The Ultimate Fighting Championship has capped off its last few years with some enjoyable shows, and the promotion appears set to continue the trend in 2022 with UFC Fight Night 216 on Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. Middleweight contenders Jared Cannonier and Sean Strickland will collide head-on and provide some action in the main event slot, while the lightweight co-headliner between Arman Tsarukyan and Damir Ismagulov figures to offer more of a high-level technical bent. Beyond that, the lineup features a solid mix of prospects and veterans. In the latter category, Alex Caceres meets Julian Erosa and Drew Dober faces Bobby Green in showcase affairs that should result in non-stop entertainment.
Middleweights
#3 MW | Jared Cannonier (15-6, 8-6 UFC) vs. #7 MW | Sean Strickland (25-4, 12-4 UFC)ODDS: Strickland (-115), Cannonier (-105)
Things did not exactly work out for Strickland in his last fight. Beyond his unique personality away from competition, Strickland has had an interesting evolution inside the cage since he made his UFC debut in 2014. Having started fighting as a teenager, Strickland was already a well-practiced veteran despite his relative youth, and that came through in a poised and patient style that mixed counterstriking and wrestling. That was enough to get “Tarzan” to the fringes of the UFC’s welterweight rankings, with losses to Santiago Ponzinibbio, Kamaru Usman and Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos all aging quite well. Then came a career-threatening motorcycle accident in 2018 that left Strickland out of action for over two years, and he returned a much different fighter. Strickland had bulked up to middleweight and became much more of a bully, using an upright stance and reliance on his defensive vision to pressure and pour on volume in the hopes of eventually breaking his opponent. Strickland was not immune to rough moments, particularly with his lack of finishing ability allowing his opponents to hang around, but his consistency, durability and ability to use his wrestling defensively allowed him to outlast all of his opposition heading into his July bout against Alex Pereira. The winner seemed poised for a title shot, and the dynamic of the fight centered a lot around whether Strickland would bring back his long-dormant wrestling against an elite kickboxer like Pereira, given that going toe-to-toe with the Brazilian seemed like a sure recipe for defeat. Indeed, Strickland was stubborn enough to charge Pereira down and got quickly annihilated for his efforts. He attempts to rebound here against another dangerous opponent in Cannonier.
Cannonier was not much of a factor during his first three years in the UFC, first as an undersized heavyweight and then as a decent light heavyweight who quickly plateaued. As soon as he made the cut down to 185 pounds, it became apparent that “The Killa Gorilla” would be a problem in his latest weight class. He was enough of a physical force to stifle David Branch and score a second-round knockout. His 2019 campaign was a breakout year for Cannonier as a potential contender, as he chopped down Anderson Silva and ran over Jack Hermansson. However, a 2020 loss to Robert Whittaker did show the technical gaps in Cannonier’s game, even if “Bobby Knuckles” had to break out a lot of his tools to get the win. That still did not do much to dull Cannonier’s momentum as a title contender. With the amount of horsepower the Alaskan brings to the table, it is still difficult to cleanly outmaneuver him for 15 or 25 minutes. After wins over Kelvin Gastelum and Derek Brunson, the latter via knockout, Cannonier got his shot at Israel Adesanya in July. Unsurprisingly, Adesanya was another opponent who could keep Cannonier at bay for five long rounds, though Pereira’s subsequent title victory does open up the hopes that “The Killa Gorilla” can still make one more charge at the belt despite being 38 years old. It will be interesting to see if Strickland can be the man to beat Cannonier head-on, as this is a clear two true outcome fight. Strickland’s going to march Cannonier down and either outpace him badly—and possibly tire him to the point of scoring a finish down the stretch—or get absolutely annihilated by another one of the middleweight division’s hardest hitters. Cannonier does not have as much craft as Pereira, so the question becomes how much this fight turns into Strickland’s win over Uriah Hall, another patient one-shot knockout artist. Cannonier does have a bit of problem-solving to his approach, so the bet is that he can find something after a few minutes, though win or lose, this figures to be definitive. The pick is Cannonier via first-round knockout.
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Cannonier vs. Strickland
Tsarukyan vs. Ismagulov
Albazi vs. Costa
Erosa vs. Caceres
Dober vs. Green
Oleksiejczuk vs. Brundage
The Prelims