UFC 193: Joanna Jedrzejczyk Tames Valerie Letourneau, Retains Strawweight Title

Valerie Letourneau was supposed to be easy prey for Joanna Jedrzejczyk at UFC 193. For a brief time, it seemed like she wouldn't be.

The first round saw quite a bit of suspense for the champ. Jedrzejczyk was, perhaps, a bit too confident in her kicking game, which resulted in a leg kick getting caught en route to a takedown. Letourneau ate up a substantial portion of the round there, but was immediately met with a brutal front kick to the face. Letourneau would survive and would ride out the round with her grappling. 

In the second, however, the tide started to turn. Letourneau's takedown attempts didn't pay off, and Jedrzejczyk's timing became sharper and sharper. The leg kicks started adding up, and Letourneau didn't quite seem to have an answer.

29-28 for the champ, not the showcase fight for the champ so far, but 2 more rounds and it looks like Letourneau might be slowing down

— E. Casey Leydon (@ekc) November 15, 2015

That swing in momentum didn't stop at the second bell, though. As the clock ticked on, the single shots Jedrzejczyk started finding in the second round turned into combinations in the third. Those combinations in the third turned into power shots in the fourth. She was in complete control and everyone, including Letourneau, knew it.

By the fifth round, the challenger was a swollen mess with a serious limp. Her hands just couldn't keep up and her footwork was just too sluggish to get out of the way. Letourneau would survive to the end, but that was, frankly, a moral victory and little else.

The scorecards would be read and Jedrzejczyk would be declared the winner by unanimous decision to the tune of 49-48, 49-48 and 50-45. It was a strong, but surprisingly clean, performance by Jedrzejczyk.

Here are some notes and thoughts about the fight:

• The importance that Letourneau's size played here cannot be understated. Jedrzejczyk was substantially larger than her previous foes, Carla Esparza and Jessica Penne, and it showed with how the fight progressed. Letourneau was actually larger than Jedrzejczyk, and that actually was incredibly important when it came to keeping her at bay.
• That said, Jedrzejczyk was in complete control after the first half of the first round. While the entirety of the fight was talked up as competitive by the commentary desk, it really wasn't. Jedrzejczyk was no less dominant than in her previous fights; it just didn't end up being a bloodbath.
• Letourneau likely had a lot of cardio sucked out of her at the weigh-ins. She looked half-dead as she stepped onto the scale and was anything but high-energy in the fight.
• Jedrzejczyk's archrival to this point, Claudia Gadelha, was in attendance. It will be interesting to see how the UFC handles her going forward, and if they set her up with a title fight after this.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com