Make way for the UFC 299 hangover, as the Ultimate Fighting Championship follows up that memorable card with back-to-back trips to the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. The UFC Fight Night 239 headliner on Saturday should be enjoyable, as heavyweights Tai Tuivasa and Marcin Tybura square off in a fight that should be over quickly and definitively. There is not much in terms of stakes beyond the main event—the lone other ranked bout sees bantamweights Pannie Kianzad and Macy Chiasson run back their 2018 final of “The Ultimate Fighter”—but there are some intriguing prospects to watch. Co-headliners Bryan Battle and Ange Loosa have each impressed during their UFC runs, while featherweight Isaac Dulgarian has looked absolutely electric. From there, the opener between Gerald Meerschaert and Bryan Barberena comes off as a fun bit of matchmaking between two veterans who are usually physically overmatched.
Heavyweights
#9 HW | Tai Tuivasa (14-6, 8-6 UFC) vs. #10 HW | Marcin Tybura (24-8, 11-7 UFC)ODDS: Tuivasa (-122), Tybura (+105)
Heavyweight careers tend to have ebbs and flows, and Tuivasa currently finds himself trying to turn around from a clear down point. “Bam Bam” came to the UFC in 2017 as an interesting but raw prospect, a knockout artist whose deceptive athleticism allowed him to quickly overwhelm his opposition. Tuivasa could have used some time to develop his game, but with his natural charisma and the UFC always on the hunt for stars in his native Australia, he got rushed into the deep end. It was only about a year until Tuivasa found himself in a main event against Junior dos Santos—a knockout loss that was the start of a three-fight losing streak that had the Australian clearly on the cut line. After taking a year off to recover and retool, Tuivasa looked much improved in a 2020 victory over Stefan Struve, showing some newfound patience and new ideas beyond just swinging into a brawl. It is difficult to call Tuivasa a technical marvel, as his success usually does come down to his ability to outpunch his opponent at the end of the day, but it has been easier for him to get those exchanges on better terms, resulting in a five-fight winning streak that had Tuivasa on the verge of title contention in 2022. However, Tuivasa is now on another skid. Ciryl Gane and Alexander Volkov each figured to always be terrible matchups for Tuivasa due to their length and skill, while Sergei Pavlovich quickly beat him to the literal punch. Up next is a winnable but tricky fight against divisional stalwart Marcin Tybura, who continues to separate the wheat from the chaff as far as the heavyweight elite is concerned.
The heavyweight division typically centers around knockout power and durability, and Tybura has just about achieved the ceiling for a man who does not possess much of either, at least as far as the usual heavyweight level goes. Primarily a wrestler and grappler during a highly successful regional career, Poland’s “Tybur” made his UFC debut in 2016 and quickly ran into Tim Johnson, which served as a lesson that there would be some heavyweights that Tybura could not push around. That led him to a brief pivot as a bouncy striker, which wound up serving as a solid backup plan once Tybura shifted back to his wrestling ways. Tybura can outmaneuver and outlast some of the less skilled monoliths on the UFC roster and even find some submissions against opponents with the tendency to tire out or mentally implode. However, athletes with knockout power have always been difficult for Tybura to outmaneuver, and the read is that Tuivasa clears the bar of being able to blow this fight open. Tuivasa’s takedown defense is not particularly great, so a Tybura submission win is certainly on the table, but the bet is that it does not get that far. The pick is Tuivasa via first-round knockout.
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Tuivasa vs. Tybura
Battle vs. Loosa
Nzechukwu vs. St. Preux
Dulgarian vs. Rodriguez
Chiasson vs. Kianzad
Meerschaert vs. Barberena
The Prelims