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#6 Marc-Andre Barriault vs. Andrew Sanchez
This Middleweight fight is a tricky one to get a handle on as I feel like the UFC probably sees both men as prospects of a sort, but then the newcomer Marc-Andre Barriault is already 29 while Andrew Sanchez is 31, and both men have enough holes in their games to likely keep them away from reaching the very top of the division for the foreseeable future.
For Sanchez – who defeated Khalil Rountree to win the 23rd season of TUF back in 2016 – those holes have usually been around his gas tank. A powerful wrestler and a solid striker, Sanchez used those skills to grind out wins over Rountree and Trevor Smith, but threw away a two-round lead in a fight with Anthony Smith and wound up being stopped in the third.
Worse still was his loss to Ryan Janes, in which he almost stopped Janes in the first before completely gassing out and being finished, again in the third round. If Sanchez can control his output and put together his game as he did in his last fight with Markus Perez though, this is a winnable fight for him.
Barriault is coming off the regional scene with a record of 11-1, and his footage shows a tough fighter with some good striking skills and a pretty stout wrestling and top control game too. How well his takedowns – which look more strength and power-based than anything too technical – translate against a wrestler as good as Sanchez is tricky to say, but ‘Power Bar’ looks tough enough to hang in there even if he’s losing initially.
I’m tempted to pick Sanchez here based on his grappling skills and the fact that Barriault doesn’t appear to have watertight takedown defense, but I’m not sure that I can trust him not to blow up at some point, particularly as Barriault appears to be the kind of hard-nosed fighter who’s not going to allow ‘El Dirte’ to hold him down without resistance. I’m going with Barriault in a come-from-behind win, landing Sanchez on the wrong end of another third round stoppage.
The Pick: Barriault via third round TKO
