Preview: UFC Fight Night 238 ‘Rozenstruik vs. Gaziev’

Light Heavyweights

Vitor Petrino (10-0, 3-0 UFC) vs. Tyson Pedro (10-4, 6-4 UFC)

ODDS: Petrino (-298), Pedro (+240)

Petrino has been a fun prospect to track thus far, and it will be interesting to see how far he can carry his game up the light heavyweight ranks. Petrino’s career has mostly seen him march forward and hunt for the knockout while figuring out the rest later, but he has shown a few new wrinkles since making his UFC debut about a year ago. Petrino’s approach is still fairly basic and centered around aggression, but he has added the ability to mix in some takedowns and work for a submission. Petrino’s path to a victory can often be quite messy—that UFC debut against Anton Turkalj saw each man give up plenty of positions in wrestling and grappling exchanges—but he remains undefeated thus far and looks to continue that trend against Pedro.

Pedro debuted as a raw 25-year-old back in 2016, and the Australian has spent most of the last decade teasing an eventual breakout. Pedro kicked off his UFC career with wins over Khalil Rountree and Paul Craig, owing to a strong wrestling and clinch game, but the UFC’s want for Australian stars led to his getting thrown in way above his head, losing handily to veterans Ilir Latifi, Ovince St. Preux and Mauricio Rua. After the loss to Rua in 2018, Pedro was essentially an afterthought. A knee injury suffered in that fight cascaded into a variety of issues that kept him out of action for nearly four years, and the UFC clearly slow-played him upon his eventual return. Pedro’s comeback has been a bit hard to parse. He looked excellent with a much-improved striking game in what figured to be walkover wins over Isaac Villanueva and Harry Hunsucker, but he burned himself out in a stiffer test against Modestas Bukauskas, adding to the somewhat worrying trend that Pedro has never won a fight outside of the first round. While his September victory over Turkalj might not mean much in a vacuum, it was a nice sign to see him quickly put away an opponent who had enough durability and aggression to cause Pedro some problems on paper. That raises some hope that Pedro might be able to knock Petrino out given the Brazilian’s own straight-ahead approach. However, this is likely another fight where Petrino can march down and wear out his opponent before finding a finish. The pick is Petrino via first-round stoppage.

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Rozenstruik vs. Gaziev
Petrino vs. Pedro
Mokaev vs. Perez
Nurmagomedov vs. Almakhan
Erceg vs. Schnell
The Prelims