Xiaonan Yan vs Denise Gomes
Women's Strawweight Bout • UFC Fight Night: Nurmagomedov vs. Song
Saturday, August 29, 2026 • 3-Round Main-Card Bout
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Xiaonan Yan
Fighter Metrics
Victory Methods
Win Round Distribution
Denise Gomes
Fighter Metrics
Victory Methods
Win Round Distribution
📋 Last 5 Fights - Xiaonan Yan
| Date | Opponent | Result | Method |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-04-12 | Virna Jandiroba | L | Decision (Unanimous) (R3, 5:00) |
| 2024-11-23 | Tabatha Ricci | W | Decision (Unanimous) (R3, 5:00) |
| 2024-04-13 | Zhang Weili | L | Decision (Unanimous) (R5, 5:00) |
| 2023-05-06 | Jessica Andrade | W | KO/TKO (Punches) (R1, 2:20) |
| 2022-10-01 | Mackenzie Dern | W | Decision (Majority) (R5, 5:00) |
📋 Last 5 Fights - Denise Gomes
| Date | Opponent | Result | Method |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-11-08 | Tecia Torres | W | Decision (Unanimous) (R3, 5:00) |
| 2025-05-17 | Elise Reed | W | KO/TKO (Punches) (R2, 0:30) |
| 2024-11-09 | Karolina Kowalkiewicz | W | Decision (Unanimous) (R3, 5:00) |
| 2024-06-08 | Eduarda Moura | W | Decision (Split) (R3, 5:00) |
| 2023-11-04 | Angela Hill | L | Decision (Unanimous) (R3, 5:00) |
Technical Analysis
Technical Score
Cardio Score
Overall Rating
📊 Technical Score
Calculated as the average of Striking Composite (61 vs 58) and Grappling Composite (41 vs 49). Balances overall striking effectiveness with grappling ability to measure complete technical skills — a near-even blend (~51 vs ~53.5, all figures estimated) in a fight contested almost entirely on the feet, where Yan's striking grade leads.
💪 Cardio Score
Based on average fight duration, striking rate per minute, takedown rate, and finish rate. Measures cardiovascular endurance and ability to maintain pace throughout fights.
🎯 Overall Rating
Simple average of Technical Score and Cardio Score. Provides a holistic view of fighter capabilities combining skill level with physical conditioning and fight performance.
Striking Composite
Grappling Composite
Technical Radar Comparison
Visual comparison of key performance metrics between both fighters
📊 Detailed Statistical Comparison
🥊 Fight Analysis Breakdown
🧩 Xiaonan Yan Key Advantages
The single most predictive pattern on either résumé is that Denise Gomes loses to what Xiaonan Yan does. Both of Gomes's UFC defeats — to Angela Hill and Loma Lookboonmee — came against high-output, movement-based strikers who out-worked her over three rounds. Yan is a more accomplished, higher-volume version of exactly that archetype, and she beat that same Angela Hill earlier in her career. There is even a shared win over Karolina Kowalkiewicz on both ledgers. Gomes has already lost this style of fight twice; Yan is the hardest version of it she has ever faced.
Yan lands more (4.69 SLpM to 4.43), is harder to hit (60% striking defense to Gomes's leaky 52%), and absorbs less (3.23 per minute against the division norm). Her southpaw angles, side kicks, and constant lateral movement are purpose-built to keep a shorter, forward-marching puncher on the end of strikes and out of the pocket where Gomes's right hand lives. Over fifteen minutes the arithmetic favors the busier, more elusive fighter who out-lands and out-moves the one weapon that can hurt her.
Two five-round fights (Zhang Weili, Mackenzie Dern) and a decade against the division's best — wins over champion Dern and former champion Jessica Andrade, plus Tabatha Ricci and Claudia Gadelha — give Yan a composure and championship-round pacing edge Gomes has never had to develop. She also owns a 3-inch height and 1.5-inch leg-reach edge to fight "taller" and kick from range Gomes must close. And the tactic that beat Yan most recently — Virna Jandiroba's takedowns and control — is not in Gomes's toolbox: with zero submission wins and minimal takedown volume, Gomes must beat Yan standing, on Yan's best terrain.
⚠️ Unfavorable Scenarios
The nightmare for Yan is the layoff showing. After roughly 16 months out at age 37, if her timing is a half-beat slow in Round 1 and she gets caught stepping in, Gomes's right hand can end it the way Carla Esparza's did in 2021 — early and violent. Most of Gomes's finishing equity is front-loaded into a possibly-cold opening round, and it only takes one clean shot on a chin that has failed once before to erase every advantage Yan carries on paper.
The other losing script is stylistic self-sabotage: Yan lets the fight become a stationary pocket brawl instead of a movement contest, plants her feet, and trades with the harder puncher. Or she banks the volume but drops the close rounds on damage — Gomes's cleaner, heavier shots (49% accuracy, seven KOs) outscoring Yan's busier-but-lighter output the way judges sometimes reward the puncher. Every exchange she chooses to have is a coin flip she does not need to take.
📋 Likely Gameplan
Yan should use her height and leg reach — side kicks, teeps, and the jab — to keep Gomes at the end of strikes and deny her the pocket. As a southpaw she circles away from the right hand, stepping left off the centerline to make Gomes reset and chase; every wasted step drains energy from that power. When Gomes loads the right, Yan should be gone — and when Gomes reaches, punish with the rear straight down the open-stance middle, the Andrade-style clean counter that is her one real finishing threat.
The KO is unlikely, so Yan should win the Hill/Lookboonmee way — accumulate, out-land, and let the judges reward activity and control of distance. Respect the right hand early, weather Rounds 1–2 without a catastrophic lapse, then lean on the cardio and movement edge in a championship-pace third round Gomes has never had to fight. If it stays mobile and long, the veteran's volume and defense bank the cards the way they always have against pure strikers.
🚀 Denise Gomes Key Advantages
Seven KO/TKO wins, a 20-second knockout of the previously-unbeaten Yazmin Jauregui — the fastest finish in women's strawweight history — and a feared right hand meet a 37-year-old who was stopped by Carla Esparza in 2021. Yan's 60% striking defense is good but not impregnable; she still absorbs 3.23 per minute, and it only takes one clean right hand. This is the great equalizer and the single most dangerous fact in the fight, and it lives mostly in the fresh opening rounds where Gomes's finishes cluster.
Gomes is eleven years younger, on a four-fight win streak, and — unlike Yan — not returning from a roughly 16-month layoff; ring rust and age are Yan's to disprove. Her 49% striking accuracy is the best mark in the fight — she throws to hurt, not to fill space — and she has never been finished in the UFC, so she can walk through Yan's low-power volume (0.15 knockdown average) and keep hunting the equalizer for all fifteen minutes. If the layoff has dulled Yan's timing even slightly, the movement that neutralizes Gomes erodes — and a stationary Yan is a finishable Yan.
⚠️ Unfavorable Scenarios
Gomes's worst case is chasing a ghost: she cannot corner a mobile southpaw, eats side kicks and jabs at range, and gets out-landed for fifteen minutes — a straight replay of the Hill and Lookboonmee losses, against a better version of both. Yan beats fighters who follow her in straight lines, and if Gomes walks forward without cutting angles she simply feeds the volume that loses her the rounds and never plants her feet long enough to load the right hand.
If her power fades after Round 2, the fight enters the championship-pace third round and Yan's cardio and movement run away with the scorecards — the exact phase where Hill and Lookboonmee banked their decisions. And if she over-commits the right hand chasing the finish, she can step into a Yan counter (the Andrade template) and, for once, her forward pressure walks her onto something. Her margin is the first ten minutes; after that, the math turns against her.
📋 Likely Gameplan
Yan beats fighters who follow her in straight lines, so Gomes must cut angles rather than chase — trap the southpaw on the fence, shrink the ring, and take away the movement that fuels the volume. Investing in the body and legs early helps drag down Yan's pace over three rounds and keeps the veteran from dancing on the outside for fifteen minutes. The goal is to make the fight ugly and stationary, where power decides the exchanges instead of output.
Her best win is the knockout before Yan's rhythm and cardio take over, so Gomes should commit to the right hand early and force pocket exchanges while fresh — turn a distance-striking chess match into a phone-booth firefight where power, not volume, decides. Above all, pressure relentlessly in Round 1 to test whether 16 months of rust have dulled the veteran's timing, and pounce the instant it shows. The KO before the rounds accumulate is her cleanest and most realistic path to the upset.
🎯 Fight Prediction Analysis
Data-driven prediction model based on statistical analysis
📊Detailed Analysis Summary
🌀The Inverted Script
The usual "old veteran vs. young lion" story assigns the power to the veteran and the volume to the youth. This fight flips it. The 37-year-old, Yan, is the movement-and-volume technician; the 26-year-old, Gomes, is the one-shot finisher. That inversion is why the fight is close-to-even on paper (~61 vs ~60 overall, estimated) and why the tiebreakers are stylistic and historical rather than statistical. The question is not whether Gomes can hurt Yan — she can; her power is real and Yan's chin failed once against Esparza — but whether she can land it against a mobile, defensively sound southpaw before Yan's numbers bank the fight.
🎯Technical Breakdown
Read the composites honestly and they nearly cancel. Yan owns the striking phase that actually matters — higher volume (4.69 SLpM), better defense (60% vs 52%), lower absorption (3.23) — for a ~61 striking grade to Gomes's ~58. Gomes owns the sharper single number (49% accuracy, the mechanism behind seven KOs) and a marginal grappling-composite edge that nudges her blended technical score (~53.5) a hair above Yan's (~51). But that blend over-weights a grappling column that barely matters in a kickboxing match; on cardio and proven championship-round output Yan grades clearly higher (~71 vs ~66). All composites are analytical estimates, not measured ranks.
🧩Key Battle Areas
The tempo projection writes the fight's timeline. Rounds 1–2 are Gomes's kingdom — she is freshest, her power is at its peak, and any lapse in Yan's movement (rust from the layoff, a mistimed exchange) can end the night early against a chin Esparza already cracked. Round 3, and the cumulative scorecard, are Yan's — if the fight stays mobile and the KO doesn't land, her volume, defense and championship-round conditioning bank the rounds the way they always have against pure strikers. Gomes must win in the first ten minutes; Yan must survive them and then take over. The whole fight reduces to whether Gomes's power arrives before Yan's clock runs out.
🏁Final Prediction
The most likely single outcome is Yan by Decision (45%): her volume, movement, striking defense and championship-round cardio out-pointing a hittable pressure fighter over three rounds, running the exact Hill/Lookboonmee blueprint that has already beaten Gomes's style twice. Gomes's primary and most dangerous route is the KO/TKO (22%) — a clean right hand on a 37-year-old chin, front-loaded into Rounds 1–2 — with a size-and-pressure decision (19%) as her secondary path. Yan's own KO equity (12%) is a modest clean counter on an over-committing Gomes, and both submissions (1% each) are rounding tokens. Yan 58%, Gomes 42%.
💰 Betting Analysis: Model vs Market
Detailed value assessment in the betting market
📊Market Odds
🤖Analytical Model
💎Value Opportunities
HIGHEST CONFIDENCE
Model: 64% | Market implied: 63.6%
DISCIPLINED PLAY
Model: 45% | Market implied: 48.8%
LIVE DOG DANGER
Model: 22% | Market implied: 23.8%
⚠️Key Market Discrepancies
- • Underprices Gomes's power – The public line leans on Yan's pedigree, ranking and home crowd, treating a genuine seven-KO right hand against a cracked 37-year-old chin as an afterthought.
- • Prices the distance efficiently – With four of each woman's last five going to the cards, the −175 "goes the distance" line is close to fair at ~64%.
- • Overrates a Gomes decision – Out-pointing a busier, more mobile southpaw is the version of this fight she has already lost twice (Hill, Lookboonmee).
🎯 Comprehensive Probabilistic Analysis
100 hypothetical fight simulation based on statistical data
🏆Outcome Distribution - Xiaonan Yan
Out-volumes and out-moves a hittable pressure fighter over three rounds — her single most likely outcome
A clean southpaw counter on an over-committing Gomes (the Andrade template), not accumulation
A rounding-level token; Yan is not a submission threat (1 career sub)
💥Outcome Distribution - Denise Gomes
Her primary and most dangerous route: a clean right hand on a cracked chin, front-loaded into Rounds 1–2
Size-and-pressure control: cut the cage and out-land on damage over three rounds
A rounding token; Gomes has zero career submission wins
⏰Fight Timeline Analysis
⚡Window of Opportunity - Denise Gomes
- • Land the right hand: A clean power shot in the fresh Rounds 1–2 on a cracked chin.
- • Cut the cage: Trap the southpaw on the fence and take away the movement.
- • Test the rust: Pressure early to exploit any layoff-dulled timing.
🎯Progressive Dominance - Xiaonan Yan
- • Fight long: Side kicks, teeps and the jab keep Gomes on the end of strikes.
- • Circle the right hand: Southpaw angles make Gomes reset and chase.
- • Bank the rounds: Out-land at range and pull away in a championship-pace R3.
🎯 Final Confidence Assessment
Confidence level and uncertainty factors
Confidence Level
A clear-but-modest lean to the veteran — an honest, live, competitive fight, not a mismatch
✅Supporting Factors
- • Gomes's only two UFC losses came to volume-movement strikers (Hill, Lookboonmee) — Yan's exact archetype, and Yan beat Hill herself
- • Higher volume, better striking defense, more mobility (4.69 SLpM, 60% StrDef) vs a hittable target (52%)
- • Elite strength of schedule and two championship-distance fights vs an untested-at-the-top résumé
- • The grappling route that beat Yan last time (Jandiroba) is unavailable to Gomes
⚠️Risk Factors
- • Genuine one-shot power (7 KOs, a 20-second finish) vs a chin Esparza already cracked
- • Eleven years younger and sharp on a four-fight streak, while Yan returns from a ~16-month layoff at 37
- • The best accuracy in the fight (49%); never finished in the UFC
🏁Executive Summary
Across 100 simulations two competing stories emerge. In roughly 58 of them, Yan Xiaonan's volume, movement and craft carry the night — most often by out-pointing a hittable pressure fighter over three rounds (her single most likely outcome, ~45), running the exact Hill/Lookboonmee blueprint that has already beaten Gomes's style twice, and pulling away in a championship-pace third round her opponent has never had to fight. The pedigree gap is real: Yan has beaten champions and gone 25 minutes with the best in the division. In the other 42, Denise Gomes reminds everyone why her right hand is feared — a clean power shot in the fresh Rounds 1–2 on a 37-year-old chin Esparza already cracked (~22 KO, the highest single-method figure in the fight), most likely if the 16-month layoff has dulled Yan's timing, or a disciplined cage-cutting decision on damage (~19). Her one-shot power is the whole of her case, and it is genuinely live.
Prediction: Yan takes it (58%) in a race between the veteran's clock and the young finisher's power. If the fight is mobile and long, her volume, defense and pedigree win it — and the numbers say it will more often be mobile and long, with the grappling route that beat her last time off the table. If Gomes can trap her early and land the right hand before the rust burns off, the young Brazilian ends it in an instant. The slight lean to Yan reflects that the blueprint and the pedigree marginally outweigh the power against a chin that has usually held — but Gomes's one-shot threat is exactly the kind of equalizer that keeps the honest number well short of a lock.