UFC 236: Holloway vs. Poirier 2 - Predictions and Picks

#4 Alan Jouban vs. Dwight Grant

Longtime veteran Alan Jouban makes his return on Saturday

I’m honestly unsure how this one has made the main card of a UFC pay-per-view; Jouban while entertaining hasn’t fought since February 2018, and Grant is just one fight off a split decision loss to the underwhelming Zak Ottow, even if he did knock out Carlo Pedersoli a couple of months ago in impressive fashion. The card isn’t that deep admittedly, but still, this is a disappointing choice.

At best then, I’m hoping for a fun fight between the two. Jouban almost always delivers on that front; a flashy striker content to land nasty shots from all areas, he was last seen knocking out Ben Saunders.

7-4 in the UFC, he isn’t a perfect fighter by any means – he gets too wild at times and that leaves him open, as we saw when he lost to Niko Price and Gunnar Nelson. But he does hit very hard, he’s an excellent athlete and he’s aggressive to a fault.

Grant meanwhile clearly hits hard; he turned Pedersoli’s lights out quite violently and it was a super-nasty knockout that earned him his slot in the UFC during an appearance on Dana White’s Contender Series. He’s clearly a good natural athlete, but it’s hard to forget the fact that we’re only 4 months removed from his loss to Ottow.

Sure, most online analysts thought Grant deserved the nod in that fight, but realistically it was still a slow-paced fight, and Ottow managed to lull Grant into his own plodding style and didn’t allow him to open up with anything special on his feet. And if that can happen to him against Zak Ottow, I just can’t see him having any success against Jouban.

I wouldn’t count Grant out here simply because Jouban’s been hurt and stopped before, and he has been on the shelf for a long time with injuries. But at his best, I just don’t see that a fighter like ‘The Body Snatcher’ offers a lot against a striker as varied and experienced as Jouban, and I can see ‘Brahma’ picking him apart, just as he did to the likes of Mike Perry and Matt Dwyer.

The Pick: Jouban via unanimous decision