Against Sean Strickland, Striking at distance could be a slow march towards a decision loss for Jack Hermansson

On the surface Sean Strickland and Jack Hermansson have rather similar striking numbers. Strickland lands a bit more while Hermansson absorbs slightly fewer significant strikes on a per minute basis.

However, when including only significant strikes at distance, the advantage of Strickland becomes apparent. He lands meaningfully more than Hermanson and maintains relatively stout defense. Strickland’s +1.39 distance differential is substantially higher than Hermansson’s +0.41 measure.

Most fighters do the majority of their striking at distance and these two are no different. However, Strickland is much more reliant on his work in the position. In his UFC career, 86.32% of his landed significant strikes have come at distance. For Hermansson that proportion is much lower at 66.64%. The Swedish fighter depends much more on his ability to land significant strikes on the ground. So far in his UFC career, 25.76% of his landed significant strikes have come on the ground. There are currently 177 ranked fighters and only 23 see a larger proportion of their landed significant strikes come on the floor. 

Hermansson is 6-0 in his UFC career when 65% or less of his landed significant strikes are at distance. When he is forced to do a larger proportion of his striking at distance, he is only 3-4. This is likely bad news for him as Strickland excels at enforcing a standing striking type of fight. In his 14 UFC fights, only three of his opponents had a distance proportion below 65%.

Back in November Hermansson mostly held his own in a somewhat bizarre wrestling match against Khamzat Chimaev. He lands a respectable 2.09 takedowns per 15 minutes, but he completes only 36% of his attempts. Takedown accuracy is mostly a useless stat since many good wrestlers will chain together their attempts. At the same time, many lesser wrestlers use takedown attempts to secure position against the cage.

 Hermansson’s 5.77 takedown attempts per 15 minutes is well above the average for a ranked UFC fighter (3.74). However, he does not make particularly good use of these attempts. As previously stated, he lands only 36% of those attempts, but he also fails to use the attempts for control. He has held control positions for only 28.54% of his cage time. On top of that, Strickland has shown strong takedown defense. He has allowed seven takedowns in his 14-fight UFC career, but he has allowed none in his last seven fights.

Strickland has the 21st lowest striking accuracy among ranked UFC fighters, but he makes up for it with volume. He attempts 13.60 significant strikes per minute, which is the 12th highest output among the same group. On the other hand, Hermansson attempts only 10.68. 

It certainly seems like Strickland will be able to keep this fight standing and force a striking battle. If that turns out to be the case, it is likely going to be a long night for Hermansson. He has proven that he can hang against better strikers, like Marvin Vettori, but here he will likely end up getting outlanded over the course of the 25-minute fight.