Odunayo Adekuoroye is traveling 5,425 miles to wrestle Helen Maroulis in a 57kg women's freestyle bout at Beat the Streets next Thursday in New York City. 

You may be more familiar with Adekuoroye’s ability to dance as opposed to wrestle. After winning a bronze medal for her home country of Nigeria at the 2015 World Championships, she proceeded to dance while carrying the Nigerian flag (Watch one of her celebrations HERE). 

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Date: Thursday, May 17 | Time: 6 PM EDT

Dancing is not the only thing that Adekuoroye is good at—she also happens to have two world medals. Will it be enough to overcome one of the best pound-for-pound wrestlers on the planet? We’ll find out for sure next week, but here are a few notes on the technical aspects of their upcoming matchup you may want to keep in mind. 

Length Will Keep Maroulis Honest

Adekuoroye is extremely tall for her weight. Check out the picture of her above after she won her semifinal match at the 2018 World Championships against Belarus' Iryna Kurachkina. While it is obvious that Adekuoroye is the taller of the two women, one of the things that stood out to me about this picture is the length of the Nigerian’s arms. It's that length that forces many of her opponents to have perfect technique when defending shots. 

Watch below as Adekuoroye takes a double from the outside and her opponent sprawls directly back instead of getting an angle. The length of Adekuoroye’s arms give her the range and ability to gather Kurachkina's hips and reestablish her body position. 

Adekuoroye's Dance Moves May Help Maroulis

Are Adekuoroye’s post-match celebrations in some way going to affect her match with Maroulis? No, not a chance, but stay with me here. What is dancing? Dance is a series of human motions dictated by a rhythm. Because rhythms repeat, they become predictable. See, every wrestler has a cadence to their movement. Some are more predictable than others. 

Maroulis can read and exploit an opponent's cadence better than most women in the world. Check out the latest Behind The Dirt that we did on Maroulis' ability to time a single leg. 

Who Has A Bigger Bag O’ Tricks?

This match may come down to who has more weapons in the arsenal. If it does, I like Helen’s chances. Over the years, Maroulis has morphed into a well-rounded athlete who can attack each hemisphere of the body. 

She can keep it simple with singles and doubles. She can hit monster foot sweeps like she did in the world championship finals last year. And she can turn people from top. 

I’m not done. Neither is Maroulis. 

Every time I see her compete she surprises me by adding another facet to her game that she didn’t possess before. P.S., that's a sign of an all-time great.