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#3 Best: Sakai picks up his biggest win yet
I could’ve talked about the fun fights between Glover Teixeira and Nikita Krylov and Uriah Hall and Antonio Carlos Junior here, but for me the final prelim of the night between Augusto Sakai and Marcin Tybura was far more memorable. Heavyweight is a weird, ageing division where the likes of Aleksei Oleinik can still succeed, so any time a young talent works his way upward is interesting – and Sakai looked excellent last night.
It is true that Tybura was coming off a disappointing loss to Shamil Abdurakhimov in his last fight, but he’s still been one of the more reliable big men in the UFC over the last couple of years – he took Fabricio Werdum to a five round decision, for instance. So to see Sakai turn his lights out with some huge punches in under a minute was massively impressive.
Sakai – who’s still young for a Heavyweight at 28 – promised to put on a better showing than his dull fight with Andrei Arlovski in April, and he duly managed it here. At 14-1-1 he could be a man to watch in this division going forward – particularly if he can uncork some more excellent knockouts like his one last night.
