Oklahoma City was a great night of fights, and the main takeaway is that two stars were born on it. Tommy McMillen and Fatima Kline had the two best performances on the card.

They won completely differently. But they share the same rare thing, and it is the reason we think both are going to be a problem for their divisions.

McMillen: old-school pressure, and better placement than it looks

McMillen fights like something out of an older era. Constant forward pressure, no respect for distance, and cardio that lets him keep the tank open into the third round.

It looks sloppy at times. It is not. Watch where the shots land: he is hitting with the knuckle, cleanly, over and over, and the body work is exceptional. The shot selection is the thing. He digs downstairs until the hands drop, then comes upstairs, and he does it while throwing at a volume nobody in the division matches.

The round splits tell the cardio story better than any highlight. He landed 74 significant strikes in the first, then went up to 97 in the second, and was still at 81 in the third when referee Nick Berens waved it off at 3:29. Alberto Montes landed 56 in the entire fight.

RoundMcMillenMontes17423297263817Total25256

That 252 is the highest three-round total in our database, ahead of the 238 Nate Diaz put on Donald Cerrone at UFC 141 in 2011. He also scored both knockdowns and took Performance of the Night.

The part that matters most: he did it against real competition this time.

Alberto Montes is no joke. He came in 12-1 on a four-fight winning streak, every one of them a submission, the last of them a second-round anaconda choke on former Ultimate Fighter winner Ricky Turcios in his UFC debut at UFC 326 in March. Our database had McMillen's previous ten opponents averaging 1511 Elo. Montes sat at 1629. That is a real step up, and McMillen's answer was to throw more, not less.

So the question is simply whether he can keep this up. Can he hold that volume and that pressure against a higher level of competition? Because if he can, McMillen is going to be a star in this sport.

He is only 28, which is not even his prime yet, and he already has two UFC wins, both TKOs. If he keeps his head straight outside the cage and keeps doing this inside it, the ceiling is high. Our Elo moved him from 46th to 33rd at featherweight on this one result.

Kline: sharper, more polished, and now a real grappler

Kline was the other one, and her performance was every bit as good.

She is an outstanding technical striker. The footwork is genuinely excellent, and she is exceptional at cutting angles on her punches — stepping off-line and landing from where her opponent is not looking. She found the timing very quickly against Tabatha Ricci and never lost it.

Her shot placement is similar to McMillen's, maybe a touch sharper. More polished. Less aggressive, though almost nobody is as aggressive as McMillen.

The real development was the grappling. It has improved enormously. She hit Ricci with big, physical suplexes and looked comfortable everywhere the fight went, which is not a small thing against a judo black belt who has been on the mat since she was six years old.

The fight totals are as one-sided as it looked: 66 significant strikes to 24, seven takedowns to one, five full minutes of control time to 30 seconds, plus a reversal and a submission attempt. She had great energy the whole way. She got everything except the finish, and as decisions go, it is about as impressive as they come.

And it came against a top-ten ranked opponent. Ricci was the UFC's No. 8, and Kline swept her 30-27 on all three cards.

Kline's only UFC loss is to Jasmine Jasudavicius — a good loss to have, taken short notice a division up at flyweight, against someone who now sits No. 10 at 125 in our Elo. Since coming back to 115 she is 4-0 and has gone from 1610 to 1706, which puts her in the strawweight top ten at No. 10 and into the 1700s for the first time.

She is 26. She is improving fast. She is going to be a big star in this sport.

McMillenKlineRecord11-010-1Age2826Combat Edge Elo1717 (+15)1706 (+14)Elo divisional rankNo. 33 FWNo. 10 SWWinning streak114Result in OKCR3 TKOUD 30-27

Combat Edge's Take

The common thread is shot placement. Both of them hit exactly where they are aiming, repeatedly, under pressure, and that is the trait that separates prospects who plateau from prospects who become contenders. Everything else is style.

McMillen expresses it through volume and pressure. Kline expresses it through footwork and angles. McMillen is the higher ceiling and the bigger question mark, because the same forward pressure that produced 252 strikes is why Montes was able to drop him in the first round while landing only 23 all round. He absorbs 5.54 significant strikes per minute against a divisional 3.86. A ranked featherweight who punches back at volume will test that.

Kline is the safer bet. One honest note on our own numbers: our Elo had Ricci 22nd rather than eighth, so we read this as a very good win rather than a division-altering one. It does not change the assessment of what she showed.

Give McMillen a top-15 featherweight and give Kline someone from the Jandiroba-Suarez tier, and we find out how much of Saturday was real. We think a lot of it was.

I think they both have incredible potential star power in the UFC. They just need to keep doing this inside the cage.

Track both climbs on the Combat Edge Elo rankings.