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#4 Middleweight: Eryk Anders vs. Krzysztof Jotko

Eryk Anders has extremely heavy hands

Both of these men are on two-fight win streaks, but that’s about the only thing they have in common. Jotko is a largely technical, cerebral fighter who can often be dull to watch, while Anders is almost all athleticism and power, and the lack of refinement in his technique has been the thing to hold him back thus far.

It’s hard to really hold that against ‘Ya Boi’, though. He only debuted in MMA in 2015, and by 2017 he was in the UFC, beating Rafael Natal and Markus Perez with his thudding strikes. A tight – and controversial – loss to Lyoto Machida followed, before he righted the ship with a head kick KO of the unheralded Tim Williams.

That fight exposed Anders somewhat though; his power punching style left him wide open to the more technical striking of Williams, even if it was ‘Ya Boi’ who won out in the end. 3 straight losses followed – an ill-advised move to 205lbs saw him suffer against bigger, harder hitters – before he moved back down in 2019 and defeated the tricky Gerald Meerschaert.

Despite now having 4 years of UFC experience to his name, the problem for Anders is that he still almost purely relies on his athleticism and power to get him through. In reality, he probably needed at least two more years snacking on lower-level opponents outside the UFC – but his explosive nature was always going to get him noticed. Such is the curse of the top-level athlete transitioning into MMA.

So can he use that explosive nature to take out Jotko in what would arguably be his biggest win to date? It’s definitely possible. A lanky 185lber, Jotko tends to look to clinch with his opponents and beat them up from close range. Recently he’s been relying more and more on his ground game, but whether he can get Anders down is another question entirely.

It’s not that Jotko isn’t dangerous, more that for the most part – especially after two TKO losses in a row – he’s become very much a safety-first fighter. The worrying thing for me with regards to this fight is that it sounds very much like Jotko’s dull fight with Marc-Andre Barriault – a fight that saw way too much clinching and Jotko edge a decision over a more athletic, heavier hitter.

Can he do that again here? Possibly, but I’m actually favouring Anders. He’s far more explosive than Barriault and he can generate scary power even from close quarters, meaning that the likelihood of Jotko simply pinning him into the fence seems rather low.

Add in the fact that the Polish fighter is eminently hittable, and doesn’t have the strongest chin, and it does sound like a recipe for ‘Ya Boi’ to pick up a knockout. He may need more nuance than simply swinging for the fences wildly, but despite his lack of technical ability he has shown patience in his previous fights, and has always carried his power into the later rounds of the fight.

The Pick: Anders via second round TKO