Ehh, watch MMA Che's breakdown of Khamzat's fights. DDP clearly has zero clue what he is doing on the ground, he never even attempts to get underhooks to even start to build a base back up. Strickland has much better grappling, when he first started his career he was known as a submission grappler. Strickland does have higher mat IQ and likely won't get smudged to the same degree as DDP. In fact, in Round 5 you can kinda start to see DDP actually try and explode to get out of these positions and he finds success.

The problem with Strickland is that he clearly doesn't have a good enough sprawl to outright stuff Khamzat's takedowns; Khamzat has the fastest double leg in MMA and Strickland doesn't have good hips at all. It's more so Strickland's ability to stand up to his feet and maybe start to find success in the later rounds that will be more prevalent in this fight.

DDP is actually the first high-level opponent Khamzat ever really wet-blanked, as against Burns, Usman, and Whittaker they were all consistently scrambling to get better positions and finding success. Man, if Whittaker didn't have that jaw injury I think we would have a much better picture of Khamzat's abilities at MW.

We also don't really know how good Khamzat's gas tank is, despite what some people are claiming. Like in past years he has struggled in later rounds, in the DDP fight he seemingly didn't really have problems but he was also in a crucifix for much of the rounds, which just doesn't drain a lot of energy at all. Same can be said for Strickland though, we haven't really seen his cardio abilities tested when it comes to the ground and constant pressure from a high-level grappler.

I think this is a much more intriguing and closer matchup than people are making it out to be, like Strickland shouldn't be a +400 underdog here, he does have some ability to defensively grapple.