5 reasons to watch UFC Fight Night: Mackenzie Dern vs. Marina Rodriguez

#4. ‘King Kong’ is a heavyweight prospect worth watching

Heavyweight prospect Alexander Romanov has extremely heavy hands

This weekend’s UFC Fight Night preliminary card is hardly loaded with notable talent. However, one fight worth watching sees Alexander Romanov taking on Jared Vanderaa in a heavyweight clash.

Known as ‘King Kong’, Romanov isn’t the biggest heavyweight on the UFC’s roster right now. However, he’s arguably one of the only true prospects that the division has to offer. A native of Moldova, Romanov is a powerful wrestler and grappler with bricks for hands. He’s already gone 12-0 in MMA, with three of those wins coming in the UFC.

His last victory over Juan Espino admittedly wasn’t the most impressive. Prior to that, though, his one-sided victories over Roque Martinez and Marcos Rogerio de Lima were definitely enough to open the eyes of UFC fans.

Romanov will be slightly outsized again this weekend when he faces Vanderaa, who stands at 6’4”, cuts weight to make the 265-pound heavyweight limit and is nicknamed ‘The Mountain’. However, Vanderaa has not shown the abilities in the octagon that ‘King Kong’ has to date.

Romanov should rightly be considered the favorite here. If he wins this one, he’ll be 4-0 in the UFC and would have to be considered a contender in the division.

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#3. Randy Brown and Jared Gooden might not be UFC title contenders, but they’re fun to watch

Randy Brown is one of the most exciting welterweights in the UFC

This weekend’s co-main event is a strange one. Welterweights Randy Brown and Jared Gooden are not really title contenders right now and even with a win they won’t move into that kind of spot on the roster. However, it’s safe to say that both men are definitely exciting to watch, which explains their high position on this card.

Of the two, Gooden is almost certainly the less proven inside the octagon. ‘Nite Train’ is 1-2 in the UFC right now, but his last fight was a wild one. He waylaid Niklas Stolze with a brutal punch with just a minute gone inside the first round.

Brown, meanwhile, has been with the UFC now for nearly six years after being discovered on the Looking for a Fight series. In that time, ‘Rude Boy’ has gone 7-4 in the years that have followed. Notably, only three of those eleven bouts have gone the distance.

Essentially, win or lose, ‘Rude Boy’ comes to finish his fights. In Gooden, he’ll be meeting an opponent who feels exactly the same way. That means that the chances of a violent finish in this fight seem pretty high. While it’s not a co-main event with high stakes, it should be great to watch.