Any degenerate can tell you the surest way to analyze a fighter is to gamble on them, because nothing identifies holes in a fighter’s game quite like losing money. For that reason — and perhaps that reason alone — Rose Namajunas was the sharp’s choice on Saturday night for strawweight title defense against Jessica Andrade. On paper, she was the superior fighter. It was always her fight to lose.
Yet Namajunas came into UFC 237’s main event as a slight underdog, a handicap created perhaps more of emotional matter than technical. She was heading to Brazil, where Andrade would have the partisan crowd, because she challenges herself by defying convention.