UFC Fight Night 155: De Randamie vs. Ladd - Predictions and Picks

#4 Karl Roberson vs. Wellington Turman

Karl Roberson has become a firm favorite with the UFC brass

In all honesty, there’s a good three or four of the prelims that I’d rather see on the main card than this, but then the UFC brass seem to love Karl Roberson – an early discovery from Dana White’s Contender Series – and so that’s why he’s here. To be fair to him, he did almost take out Glover Teixeira on late notice at a higher weight class, so there is that.

Opponent Wellington Turman is making his UFC debut, and it’s on relatively late notice too – replacing British brawler John Phillips with about four weeks of training. A Brazilian native, Turman is 15-2, has been fighting since 2014 and is currently on a 4-fight win streak, with his last win coming over Marcio Alexandre – ‘Lyoto’ of TUF Brazil 3 fame.

Interestingly enough, watching footage on Turman it appears that he’s actually a similar fighter to Teixeira; he’s a plodding but powerful and semi-effective striker but his real strength is on the ground – he has 7 submissions to his name and from what I’ve seen he’s incredibly dangerous and a particularly excellent back-taker.

Roberson meanwhile is a striker, plain and simple. A professional kickboxer prior to getting into MMA, we saw an example of his dangerous striking prior to his UFC tenure when he took out Ryan Spann on the Contender Series with some short elbows from the clinch. Surprisingly though, in the UFC itself he’s been more well-rounded than you’d expect.

His UFC debut saw him choke out fellow striker Darren Stewart, although he rocked him with punches first, and against brawler Jack Marshman he used his wrestling to grind out the Welshman. But he’s also shown vulnerabilities on the ground, as he was submitted by both Cezar Ferreira and Teixeira, both by arm triangle choke.

Turman could gain some hope from watching those two fights; they showed that Roberson isn’t impossible to take down and against a submission expert, he can still put himself into bad positions.

The issue for the newcomer is that Roberson is an unbelievably explosive athlete and he’s also very dangerous from the clinch – the area that most of Turman’s takedowns come from.

If Turman can get Roberson on his back then he could pull off a bit of an upset, but instead I think he’ll probably get hurt by ‘Baby K’ on the feet due to the massive speed difference between the two, and once he lunges into the clinch, Roberson will use those nasty elbows to put him away.

The Pick: Roberson via first round KO