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#1 Worst: Light-Heavyweight loses a potential contender
Coming into his fight in Busan with Volkan Oezdemir, a lot of fans were talking up Aleksandar Rakic as a potential title challenger in 2020. Following today’s split decision loss to ‘No Time’, that no longer looks likely, which is pretty sad given the generally thin state of the Light-Heavyweight division.
Sure, the fight was close enough to the point where Rakic could’ve won – in fact, a number of online outlets scored it for the Austrian prospect – but he took a lot of punishment, particularly to his lead leg, and certainly didn’t look like a fighter capable of dethroning Jon Jones. To be fair, neither did Dominick Reyes – the next title challenger – when he fought Oezdemir, but at least the winner was clear in that fight.
Rakic will undoubtedly bounce back; at 27 he’s still young for a Light-Heavyweight, but this was a bad setback for him and a bad result for the UFC, too, as Oezdemir’s ceiling is well-known at this point while Rakic could’ve been pushed as a potential star with a win.
