The Ultimate Fighting Championship’s last pay-per-view of 2022 offers a strong slate of eight prelims on Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. A major theme of UFC 282 sees former top prospects looking to get on track, which holds true in the featured prelim between Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Chris Daukaus—two past heavyweight headliners trying to get back in the win column. Onetime middleweight wunderkind Edmen Shahbazyan finds himself in the same boat and aims to break a three-fight skid against Dalcha Lungiambula, as does Alexander Hernandez, who drops down to the featherweight in hopes of recapturing his previous success. Beyond that, some recent Dana White’s Contender Series standouts are on display in their respective Octagon debuts, led by flyweight Vinicius Salvador and bantamweight young guns Raul Rosas Jr. and Cameron Saaiman. Add in a compelling middleweight tilt pitting Chris Curtis against Joaquin Buckley, and this functions as an appealing appetizer for the main card.
Heavyweights
#9 HW | Jairzinho Rozenstruik (12-4, 6-4 UFC) vs. #11 HW | Chris Daukaus (12-5, 4-2 UFC)ODDS: Rozenstruik (-170), Daukaus (+145)
Can Daukaus right the ship? Daukaus’ signing in 2020 was a late-notice afterthought, though the Philadelphia native had certainly earned the shot with a solid regional resume. However, Daukaus’ success was not particularly guaranteed. He is not the largest heavyweight, which seemed to be an issue in a 2019 loss to Azunna Anyanwu that suggested he could be cowed by a more physically imposing opponent. For Daukaus’ first year-plus inside the UFC, that did not matter much. Daukaus leveraged his speed advantage and his fast hands into a string of four straight knockouts, earning him a main event spot against Derrick Lewis in the UFC’s last fight of 2021. Whether it was the gameplan or just the return of Daukaus’ old issues, he wound up staying patient enough to give Lewis time to knock him out; and an attempted bounce-back against Curtis Blaydes did not go particularly well. Daukaus did at least recapture some aggression but mostly got outboxed on his way to suffering a second-round knockout. Daukaus looks to stop his skid against Rozenstruik, who provides both some danger and some opportunity. Rozenstruik had a similar trajectory from late-notice signing to sudden contender on the back of a breakout 2019 campaign, which saw “Bigi Boy” knock out Andrei Arlovski and Alistair Overeem within five weeks’ time to cap off an undefeated calendar year. Rozenstruik has gotten his wins in the time since, but he has also fallen clearly short against the top of the heavyweight division. He is a counterstriker who is patient to a fault, leaving opponents able to outmaneuver him, outwrestle him or, in the case of Francis Ngannou, simply overwhelm him with unchecked aggression. For Daukaus, the best path seems to be to just take advantage of his speed and attempt to immediately knock out Rozenstruik. There is some more hope that may happen after the Blaydes fight, but his track record overall still suggests he will fall into Rozenstruik’s type of bout. The pick is Rozenstruik via first-round knockout.
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