UFC Fight Night 170: Lee vs. Oliveira - Predictions and Picks

Light-Heavyweights: Johnny Walker vs. Nikita Krylov

Johnny Walker's fight with Nikita Krylov should guarantee fireworks

We’ve seen some wild fights thus far in 2020 – UFC 248 alone had two of the crazier ones in Beneil Dariush vs. Drakkar Klose and Weili Zhang vs. Joanna Jedrzejczyk – but this one could well turn out to be the wildest of them all. Both Walker and Krylov simply have no idea what it means to fight a measured and patient fight, and it’s hardly a surprise to learn that they have a total of 10 stoppages in the UFC between them.

Brazil’s Walker looked all set to be heading for a title shot at some point in 2020 following a red-hot start to his UFC career; he knocked out Khalil Rountree, Justin Ledet, and Misha Cirkunov in incredible fashion, but then ended up being crushed in turn by Corey Anderson, ending his hopes of a fight with Jon Jones.

Krylov meanwhile garnered a cult reputation in the UFC with 5 entertaining wins from 2014 to 2016, but a loss to Misha Cirkunov sent him out of the promotion temporarily. ‘The Miner’ returned in 2018, only to lose in surprising fashion to Jan Blachowicz. Since then, he avenged an earlier loss to Ovince St. Preux before dropping a tight decision to veteran Glover Teixeira in his last fight.

That fight saw a new wrinkle for Krylov – patience – but it’s doubtful that we’ll see more of that in this fight, as Walker is far more aggressive than Teixeira – and judging by his loss to Anderson, he’s far less durable, too. So essentially, this fight is kill-or-be-killed for both fighters.

This is probably the trickiest fight on the entire card to pick purely because both guys are so unpredictable and are so open to being hurt just as much as they are to taking out their opponent in a wild rush. Both men are more than able to knocking the other out and while Krylov’s grappling is more proven, I have a lot of doubts that the fight even gets that far.

I’m predicting a wild brawl here, unsurprisingly, and a coin flip tells me that Walker gets the job done in a violent opening stanza.

The Pick: Walker via first-round KO