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#4. Erick Silva vs. Yaroslav Amosov
Ask a lot of UFC fans, and they’d tell you that Erick Silva is up there with the very biggest busts in UFC history, but realistically, that isn’t quite right. Essentially, Silva was never really as great a prospect as some made him out to be – myself included – due to his defensive struggles.
By the point he was released from the UFC in 2017, he’d been firmly established as a top-level glass cannon – dangerous in all areas, but simply not durable enough to be a title challenger.
Silva picked up a lone win on the smaller circuit in 2018 before being signed by Bellator, and he’s been handed a horrendous-sounding debut fight here against Yaroslav ‘Dynamo’ Amosov. The Ukrainian is 20-0 in MMA and comes after his opponents with an array of savage strikes and dangerous submissions.
Sure, he’s never been tested by an opponent as good as Silva before, but he had no issues with tough veteran Gerald Harris in his Bellator debut and even outwrestled him. That doesn’t bode well for Silva, who is now 34 and has suffered some truly brutal knockouts in his time – including nasty ones at the hands of Matt Brown, Dong Hyun Kim and Nordine Taleb.
Silva probably has the offensive talents to beat anyone in the division but he seems to have lost a lot of the explosive energy that made him so dangerous in his early UFC days, and that means he has to hold back for fear of gassing out at this point.
Could he land a counter on such an offensively-minded opponent as Amosov? Possibly, but I’m not willing to bet on it, particularly as he’s now quite old for the division at 34.
The Pick: Amosov by second round TKO
