Jasudavicius beat Blanchfield. Now give her a top-two opponent

One year ago this weekend, Manon Fiorot needed 74 seconds to stop Jasmine Jasudavicius at UFC Vancouver. That knockout was supposed to be the ceiling. Good fighter, tough out, not one of the women who fight for belts.

On Saturday night at Rogers Place, in the co-main of UFC Fight Night: Buckley vs Malott, Jasudavicius beat Erin Blanchfield, No. 4 on the women's flyweight board, by unanimous decision. All three judges had it 29-28. She was +265 across 18 sportsbooks when the prelims started and +270 by the time the main card did, which works out to roughly 26 percent with the margin removed. Our model was even less impressed: it gave her 19.9 percent.

I was with them. In my piece on the line before the fight I wrote that I would not argue with the direction the money was moving. I should have argued. And the more interesting question now is not how the market missed it, but what the UFC does with a 37-year-old who just took the No. 4 spot off a 27-year-old.

My answer: give her someone from the top two, and do it next.

How it was won

Photo: MM-eh / CC BY 3.0

Everything people said about the matchup going in was true, and it did not matter. Blanchfield walked in having stopped 78 percent of the takedowns tried on her in the UFC, with four UFC wins by submission, the more dangerous of the two once the fight hit the floor. Jasudavicius took her down three times in four tries in the first round and held her there for 3:28 of it. In the second she landed one more takedown and held control for another 3:24 and outlanded Blanchfield 31 to 12 in total strikes.

That is 6:52 of control across two rounds, against 13 seconds the other way. Jasudavicius also had three submission attempts. Blanchfield, the submission artist, had none. Her takedown defense left Edmonton at 72 percent.

Then the third round happened, and it belonged to Blanchfield. She landed 42 significant strikes on 85 attempts to Jasudavicius's 22 on 83, and stuffed six of seven takedown attempts. Over the full 15 minutes Blanchfield outlanded her 62 to 43 in significant strikes. Judges Eric Colón, Junichiro Kamijo and Thomas Collins all scored it the same way: rounds one and two for Jasudavicius, round three for Blanchfield. There is no robbery here to litigate. It was the easiest decision on the card to score.

The case against her, steel-manned

Some will say that third round is the real story. Jasudavicius tired, the takedowns stopped coming, and over five minutes on the feet Blanchfield nearly doubled her output. Put that version of the fight on a five-round title card and the championship rounds look like round three, twice.

I will concede part of that. The Fiorot loss is real, and it was not close. And a fighter whose wins are built on control, which hers are (11:25 of it against Priscila Cachoeira, 8:09 against Karine Silva in April), is easier to plan for than one who can end a fight from anywhere.

But the scoring system rewards rounds, not narratives about rounds. She won two of them clearly against a woman who had been in the top five for most of the last two and a half years. Since her loss to Tracy Cortez in September 2023 she is 7-1, and the one loss is to a former title challenger. That is not a ceiling. That is a contender's record that took longer to assemble than most.

The board she just walked into

Here is the top of the division as the official rankings stood on October 6, before Saturday, with each fighter's most recent UFC result.

Read it as a list of who has already fought whom and it gets thin fast. Silva has beaten Grasso (UFC 315, May 2025) and Namajunas. Grasso has beaten Fiorot and Barber. Shevchenko has beaten Fiorot. Fiorot has beaten Blanchfield and Jasudavicius. Blanchfield has beaten Namajunas. The top six have spent two years fighting each other in a circle, and the champion has already been through two of them.

Two names Silva has not seen

Photo: MMAnytt / CC BY 3.0

Strip out the losses and the rematches and only two fighters in the top six are coming off a win and have never shared a cage with Silva. One is Shevchenko, who sat at No. 0 on the board as recently as September 29, now sits at No. 1, and has not fought since beating Zhang Weili eleven months ago. The other is Jasudavicius.

Shevchenko is the obvious first defense, and I have no quarrel with it. Grasso, on two straight wins, has a case too, but she has already lost to Silva once, and a rematch is a harder sell while fresh options exist. Which is the point: the fight that makes the queue make sense is Jasudavicius against Grasso. No. 2 against the woman who just removed No. 4, winner waits on the Silva and Shevchenko result.

The alternative is the booking I would bet the UFC reaches for first: Fiorot again, a rematch of a 74-second fight. It would tell us something we already know. Fiorot is coming off a loss, Jasudavicius is coming off the biggest win of her career, and putting her back in with the one woman who has already blown her out is a way of asking her to prove the old ceiling again instead of testing the new one.

Age is the other reason not to wait. Jasudavicius turned 37 in March. The UFC has every incentive to slow-walk a contender it did not plan for, and none of that cost falls on the promotion. It falls on her.

The line moved the wrong way

Before Saturday the money moved against her almost without pause for eight days, from +192 on October 9 to +270 by the main card. The market looked at Blanchfield's takedown defense and decided the fight would be on the feet.

It was on the feet for one round. Jasudavicius has spent the last three years making people who had already made up their minds about her look early. Saturday added a few more names to that list, mine included. The matchmakers should try not to be next.

The full round-by-round stats and scorecards are on the event page, and the women's flyweight board, which will update this week, is at /rankings/womens-flyweight.