The first thing to understand about Priscila Cachoeira is that her nickname is literal. Across fourteen UFC fights she has absorbed 905 significant strikes, been knocked down four times and been knocked out once — by Joselyne Edwards, who timed her charge with a counter. She keeps walking forward, and in the first minutes of a fight that forward walk is dangerous: Shana Dobson lasted 40 seconds, Ariane Lipski 65, Josiane Nunes 2:46. The problem is everything after that. On average her opponents land more than she does in every round, and in UFC fights that reach the third round she is 1-5. Milošević does not have to out-tough Cachoeira. She has to survive the first rush without trading into it.
The second thing is how Cachoeira actually loses. Five of her nine UFC losses are submissions — rear-naked chokes by Valentina Shevchenko and Gillian Robertson, armbars by Miranda Maverick and Chelsea Chandler, an anaconda choke by Jasmine Jasudavicius — and she has never attempted a submission of her own in the Octagon. Most of those came after long stretches of control by grapplers. Chandler's was different, and it is the one that matters here: a short right hand dropped Cachoeira, Chandler took her back in the scramble and finished with an armbar at 3:42 of the first round. Milošević is not a control wrestler, but she is a brown belt with two rear-naked-choke finishes, and hurt-then-take-the-back is exactly the route a striker with a submission game uses. The model gives her 16 wins in 100 that way, more than half of what she gets by knockout.
The case for caution is all on Milošević's side of the ledger. Her UFC career is 3:41 long. Hailey Cowan, the opponent in it, had lost three straight in the UFC and retired after the fight. Before that, nobody she beat had fought in the Octagon, and the one prospect-level opponent she met — Cecilie Bolander, in her pro debut — beat her on a split decision. None of those fights involved an opponent who throws the kind of looping, forward power Cachoeira brings in the first round. That is why the model keeps Cachoeira at 28% rather than lower, why 11 of her 17 knockout wins in the simulation come in Round 1, and why conviction stops at 6.
