UFC Fight Night 153: Gustafsson vs. Smith - Predictions and Picks

#3 Jimi Manuwa vs. Aleksandar Rakic

Jimi Manuwa's chin has given him some issues as of late

Another fight at Light-Heavyweight, this is essentially the last chance saloon for Manuwa in terms of being relevant to the title picture – if he still is – while for Rakic it’s a chance to break into the top ten and push his own claim to a title shot.

The Austrian fighter is still unbeaten right now and Manuwa, despite his recent skid, is clearly the toughest opponent he’s fought to date. So who comes out on top?

Debuting back in 2012 with a crushing win over Kyle Kingsbury, London-based striker Manuwa is a fantastic offensive fighter; he’s got big power even for 205lbs and knows how to use it, with his left hook being his most deadly weapon as we saw when he faced Corey Anderson a couple of years ago. The issue for ‘Poster Boy’ though has been his durability, or lack thereof.

Losses to Alexander Gustafsson and Anthony Johnson were nothing to be ashamed of, but in hindsight the Johnson loss in particular highlighted the fact that Manuwa’s chin simply isn’t that strong when he’s up against heavy hitters.

And so it came as no real surprise when Volkan Oezdemir folded him with some short punches from the clinch when they faced off in 2017.

More worryingly for Manuwa though, where his chin looked protected earlier in his UFC career, he seems to have deteriorated recently into a more reckless brawler; not the best style for him given his lack of durability.

He was doing fine against Jan Blachowicz before apparently being unable to defend against Blachowicz’s jab, and against Thiago Santos he simply traded with the Brazilian until he came out on the wrong end of a knockout.

Rakic is an interesting prospect for sure; he’s 11-0 and 3-0 in the UFC, and has only gone the distance twice. Sure, both Francimar Barroso and Justin Ledet lasted the full 15 minutes with him, but both of those fights were largely beatdowns outside of the odd takedown from Barroso.

Rakic throws quick combinations with a lot of power, has some savage leg kicks and appears to be a pretty high-level athlete too.

The big question about Rakic is his defensive work. His last fight saw him dropped multiple times by Devin Clark, largely due to leaving himself too open while throwing his leg kicks.

That’d be a huge mistake to make against Manuwa given the ridiculous power the Brit carries in his left hook, but to be fair to Rakic, he did get back up twice against Clark – even recovering from some illegal knees – and finished him moments later.

It’s that toughness that has me leaning towards Rakic here I think. These two could probably have a pretty technical striking battle and it’d be hard to call a winner, but realistically at some point one of the two will land hard and the other will be hurt, and the likely outcome from there is the fight descending into a wild brawl. If that’s the case then I’m backing Rakic and his less shopworn chin.

The Pick: Rakic via first round KO