Season 9 of Contender Series<\/a> by defeating Sofia Montenegro via split decision \u2014 in a fight that many people believe Montenegro won. However, the fight was exciting enough in Dana White\u2019s eyes that both women were awarded contracts.<\/p>\nThe fight started with Chaves landing a calf kick, which Duben immediately returned. Chaves then ate a heavy right hand from Duben but fired back. Duben took Chaves down early, but the UFC rookie got right back up. At the 2:40 mark, both fighters traded body kicks at the exact same time.<\/p>\n
Chaves showed in the opening round that she had no fear and was more than willing to engage with Duben\u2019s boxing and power.<\/p>\n
Round two started with nearly two minutes of boring clinch work where nothing really happened, but after that, the women got back to scrapping. Chaves landed a body punch that seemed to hurt Duben, but she didn\u2019t recognize it. Instead, she went for a takedown, which Duben defended. Chaves went for it again and got it, eventually working her way to Duben\u2019s back and attacking a face crank. Chaves spent the final minute and a half of the round glued to Duben\u2019s back.<\/p>\n
The final round got a little interesting because Duben tried for a spinning backfist and was immediately taken down by Chaves. However, the UFC rookie really started to slow down. Duben got back up and landed a head kick, but Chaves answered by taking her down again. This time, though, Duben reversed the position and started dropping short elbows from top position.<\/p>\n
If Duben had a better ground game, she probably could have finished the newcomer because Chaves was clearly gassed. Ultimately, she didn\u2019t, and Chaves escaped with a split decision win.<\/p>\n
Chaves vs. Duben was a pretty fun fight to watch, but at times it was extremely low-level. I do not think Chaves is going to have a great UFC career because she is going to be learning on the job at just 7-0, and she fought very weak competition on the regional scene.<\/p>\n
To put it in perspective, Duben is ranked near the very bottom of Tapology\u2019s Flyweight rankings, and Chaves had her hands full.<\/p>\n
Still, UFC can put her in fun striking fights and see what happens. She should fight Ernesta Kareckaite for her next outing.<\/p>\n
For complete UFC Vegas 118 results, coverage, and highlights click HERE<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You only get one Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) debut! Only one fighter made her Octagon debut at UFC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,33601,638,27983,82,139445,702,7788],"class_list":["post-722028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-mma-prospects","tag-sports","tag-ufc-on-paramount","tag-ufc-news","tag-ufc-results"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722028"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722028\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}