Featherweights
Movsar Evloev (12-0) vs. Mike Grundy (12-1)Odds: Evloev (-195), Grundy (+168)
With the crush of the UFC schedule, some prospects can get overlooked, and Russia's Evloev certainly falls into that category. Evloev's pre-UFC tape certainly fell into the upper percentile; the former M-1 Global bantamweight champ showed some strong striking that flowed directly into his relentless wrestling game, the best part of his skillset. Somewhat surprisingly -- particularly for a grappler -- Evloev made the call to move up to featherweight for his UFC career, but so far he's been as strong as ever, handily defeating Seung Woo Choi and Enrique Barzola. Thus far into his career, the only way to stop Evloev has been to hit him with a car, as a motorcycle accident forced him out of action earlier this year.
Evloev's return fight comes against England's Grundy, who should be an interesting test. A former high-level wrestler for his country, Grundy was primarily a takedown artist prior to his UFC debut, but he showed off an impressive striking game against Nad Narimani to rack up his first win inside of the Octagon. Grundy's definitely someone to watch, but unless he's taken another step forward in the last year, this feels like the matchmakers are doing him dirty. Evloev figures to be the stronger wrestler and should dictate the terms of this fight, but even if Grundy is able to keep this fight standing, the Russian also looks like the more put-together striker. Maybe Grundy can catch Evloev with a shot that sends everything careening off the rails, but this is firmly in "puncher's chance" territory. The pick is Evloev via one-sided decision.
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