UFC Fight Night 145: Blachowicz vs. Santos - Predictions and Picks

#5 John Dodson vs. Petr Yan

John Dodson is one of the UFC's fastest fighters

This could well be the Fight of the Night, as for all his faults, Dodson is at his best when an opponent brings the fight to him – and judging by his previous UFC action, Yan is highly aggressive and more than willing to come forward to attack. The big question for me is which fighter – if either – will turn out to be outgunned come Saturday night?

The book on Dodson is essentially written at this point – a deadly southpaw counter-striker, he moves at a ridiculously fast pace and hits far harder than you’d expect a smaller fighter to hit. We haven’t seen a lot of his ground game in the UFC, but that’s largely because he doesn’t really look for takedowns and he’s so quick that the only opponent to really ground him was the equally fast Demetrious Johnson.

With this skill-set, Dodson sounds practically unbeatable, but that’s not the case – as essentially a strict counter-fighter, it’s easy to lull him into a low-output fight that can go either way when it goes to the judges, which is exactly what caused his losses to Marlon Moraes and John Lineker. Jimmie Rivera meanwhile was able to hit him with more volume while avoiding the heavy counters – admittedly, something few fighters would be able to pull off.

Yan meanwhile has been perfect in the UFC at 3-0. The Russian came into the promotion with the reputation as a hard-hitting boxer, and thus far he’s lived up to all of that hype. ‘No Mercy’ destroyed Teruto Ishihara in his debut, and then hit Jin Soo Son with everything he had, gaining the Fight of the Night bonus largely because Son simply wouldn’t go down.

Most recently, he destroyed Douglas Silva de Andrade in a ruthless display, absorbing the aggression of ‘D’Silva’ before turning up the heat to the point where the Brazilian was unable to come out for a third round. It was a hugely impressive showing from the Russian and catapulted him into this high profile fight.

For me this comes down to whether Yan can press Dodson without eating something nasty on the counter. He went into counter mode against De Andrade, but then the Brazilian is recklessly aggressive, something that can’t be said at all for Dodson. Yan is going to have to push this fight if he wants that kind of battle. If he doesn’t, we could be looking at a low-output affair, but that doesn’t really feel like Yan’s style.

I’m actually worried for Yan here as Dodson is likely the fastest opponent he’s ever faced, but I also suspect that ‘The Magician’ may finally be slowing down somewhat, as evidenced by his fight with Rivera last year and also by his split decision win over Pedro Munhoz – another fight that could’ve gone either way. I doubt Yan can put Dodson away – nobody else has, after all – but I’m going to take Yan by close decision here.

The Pick: Yan via split decision