BETTING ODDS: Ruziboev (-225); Pulyaev (+180)
Towering 185-pounders clash in this intriguing preliminary bout
when 6-foot-5 Ruziboev seeks his third straight win against
6-foot-4 Pulyaev, who needs a victory to pull back up to .500 in
the UFC.
Incredibly for the tallest middleweight in the UFC, Ruziboev tried
his hand at welterweight two years ago, coming up short, no pun
intended, against fellow ‘tweener Joaquin
Buckley. He bounced back with two straight wins at
middleweight, then had a matchup with Bryan
Battle scratched last summer when Battle missed weight
badly.
Ruziboev is a powerful striker with good kicks from both legs and a
very powerful right hand that he can sometimes rely on too heavily,
to the point of becoming predictable in pocket exchanges. He can
sometimes be drawn into leg kicking contests with fighters he could
outclass in other ways, simply because his own calf kicks are very
effective and he prefers looking for counterpunches to checking his
opponent’s kicks.
He has not used it nearly as often since joining the UFC, but
Ruziboev’s wrestling is unorthodox yet effective, as one might
expect of a titanic, lanky man who sometimes wants the fight on the
ground. He is one of the few fighters with his build who doesn’t
mind changing levels and shooting, but his best work comes from the
clinch, where he can sneak trip and body lock attempts into the
flow of close-quarters striking. On the ground, he makes full use
of his huge frame, locking up back control and body triangles, and
threatening with chokes from a variety of angles.
Pulyaev is in nearly every way the opposite of what one might
expect of an Alexander
Shlemenko protégé. Where “Storm” was a short, stocky (even
portly, depending on which weight class he was competing in) yet
explosive, whirling dervish of spinning strikes, Pulyaev is a tall,
long-limbed, mediocre athlete who employs a very conventional
kickboxing game. The 28-year-old Russian is a rangy southpaw who
can sometimes look quite disciplined and technical, but can lapse
into swinging sloppily if he is hurt, tired or frustrated.
Pulyaev’s defensive wrestling and grappling have always been
liabilities, and that has held true in the UFC. His defensive stats
look decent on paper, but the numbers belie the fact that Nick Klein,
who appears to be a marginal UFC talent at best, had significant
success getting him down despite his gameplan being screamingly
obvious.
This matchup feels lopsided in a way the betting line might not
even truly reflect. Ruziboev is the more diverse, harder hitting
striker and by far the better ground fighter. At 32, with 50 fights
on his record and after over a year away, there is the outside
possibility that Ruziboev suddenly looks old in the cage, but
assuming he is roughly the same fighter who won two fights in the
first half of 2025, he should win easily. The pick is Ruziboev by
second-round submission.
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Hasanov vs. Nolan
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Ruziboev vs. Pulyaev
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