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#3 Joaquim Silva vs. Nasrat Haqparast
While these two aren’t the biggest names in the UFC’s Lightweight division, this should make for an interesting fight as both men are aggressive, push a hard pace, and tend to put on exciting fights. It’s also quite a test for youngster Nasrat Haqparast, who came to prominence last summer with an impressive win over Marc Diakiese.
Haqparast – who resembles a smaller Kelvin Gastelum – also fights somewhat like the Middleweight contender. His biggest strength is the pace he’s able to push, and he’s also an excellent striker who puts some nice combinations together while walking his opponent down. He’s not a perfect fighter, though, and that’s what makes this fight interesting.
Firstly, we saw him really struggle with the tight ground game of Marcin Held in his promotional debut back in 2017 – that shouldn’t be a problem in this fight as Joaquim Silva isn’t really known for his ground game despite his strange ‘Netto BJJ’ nickname – but he’s also shown issues with his defensive striking, as Thibault Gouti was able to tag him on numerous occasions in their fight even if he didn’t have the power to truly hurt him.
Silva – who came off the fourth season of TUF Brazil and is the only survivor from that crop still on the UFC roster – definitely does carry power in his strikes. We saw that when he knocked out Jared Gordon last December, and when he took out Andrew Holbrook in a matter of seconds back in 2016. The problem for the Brazilian, however, is that he’s defensively porous and was losing that fight with Gordon until he managed to draw him into a brawl.
Essentially then, I’d say that this should be Haqparast’s fight to lose unless he’s drawn into a straight shootout with Silva, but even then there’s no guarantee for ‘Netto BJJ’ as Haqparast has also shown himself to have a pretty stout chin. The fact that Haqparast hasn’t stopped any opponent in his UFC run thus far is somewhat worrying, but even if he can’t change that against Silva, I think he should win this fight.
The Pick: Haqparast via unanimous decision
