The UFC has added a rare new face to one of their thinnest divisions, women’s bantamweight. It’s no secret that the 135 lb division has struggled mightily to find new talent on the women’s side of the sport. While Ronda Rousey may have led the charge in solidifying a larger public interest in WMMA and bringing UFC brass around, that hasn’t seemed to have made the influx of talent much larger. The latest entry, bringing the total number of fighters up to 27, is Ketlen Vieira, according to globo.com she’s signed a four fight contract with the UFC. No debut date or opponent have been announced, yet, but...
Who is Ketlen Vieira?
The 24-year old Brazilian trains out of Nova Uniao Manaus, in Manaus Brazil and under Marcinho Pontes, one of the coaches responsible for Jose Aldo’s early career development. She’ll be making her UFC debut with an unbeaten 6-0 record, with five of those wins combing by stoppage. Unsurprisingly, she’s faced nothing in the way of meaningful opposition at this stage in her career, but that’s pretty much the norm for WMMA fighters coming out of the international MMA scenes. Outside of MMA, Vieira has a black belt in Judo and a brown belt in BJJ.
What you should expect:
When she’s only throwing one or two strikes, Vieira seems to have a reasonable grasp of range and punch mechanics. However, once she gets into a brawl (which she’s relatively willing to do) a lot of her technique goes out the window. She tends to pull her head straight back against more aggressive opposition, while winging wild punches and kicks.
That said, she seems to have the size and power to make that work for her in the short term while she continues to develop the more technical aspects of her game. She’s showing signs of developing deeper combinations and striking defense, but a lot seems dependent on the pressure her opponent applies. Otherwise despite her Judo background and BJJ, I haven’t seen much of her takedown or grappling games outside of a hulked single-leg.
To get us better acquainted, here’s her 2015 fight against Laet Ferreira: