UFC: Ultimate Fighter 28 Finale - Predictions and Picks
The first of the UFC’s two cards this weekend, The Ultimate Fighter 28 Finale takes place on Friday night from Las Vegas, Nevada. While the latest season of TUF hasn’t garnered much hype, the Finale card is surprisingly solid, and in the main event, we’ve got a fight that could decide the next top contender at Welterweight.
Historically, Ultimate Fighter Finale cards have given us some fantastic fights – from Griffin vs. Bonnar and Sanchez vs. Diaz back in 2005 all the way through to Jedrzejczyk vs. Gadelha and Johnson vs. Elliott in 2016 – so hopefully this card will be no different.
Here are the predicted outcomes for the Ultimate Fighter 28 Finale.
#1 Kamaru Usman vs. Rafael Dos Anjos
Simply put, this is a huge fight worthy of any pay-per-view card right now. The fans might not be too hot on Usman due to his wrestling-heavy fighting style, which many consider to be dull, but only a fool would claim he’s not an absolutely fantastic fighter. And Dos Anjos is a former UFC Lightweight champion who’s only taken one loss at 170lbs and was closing in on a title shot before that fight.
Basically, the winner of this one should be looking at a shot at the winner of the likely Tyron Woodley vs. Colby Covington Welterweight title fight that is currently rumoured for UFC 233 in January 2019. So will it be the powerful grappling game of Usman that comes out on top? Or can Dos Anjos find an answer for his stifling top control and put him away?
Usman debuted in the UFC back in 2015, coming off a run as the most impressive fighter on the 21st season of TUF. His debut saw him submit Hayder Hassan with an arm triangle choke, and since then he’s won a further 7 fights inside the Octagon. That gives him one of the best win streaks in the UFC, but because that run has only seen him pick up one more finish – a knockout of Sergio Moraes – he’s become largely maligned by the fans.
That isn’t always fair – it isn’t the fault of ‘The Nigerian Nightmare’ that none of his opponents have found an answer for his incredible wrestling and top control, and in the form of fighters like Demian Maia, Emil Meek and Sean Strickland, he’s been facing opponents who are notoriously tricky to finish anyway.
Basically, Usman is incredibly athletic and he’s used that athleticism and a phenomenal wrestling background – he was a NCAA Division II national champion – to be able to take all of his opponents down, where he usually hunts for submissions while landing often-punishing ground strikes. His striking is cruder, but he throws with power – as Moraes found out – and he knows how to use his strikes to set up his takedowns.
Dos Anjos meanwhile is one of the most lethal offensive fighters in the UFC. On the feet, he favours a stiff jab, sweeping power hooks and chopping low kicks, and most impressively, he chains together combinations in terrifying fashion – witness the one he unleashed on Robbie Lawler last December, for instance. He’s also got powerful takedowns, crushing top control and a devastating submission game based around his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt.
‘RDA’ entered the Welterweight division in 2017 after beginning to struggle to make the 155lbs limit for Lightweight, and immediately saw success, defeating Tarec Saffiedine, Neil Magny and finally Lawler to cement himself as a title contender. When champ Tyron Woodley was sidelined with a shoulder injury, Dos Anjos was matched with fellow top contender Colby Covington in June to decide an Interim champion.
Unfortunately for RDA, he was completely outworked in that fight by ‘Chaos’, and it’s that result that makes me lean towards Usman in this fight. Covington essentially defeated Dos Anjos on the strength of two things – his takedowns and top control, and his suffocating pressure game. Interestingly, it was the exact same gameplan used by Khabib Nurmagomedov to hand RDA a loss at Lightweight back in 2014.
Dos Anjos might have superior offensive tools to Usman, but if he isn’t given the chance to use them – and there’s nothing to suggest Usman won’t look to push the pace and pressure RDA with his takedowns and striking just as Covington did – then I fail to see a path to success for him. It likely won’t be pretty, but expect Usman to grind out another one.
The Pick: Usman via unanimous decision