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This Saturday sees the UFC make its debut in a new European country – Denmark to be exact – as the promotion rolls into Copenhagen’s Royal Arena for UFC Fight Night 160: Hermansson vs. Cannonier.
Despite being a European Fight Night show – most of which are traditionally weaker cards by UFC standards – there’s a lot to like here. Sure, the main event isn’t as captivating on paper as the previous two – Justin Gaethje vs. Donald Cerrone and Yair Rodriguez vs. Jeremy Stephens – but it’s still two top ten 185lbers doing battle, and the undercard is filled with talented and exciting fighters, too.
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Here are the predicted outcomes for UFC Fight Night 160: Hermansson vs. Cannonier.
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#1 Jack Hermansson vs. Jared Cannonier
If someone had told me a year ago that these two men would be main eventing a UFC show, I’d have come to one of two conclusions; the person was crazy, or the UFC was really spreading itself thin. Well, that isn’t actually the case, as MMA has proved to be as unpredictable as ever, and both Hermansson and Cannonier are now clearly, albeit unlikely, top ten contenders at 185lbs.
Interestingly enough, both men enjoyed their first breakout performance against the same opponent: the recently released David Branch. Cannonier knocked Branch out after stepping in as a late replacement at last November’s UFC 230, while Hermansson choked him out earlier in 2019. Who had the more impressive performance? Given Branch’s grappling skill, you’d have to say Hermansson, for what that’s worth.
Since then both men have also picked up even bigger wins. Hermansson pulled out a career-best performance to outpoint Ronaldo ‘Jacare’ Souza just weeks after beating Branch, while Cannonier picked up the biggest win of his career – in name-value at least – by TKOing Anderson Silva with leg kicks in his back yard of Rio De Janeiro in May.
While this is a bit of an unlikely main event, it’s also a fascinating clash of styles given the differing approaches of the two men. Cannonier’s great strength comes, well, from his great strength. A former Heavyweight, ‘The Killa Gorilla’ has insane striking power, hence winning 7 of his 12 wins by KO or TKO. Is he the most nuanced striker in the division? Definitely not, but his fundamentals are sound and everything he throws, he throws heavily.
Hermansson, on the other hand, succeeds largely based on two things; firstly, his height and reach. Despite not being the tallest 185lber at 6’1” he’s long and lanky and always makes the most of his 77.5” reach – although it’s notable that he’ll only have a half-inch reach on Cannonier here.
And secondly, his ability to push a simply insane pace, as we saw when he faced Jacare. The Brazilian is hardly a fighter who struggles for cardio, but he couldn’t keep up with ‘The Joker’ at all.
Hermansson is also an excellent grappler, something that became obvious when he choked out a high-level BJJ black belt in Branch and somehow came close to submitting one of the best grapplers on the planet in Jacare. Sure, he’d tapped other opponents out before but it came as a major surprise to find out exactly how good he’d become on the ground earlier this year.
For me then, this comes down to a couple of things. Firstly, can Cannonier use his own long reach to get inside the jab and long strikes of Hermansson to do damage on the inside? ‘The Joker’ was last defeated by the hard-hitting Thiago Santos, who basically turned up the heat late in the first round and took out the Swede with a vicious barrage of strikes, something that Cannonier is definitely capable of doing – and of course, like Cannonier, Santos is also a fighter capable of competing at 185lbs and 205lbs.
The problem with that theory, though, is that Cannonier usually does most of his best work from close range. Last time he fought a longer, rangier striker was when he faced Dominick Reyes, and while it’s true that Reyes is a big 205lber, he also made taking out Cannonier from distance look remarkably easy. Hermansson likely doesn’t have Reyes’ power, but he’s still a hard hitter with 11 KOs or TKOs to his name.
Secondly, what happens if this fight goes to the ground? We’ve never really seen Cannonier against a dangerous grappler with the long arms of Hermansson before although he was notably outwrestled by Glover Teixeira in their fight. He was able to deal with Branch on the ground though, which should definitely earn him some points and gives him hope if this one hits the mat.
After some thought I’m leaning towards Hermansson here; I feel like even though Cannonier hits hard, he’s going to find it hard to land something big on the Swede, and more to the point even if he does, I’m not sure even he has the one-shot kill power to take out Hermansson in that way. Santos took him out in a rush, but he hits even harder than Cannonier and even he didn’t knock ‘The Joker’ completely unconscious.
Mainly though I can’t get the image of Cannonier being TKOd by Reyes out of my mind, especially given the manner that Reyes did it – with long strikes from distance. Throw in the fact that Hermansson has better cardio and a better ground game, and I think this fight is his to lose – with the obvious caveat that Cannonier has a puncher’s chance.
The Pick: Hermansson via fourth-round TKO
#2 Mark Madsen vs. Danilo Belluardo
This sounds like a bit of a bizarre main event given Mark Madsen is making his UFC debut and Danilo Belluardo is 0-1 in the promotion, but when you remember that Denmark is short on homegrown fighters – and Madsen is a 2016 Olympic silver medallist in Greco-Roman wrestling representing Denmark – then it makes perfect sense.
This isn’t Madsen’s MMA debut though; he’s actually been fighting since 2013 and took a break from the sport to compete in the Olympics, meaning he could be seen as quite a high-level prospect.
‘The Olympian’ (no points for an unimaginative nickname!) is 8-0 in MMA, with a healthy mixture of TKO stoppages, submissions and decisions to his name. A physical specimen at 155lbs, his wrestling highlight reel shows off some ridiculous throws and suplexes, while in MMA, he’s all brute force, showing insanely heavy hands and a power-based grappling game with slams, throws and crushing submissions.
Naturally, there has to be some question marks around his cardio and chin – right now, nobody appears to have tested either – but he’s clearly an A+ athlete who appears to fight a bit like a smaller version of a fellow wrestling Olympic medallist in Yoel Romero.
Belluardo – who has an equally strange nickname, ‘Caterpillar’ – is an Italian fighter who made his debut on the last occasion the UFC visited Scandinavia, the Fight Night show from Sweden in May. Belluardo looked good in the opening round of his fight against Joel Alvarez, but suffered a TKO loss when he was put on his back and hit with some big shots.
His highlight reel shows a fighter who’s a decent striker with solid fundamentals and some good power, but he’s also clearly not an athlete on the same level as Madsen and appears substantially slower than the Dane, too.
The fact that Alvarez was easily able to pass his guard and pound him out becomes more worrying when you consider that Madsen can probably dump him to the ground with relative ease.
If Madsen’s chin turns out to be weak then I could be horribly wrong here, but I just don’t see the Danish wrestler having any issues here. He’s up against a below-par athlete (in comparison to himself) who showed a notable weakness from his back in his previous fight. Assuming he doesn’t suffer Octagon shock I think he’ll throw Belluardo onto his back and TKO him shortly after.
The Pick: Madsen via first round TKO
#3 Gunnar Nelson vs. Gilbert Burns
Okay, now this fight is hugely intriguing. Initially, Gunnar Nelson was set to face Thiago Alves here in what sounded like a set-up fight for him given Alves’s deterioration over the past couple of years, but with ‘Pitbull’ out with an injury, things might’ve gotten a lot tougher for him.
Burns hasn’t quite lived up to his early hype, but he’s on a 3-fight win streak and he’s also one of the few fighters in the 170lbs division who can match – and even better – Nelson’s accomplishments in the grappling world.
‘Durinho’ is a fireplug at 5’10”, and given he fought at 155lbs for the early part of his UFC career, it’s safe to say he isn’t the biggest Welterweight on the roster. But he’s thickly muscled, strong as an ox and packs a lot of power into everything he does. Does that make this an unwinnable fight for Nelson? Well, not exactly.
Firstly, while ‘Gunni’ has been knocked out and hurt by strikes before, he’s almost certainly the more polished fighter on the feet here. Burns has steadily improved his striking from his early days, but we’re only a year or so removed from seeing Dan Hooker knock him out with some cleaner counter-striking when he got too wild, and only a month ago he had a lot of issues with the striking of Alexey Kunchenko, although his grappling pulled him through in that fight.
Secondly, given the relatively late notice for Burns (about two weeks), it seems like a safe bet that Nelson will probably have an advantage in conditioning – and ‘Durinho’ has gassed out in the past, particularly when he’s forced into protracted striking exchanges.
The problem for Nelson is that for all his grappling skills, it’s been shown in the past that he’s really not that dangerous when he’s planted on his back. Demian Maia proved that and while Maia is arguably the best pure grappler in UFC history, the likes of Leon Edwards, Rick Story and Alex Oliveira have all had success when they’ve been able to take Nelson down.
Does Burns have a wrestling advantage over the Icelandic fighter? Quite possibly, which means that this issue might raise its head again here.
With that said, who knows how Burns will deal with things if Nelson manages to take him down? After all, these are two incredibly high-level grapplers we’re discussing, but Nelson’s top game is incredibly dangerous; he’s got a rock-solid mount and heavy strikes from that position and he’s a vicious finisher with chokes from all types of angles.
For me this is the hardest fight on the card to pick; in my mind either Burns will get Nelson to the ground and basically outwrestle him for a decision or late TKO, or Nelson will be able to pick Burns apart from range and perhaps put him on his back to give him problems.
In the end I’m leaning towards Nelson here purely because we’ve seen Burns hurt by counters on the feet before and ‘Gunni’ is capable of doing that, particularly as his cardio should be superior.
The Pick: Nelson via unanimous decision
#4 Ion Cutelaba vs. Khalil Rountree
If this battle between two of the most powerful 205lbers on the UFC roster lasts for more than a round, I’d honestly be surprised. Sure, Khalil Rountree went the distance in his last fight – a largely dominant decision win over the undersized Eryk Anders – but the majority of his fights have been finished in the first round. Ion Cutelaba, on the other hand, has just two decisions on his record, and the way he fights is fuelled by pure aggression.
What makes this fascinating is that Cutelaba probably has a relatively simple way to win this one, should he choose to go that way. Although he prefers to strike, berserker-style, with his opponents, he’s also a pretty excellent wrestler with powerful takedowns and a solid top game, thanks to his background in Greco-Roman wrestling and Sambo.
Rountree, on the other hand, has shown in the past that his ground game is painfully lacking. Andrew Sanchez simply spammed takedowns in their fight – the finals of TUF 23 back in 2016 – and took a comfortable decision despite being badly outsized, while Tyson Pedro easily dealt with him once he took him down.
‘The War Horse’ was also beaten by Michal Oleksiejczuk largely in the clinch – another strong area for Cutelaba – although that fight was overturned due to a positive PED test for Oleksiejczuk, while Johnny Walker outright knocked him out from the clinch with some vicious elbow strikes.
Essentially then, this really ought to be Cutelaba’s fight to lose – if he could be trusted not to trade blows with Rountree. ‘The Hulk’ hits hard, that’s for sure, but he’s also at a reach disadvantage in this fight and he’s also very stiff on the feet while Rountree is a far more relaxed and comfortable striker. And he’s shown that he can be hurt standing before – both Glover Teixeira and Jared Cannonier rocked him – and Rountree is a heavy hitter, too.
In the end though, I’ve got to go with Cutelaba here. Nothing that Rountree has shown in the past suggests he’s got enough to fend off the Moldovan fighter from close range – whether that’s in the clinch or in terms of takedown defense – and even if he can clip Cutelaba, unless it’s a one-punch KO job then I can easily see Cutelaba getting inside and dumping him before he can follow up. Stylistically, this should be Cutelaba’s fight.
The Pick: Cutelaba via first round TKO
#5 Michal Oleksiejczuk vs. Ovince St. Preux
After seemingly dropping out of title contention a couple of years back – you can pretty much split his career into pre and post-Jon Jones fight portions – Ovince St. Preux has basically settled into a role as a super-tough gatekeeper at 205lbs, exposing hopefuls like Tyson Pedro and Marcos Rogerio De Lima as lacking the tools to get to the very top while losing to potentially elite fighters such as Volkan Oezdemir and Dominick Reyes.
Essentially then, this is another gatekeeper-type fight for him, as he faces Poland’s Oleksiejczuk – an unheralded but hugely dangerous fighter who’s currently 2-0 in the UFC with one No Contest, a fight that he originally won against Khalil Rountree before he tested positive for clomiphene.
‘The Lord’ is only 24 years old but he’s hugely experienced, putting together a 14-2 record since 2014, and this is his chance to break into the upper echelon of the Light-Heavyweight division.
Thus far, Oleksiejczuk has shown incredibly heavy striking power in all of his UFC fights, and he’s quite willing to go to the head and body indiscriminately, as Gian Villante found out in their fight in March.
His defense seems to be hugely lacking – he appears to prefer to run out of range or lean back to avoid strikes rather than use head movement or footwork – but his chin has largely held up with just one KO loss to his name, and his power always seems to be the great equaliser.
Does OSP have the skills to take him out? A few years ago, maybe. St. Preux was a brilliant athlete in his prime and there would’ve been every chance that he could’ve caught Oleksiejczuk with something nasty on the counter, or been able to take him down to test his ground game. The problem now though is that at 36 years old and with a decade of action under his belt, he appears to be past his prime.
Most notably, his durability appears to be waning, and fast. He was knocked down in 3 of his last 4 fights; Tyson Pedro dropped him before he came back to submit the Aussie, Ilir Latifi dropped him en route to a submission win and Reyes practically knocked him out, and that’s before you mention his vicious KO loss at the hands of Jimi Manuwa in 2017.
He also appears to be slower than he was a few years ago, and that’s very worrying against a striker as fast and powerful as Oleksiejczuk. This isn’t an impossible fight for someone as experienced as OSP, but I’m just not convinced he can survive the heavy strikes of ‘The Lord’ across three rounds without being knocked out cold.
The Pick: Oleksiejczuk via second-round KO
#6 Nicolas Dalby vs. Alex Oliveira
The UFC’s first Danish fighter, Nicolas Dalby has been on the outside looking in for the last few years; ‘Sharpshooter’ debuted in the Octagon back in 2015 and handed Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos a rare defeat, albeit in a tight fight via split decision.
He then took a more raw version of Darren Till to a draw – although he was losing handily until Till dislocated his shoulder – before dropping decisions to Zak Cummings and Peter Sobotta to put an end to his tenure in the promotion.
Since then Dalby has gone 3-1 with one No Contest, with his only loss coming to current UFC fighter Carlo Pedersoli Junior. That fact doesn’t bode well for him here if you go by MMA Math – Pedersoli was violently knocked out by Oliveira last year – but as we all know, it’s not smart to rely on that to pick fights.
At his best, Dalby lives up to his ‘Sharpshooter’ nickname with some dangerous and technical kickboxing. He’s comfortable from close range and also at distance, and with 6 KOs or TKOs to his name he hits relatively hard too. The problem for him is that while technique and decent power are great at the regional level, he’s just not the best athlete. A relatively small 170lber, he’s always likely to have trouble with explosive opponents.
Oliveira is very much that type of opponent. An A+ athlete, he hits incredibly hard and makes good use of his long, rangy frame. He’s also a pretty tremendous grappler, capable of catching opponents in quick and skilful submissions. Judging by his previous fights, he’s also got a rock-solid chin and he’s extremely tricky to knock out.
Weaknesses? Inconsistency would be his main one. Against Pedersoli, Ryan LaFlare and Carlos Condit he looked like a world-beater, but he just wasn’t the same fighter against Mike Perry or Tim Means, in their first fight at least. Better grapplers have also capitalised on the holes in his game, but Dalby isn’t likely to join their ranks.
Basically then, to win this fight Dalby has to be technically perfect for three rounds – I don’t think he can knock out Oliveira, but he can probably out-technique him, assuming he doesn’t take a big shot or find himself on his back with ‘Cowboy’ on top.
Do I trust him to do that? I’m not sure that I do, but given the fight is in his home country and considering Oliveira’s inconsistent style, I’m going to risk picking him anyway.
The Pick: Dalby via split decision
#7 The Prelims: ESPN+ card
All of this weekend’s prelims will be shown on ESPN+ meaning it’ll be another marathon night for any fan choosing to watch the whole thing.
At the top of the card is a Middleweight clash between Alen Amedovski and John Phillips. Unsurprisingly it’s a fight with heavy European flavour, Phillips being a Welshman and Amedovski hailing from Macedonia.
Amedovski showed basically nothing in his UFC debut as Krzysztof Jotko outwrestled him for three rounds, but this is a more favourable match against the plodding brawler Phillips. Given Phillips was largely outstruck by Jack Marshman in March and appears to be slower than Amedovski, I like the Macedonian’s chances here. Phillips has never been KO’d, though, so Amedovski via decision is my pick.
At Middleweight, Italy’s Alessio Di Chirico takes on newcomer Makhmud Muradov, a late replacement for Peter Sobotta. Di Chirico has looked steady in the UFC thus far and he’s more experienced at this level, but I like Muradov here.
The Uzbek native looks strong, powerful and he’s got a lot of KOs on his ledger. He also hasn’t lost since a clavicle injury in 2016. There’s a chance his conditioning lets him down but I’m taking him by TKO.
Veteran Siyar Bahadurzada returns at 170lbs to take on young gun Ismail Naurdiev in what sounds like a tricky fight for him. Bahadurzada is a heavy hitter and is underrated in all areas really, but he’s also 35 now, probably past his prime, and up against a strong grappler who somehow got past the infuriating Michel Prazeres in his UFC debut. Naurdiev via decision is my pick.
At Featherweight, tough brawler Brandon Davis faces off with Georgian newcomer Giga Chikadze, who has experience in kickboxing in the Glory promotion. Chikadze lost in his appearance on Dana White’s Contender Series in 2018 but has since been training with Kings MMA and looks greatly improved on the ground to go along with his dangerous striking. Davis is tough but I’m thinking he might be overmatched here on the feet, and I like Chikadze to win via TKO.
In a Bantamweight showdown Macy Chiasson takes on Lina Lansberg. Lansberg is a dangerous striker, particularly from the clinch, but I don’t like her chances here; Chiasson is a huge 135lber with a 7” reach advantage and a highly dangerous ground game. If she gets Lansberg down I think this one is over, so I’m taking her via submission.
At Lightweight, exciting strikers Lando Vannata and Marc Diakiese face off. Diakiese was looking like a busted prospect this time last year, but he then pulled out a career-best showing to beat Joseph Duffy in March. Both men love to throw flashy strikes but I think Vannata’s wilder, risky style could harm him here, particularly if Diakiese fights as patiently as he did against Duffy. Diakiese via decision is my pick.
Finally Bantamweights Jack Shore and Nohelin Hernandez square off in the opener. This is Welshman Shore’s UFC debut after a tremendous run in Cage Warriors that has seen him go 11-0; Hernandez meanwhile is more of a journeyman who lost his UFC debut to Marlon Vera earlier this year. I like Shore here, he appears to have well-rounded, strong skills, and in Europe, should be more at home too. I’ll go Shore via decision.
