The Moldovan known as “The Polar Bear” completely throttled two-time title challenger Derrick Lewis in the UFC Fight Night 218 headliner, winning via arm-triangle submission at the 3:05 mark of Round 1. With wins in six of his last seven Octagon appearances, Spivak is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore when it comes to title contenders among the UFC big men.
Here is a by-the-numbers look at UFC Fight Night 218, with statistics courtesy of UFCStats.com.
3: Consecutive victories for Spivak, tying him with Curtis Blaydes for the second longest active winning streak in the UFC’s heavyweight division. Sergei Pavlovich is No. 1 with five straight wins at heavyweight.
10: First-round finishes, among 16 professional victories for Spivak.
6: Takedowns landed in eight attempts for Spivak in just 3:05 of Octagon time. “The Polar Bear” also logged 2:32 of control time in the bout.
36: Total strikes landed by Spivak. Lewis, meanwhile, failed to land a significant strike in the bout, the first time in his UFC career that has occurred.
26: UFC appearances for Lewis. That ranks No. 3 in heavyweight history behind only Andrei Arlovski (39) and Frank Mir (27).
1-4: Record for Lewis in his last five Octagon appearances. “The Black Beast” has been finished in each of those defeats.
96: Total strikes landed by Devin Clark in a unanimous decision triumph against Da Woon Jung at lightweight. By comparison, Jung landed 43 total strikes. Clark also held a 39-to-18 advantage in significant strikes landed.
40: Significant strikes landed by Marcin Tybura in a hard-fought unanimous verdict over Blagoy Ivanov at heavyweight. Tybura distributed his attacks well, landing 12 to the head, 19 to the body and nine to the legs.
9: Unofficial media scorecards, of the 11 tracked by MMADecisions.com, that scored the featherweight fight between Doo Ho Choi and Kyle Nelson in favor of Choi. The official result was a majority draw, as Eric Colon and Chris Lee submitted 28-28 tallies after Choi was penalized one point for a headbutt in Round 3.
30: Significant strikes by which Choi outlanded his opponent. Nelson, meanwhile, was successful on five of 10 takedowns, while Choi did not attempt a single takedown in the fight.
54: Total strikes by which Anshul Jubli outlanded Jeka Asparido Saragih in a second-round technical knockout victory at lightweight. Jubli also held a 38-to-14 advantage in significant strikes landed.
21: Takedowns attempted by Zha Yi in a unanimous decision loss to Jeong Yeong Lee in a featherweight bout. Yi was only successful on five of those attempts, though he did log 8:19 of control time in the fight. That was ultimately offset by Li’s 66-to-37 edge in total strikes landed.
0:33: Time of Rinya Nakamura’s first-round knockout of Toshiomi Kazama. That’s the second-fastest finish for a debuting bantamweight in UFC history, behind only Nick Denis, who knocked out Joseph Sandoval with elbows 22 seconds into their UFC on FX 1 encounter.
2: Knockdowns landed by Nakamura in those 33 seconds of Octagon time.
10: Triangle armbar submission finishes in UFC history. Flyweight prospect Tatsuro Taira joined this select group when he used the maneuver to submit Jesus Santos Aguilar 4:20 into the opening stanza of their 125-pound clash.