UFC 237: Namajunas vs. Andrade - Predictions and Picks

#5 Francisco Trinaldo vs. Carlos Diego Ferreira

Francisco Trinaldo's last fight was a win over Evan Dunham

This battle of veterans might be the sleeper fight on this card, as both men have shown skills in all areas and despite their status as elder fighters in the 155lbs division, both men could still find themselves in title contention in the near future.

Both men are coming off wins; Trinaldo over Evan Dunham, Ferreira over Rustam Khabilov, and in fact Ferreira is on a 4-fight winning streak.

In terms of how these two match up, I’d give Trinaldo a slight advantage on the feet and Ferreira a slight advantage on the ground.

Ferreira has actually looked pretty solid with his striking game recently, but he’s still a largely wild striker who relies too much on his power to get by.

On the ground however he’s extremely smooth, and has developed his wrestling to the point where he comfortably outgrappled the tricky Khabilov earlier this year.

Trinaldo meanwhile came into the UFC with the reputation as a grinder-come-grappler, with a lot of submissions and ground-and-pound based TKOs on his record, but over his 7 years in the Octagon he’s really come on with his striking.

Where ‘Massaranduba’ once relied almost purely on overhand haymakers, he now throws heavy shots to the head and body, chains his combinations together and is fond of a Cerrone-style step-in knee – one of which he used to finish Dunham last year.

At 40 years old he should theoretically be showing signs of slowing down now, but somehow that hasn’t been the case; like a man who drinks regularly from the fountain of youth Trinaldo still appears to be in his athletic prime, both physically and in terms of how he looks inside the cage.

For me, this fight suits ‘Massaranduba’ down to the ground. He pushes a harder pace than Ferreira and doesn’t tend to slow down dramatically, and while Ferreira is the more proven submission grappler, it’s not like Trinaldo is a slouch on the ground himself – he has 5 submissions on his ledger and came close to tapping out Michael Chiesa in their fight.

And while two of his UFC losses came by submission, they came after he’d been hurt on the feet.

I think this will be an exciting fight but I feel like Trinaldo is too strong, too aggressive and will push too hard of a pace for Ferreira to keep up with, especially in the early going of the fight when both men will likely seek a stand-up affair.

Ferreira’s cruder striking style will struggle to mesh with Trinaldo’s more technical abilities and so I think ‘Massaranduba’ will pull another surprising victory out of the bag.

The Pick: Trinaldo via second round TKO