are no clever set ups, it is just more windmilling but to the body this time. This body work, combined with her relentless pressure and ability to take seemingly anyone’s best shots without flinching at strawweight, are what make her such a fascinating match up for Namajunas.

You cannot fully understand the intrigue of this match up without a third player: Joanna Jedrzeczyk. When she was the champ, Jedrzeczyk handled Jessica Andrade and indeed carved out her place as the strawweight great with a trilogy of title defences against Andrade, Claudia Gadelha, and Karolina Kowalkiewicz. Those women all have different skills, but each was going to go straight after Jedrzeczyk and try to hit her or take her down. Jedrzeczyk’s lateral movement and excellent takedown defence allowed her to avoid most of the trouble against these fighters, and the constant forward movement of the opposition meant that the scoring percentage of Jedrzeczyk’s jab shot through the roof. When Jedrzeczyk met Namajunas, her jab went from a reliable ramrod connection to almost a non-factor. Namajunas’ game is drawing the opponent out into lunges towards the centre of the cage and countering, she had no desire to plough in behind her face and suddenly Jedrzeczyk was trying to land a meaningful blow on mosquito netting instead of a heavy bag.

Yet we haven’t seen that style of fighting that Jedrzeczyk used through her three most notable title defences from Namajunas. Namajunas is an in-and-out fighter who likes working with her back to the middle of the cage—plenty of room to fall back into and plenty of space in which to score counters. Time and measure. Letting her work like this isn’t an act of kindness of course, Paige Vanzant tried her usual bum rush tactics against Namajunas and quickly changed her mind after tasting Namajunas’ crisp right hand. The one fighter who bit down on her mouthpiece and walked in anyway was Karolina Kowalkiewicz.

Kowalkiewicz started the fight getting outclassed over long distance exchanges. She would reach, Rose would slip, and a right hand or a left hook would clatter her over the head. When the two fell into a clinch towards the end of the first round, Kowalkiewicz scored a couple of knees to the body and the air went right out of Namajunas. In the second round, Kowalkiewicz immediately pressed in and fell into this clinch in spite of Namajunas’ counter fighting, and from there it was all downhill for Namajunas. The clinch fighting slowed her feet down and then, in turn, she could not avoid further clinch fighting. In the Kowalkiewicz fight and in the second Jedrzeczyk fight, Trevor Wittman reiterated between rounds “do me a favour, stay out of the clinch please.”

Rose Namajunas’ mobility is her power. She walks opponents onto shots and she avoids damage herself. She controls the pace of the fight and the timing of exchanges. All of that comes from her feet and you will notice that in between that peculiar bounce, her feet are off quite far out in her stance.