The first time Erin Blanchfield appeared in a main event was a little over two years ago, when she headlined a UFC Fight Night card against Jessica Andrade at the Apex. You might remember how that one went down. Andrade came out headhunting until Blanchfield shot for her first takedown early in the second round, immediately took side control, then sunk a rear-naked choke before the commentators could really get into the meat of their notes.
That’s when Blanchfield first arrived. She was just 23 at the time.
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Yet her second main event might be the one that comes to define her. Or at least, the fight that went into necessary scaffolding of what she hopes is a championship run.
That one came last spring in her home state of New Jersey, a showroom booking against Manon Fiorot in Atlantic City. It was a partisan crowd at Boardwalk Hall, there to see the upstart Blanchfield — who was 6-0 in the UFC to that point and carried the nickname of “Cold-Blooded” — punch her ticket to a title shot.
Yet what happened was closer to existential vertigo. Fiorot shut her down for five full rounds, rendering all of what made Blanchfield the women’s most dominant prospect — the pressure, the pace, the managing of distance and the changing of levels — all but moot.
Fiorot forced Blanchfield to produce a Plan B. Problem was, there wasn’t a Plan B. Up until that point, Plan A had always worked.
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Yet sometimes a hard night at the office is exactly what a young fighter needs, a night when you’re forced to look more closely at your own shortcomings. If the now 26-year-old Blanchfield’s rebound performance against Rose Namajunas in November is any indication, the old fight game proverb still holds true: “You learn more from your losses …”
Erin Blanchfield punches Rose Namajunas in a flyweight fight during a UFC Fight Night event at Rogers Place on Nov. 2, 2024, in Edmonton, Alberta. (Photo by Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC)
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
“I think you really do,” Blanchfield told Uncrowned. “I’ve had a few losses in my career, and I feel like after I’ve lost, I’ve learned the most because it really pushes you. You don’t want to lose again, and it really exposes your weaknesses. I feel like I was able to look back on that [Fiorot] fight and adjust and come back and start building a winning streak again.”
She could hit two consecutive wins if she can take care of business in what will be her third main event Saturday against Maycee Barber at the Apex. It hasn’t officially been dubbed a title eliminator in the women’s flyweight division, but an emphatic win either way could certainly sway the matchmakers. Right now, Brazil’s Natalia Silva sits as the No. 1 contender for champion Valentina Shevchenko, and there’s always the possibility strawweight champ Zhang Weili could move up to try to win a second title.
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None of that matters to Blanchfield, who’s orbited the title for the last few years. In a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately business, she knows the importance of making the case whenever the spotlight comes around.
“I feel like getting a really good win, like a finish on Saturday, it could put me right in a title picture,” she says. “I’ve been fighting top five for the last two years now, so I feel like it’s been a really good experience for me and just prepping me for when I do get that title shot.
“But I don’t feel like there’s a huge hurry [to get the title shot]. I’ve been in the top five for a while, but I think people forget how young I was in the top five, only 23 when I first got in. So I think I needed that experience and I needed those fights, so whichever way it goes, I know I plan on being undeniable and keep winning and improving, so I’ll get there.”
If her and Barber share a connection, it’s that both are still young (Barber just turned 27), both have carried big expectations since they were ridiculously young (when Barber was 21, she vowed to become the youngest champ in UFC history until 10-to-1 underdog Roxanne Modafferi upset her), and both have been battle-tested (Barber’s loss to Alexa Grasso all but dropper her out of top-10 talk for years).
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If anything, this weekend’s fight is meant to serve as a reminder the youth movement is still very much underway. That yesterday’s phenoms are now carrying experience. The growth of Blanchfield lies in the details of the Namajunas fight, which was taking a bad turn early — much like the Fiorot bout.
Namajunas was holding court in first couple of rounds. It looked like Blanchfield was headed toward a second straight loss, yet this time she was able to overcome the slow start.
“She’s a really good boxer,” Blanchfield says of Namajunas. “I feel like the first two rounds she out-pointed me a bit. She was kind of getting her shots off, and she was countering really well. But I was able to get my takedown in the third round and then in the fourth round I began out-striking her.”
That’s when vintage “Cold-Blooded” Blanchfield began to take over.
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“I could feel that I was beating her there, and then the fifth round I was able to take her down again and beat her from there. I had a little bit of bad start, but she’s also really talented and then I was able to build as the fight went.”
Back when Blanchfield was coming up, she would overwhelm people by dictating where the fight would take place. She dragged JJ Aldrich into the deep water before submitting her in the second round. She all but ruined the hype of Molly McCann in what was a lopsided affair at UFC 281. She controlled Miranda Maverick and Taila Santos as if holding them in custody, racking up control times that have made those betting the over at times very happy. What Blanchfield likes to do is break an opponent mentally and physically.
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In fact, she’s been so predictably dominant that some people have accused her of being the one word no fighter wants to be associated with.
Boring.
“I wouldn’t say I’m a boring fighter,” Blanchfield says. “I would say I’m a technical fighter. I try to bring the fight where I want to fight, to make it my fight. I think I’ve gotten a lot of finishes. I’ve got a lot of finishes, with my jiu-jitsu, and I want to get some finishes with my striking as well. My goal is always to try to finish people.”
She’ll get another chance Saturday against a fighter who has led the chorus of saying Blanchfield is boring. Never mind that Barber has just one finish in the last six years (to Blanchfield’s five), a little bad blood never hurts.
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“[Maycee]’s been outspoken,” Blanchfield says. “I plan on going there Saturday and finishing her. I mean, I know people always say they need to talk, right? They need to talk whether they’re trying to build up a fight or make themselves feel better, so that’s kind of where I put that.”
Where Blanchfield has always done her loudest talking is in the Octagon. The Namajunas fight told us that she’s back. Back to dictating the fight on her own terms. Back to figuring people out.
Back to breaking people in a way that makes her becoming a champion more a question of when rather than if.
“I feel like you can tell [when somebody is breaking], especially when people start getting gassed, they’ll be taking these deep breaths,” she says, almost too happily. “I’ve been in fights where I’m fighting them and I’ve seen them take a big breath and you’re like, ‘Oh, I know you’re tired, it’s my time to go.’ Or you feel them crumbling under your strikes. So, yeah, those are the moments you can feel you’re breaking someone.”
