UFC 241: Cormier vs. Miocic II - Predictions and Picks

#4 Gabriel Benitez vs. Sodiq Yusuff

Sodiq Yusuff is one of the best prospects in the Lightweight division right now

Even on a huge, loaded card like this one, I’ve got a feeling that this fight could be a sleeper bet to win the Fight of the Night award. In my opinion the cast of the first season of TUF: Latin America, while perhaps not the most talented bunch of fighters, were some of the most reckless and exciting talent ever brought into the promotion en masse.

That’s probably why there’s so many of them still around on the roster. And ‘Moggly’ Benitez is one of the stand-outs from that crop.

Yusuff meanwhile burst onto the scene with a tremendous showing on Dana White’s Contender Series last year and then violently knocked out Suman Mokhtarian in his UFC debut proper.

A win over Sheymon Moraes followed this past March, proving Yusuff – a native of Nigeria – was more than just a simple power-puncher, as he showed poise, patience, a skilled striking game and impressive cardio too.

This should be an interesting fight because while I wouldn’t necessarily call Benitez a step up in competition for Yusuff in terms of the stylistic match – he’s not as clean a striker as Moraes is – he’s certainly a step up in the sense that he’ll come out aggressively and will push the pace, and he’ll also present issues on the ground for ‘Super Sodiq’ should the fight go there, as he’s got a number of submissions to his name, and is dangerous in particular with the guillotine choke.

Where ‘Moggly’ could fall down here is the issue of speed. While he picked Jason Knight apart impressively in their 2017 fight, he’s just not the fastest fighter on the UFC roster – and it was that lack of speed and athleticism that led directly to both his KO loss to Andre Fili and his decision loss to Enrique Barzola, a fight he was actually winning in the early going.

And worryingly for him, Yusuff will probably be the fastest, most explosive opponent he’s ever faced.

Yusuff is admittedly still very unproven in a lot of areas – he has a TKO loss on his record prior to his UFC stint and we just don’t know all that much about his ground game and defensive wrestling – but I’m just not convinced that ‘Moggly’ is the man to really test him in those areas right now.

More than likely this will be a straightforward shootout; Benitez may well try to pick Yusuff apart as he did Knight but he’ll find himself outgunned, and even if Yusuff can’t finish him off, I think he’ll catch him enough to take a decision.

The Pick: Yusuff via unanimous decision