Heavyweights
Junior Tafa (5-3, 1-3 UFC) vs. Sean Sharaf (4-0, 0-0 UFC)Raw heavyweights hunt for a knockout in this makeshift encounter. At this point, it seems safe to consider Junior the lesser of the Tafa brothers. He’s faster and more athletic than his older brother, but that has seemed to work against him so far, as he’s mostly been bullied and physically overwhelmed at the UFC level. He does show flashes of being an effective striker at times, but given that he has been outwrestled and outgrappled by the likes of Mohammed Usman and Valter Walker, it’s hard to reliably bank on “The Juggernaut” unless there’s close to zero chance of a fight heading to the ground. With that said, the situation appears to have worked out for him here, as Chris Barnett gets replaced by a promotional newcomer in Sharaf on a few days’ notice, and “The Smoke” looks willing to consent to Tafa’s type of fight. There’s not a lot of publicly available footage of Sharaf, but what’s there backs up the scouting report you would expect from someone with four first-round knockouts in four fights. Sharaf mostly hits hard and looks to figure the rest out later. That could work in his UFC debut, as this is essentially a coinflip, but Tafa looks like the faster fighter and should be able to beat Sharaf to the literal punch, even before factoring in the late notice. The pick is Tafa via first-round knockout.
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Njokuani vs. Gooden
Temirov vs. Vergara
Pearce vs. Sabatini
Gorimbo vs. Price
Tafa vs. Sharaf
Haddon vs. Argueta
Carpenter vs. Rocha