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#2 UFC Heavyweight Division: Josh Parisian vs. Parker Porter

Josh Parisian makes his UFC debut this weekend against Parker Porter. (Image credits: UFC)

How we’ve ended up with this Heavyweight clash as the co-main event on a UFC card in 2020 is anyone’s guess. No offense to either fighter, but surely Anthony Smith vs. Devin Clark would’ve made more sense in the spot? Perhaps for these ESPN+ Fight Nights, the UFC only cares about the main event.

At any rate, this fight marks Parisian’s official UFC debut. It’s been a long time coming for the Michigan native, too. Parisian first burst onto the scene back in 2018, delivering a knockout via spinning backfist during the second season of Dana White’s Contender Series.

Strangely enough, that wasn’t enough to earn him a UFC deal, and instead, Parisian was handed a slot on the 28th season of The Ultimate Fighter. There, he was defeated by Michel Batista in his lone fight, and a loss via kimura in his next regional fight seemed to end his UFC dreams.

But Parisian picked himself up and won five fights in a row to earn another Contender Series appearance. And when he TKO’d Chad Johnson, he was finally handed that elusive contract.

So what does Parisian bring to the UFC? Well, for starters, he’s not the most chiseled Heavyweight, looking more like Roy Nelson than Francis Ngannou. But he’s deceptively quick for a guy of his size and is a cleaner striker than you might expect.

However, the majority of his wins have come against sub-par opponents, and as we saw against Batista, his wrestling game is lacking somewhat. Batista was able to ground him on multiple occasions and eventually finished him off there.

So how does he match up with Porter? For starters, he’ll have quite a size advantage over him. Porter weighed in at 264lbs – the same as Parisian usually comes in at – for his UFC debut against Chris Daukaus. But he also stands four inches shorter and generally looks like the smaller man.

And worryingly for Porter, he does seem like the kind of opponent who Parisian can look good against. He was bullied around the cage by Daukaus in that UFC debut, roughed up in the clinch, and eventually TKO’d. And it’s not like he’s a developing prospect, either – he’s been fighting since 2007 and even has a loss to a pre-UFC Jon Jones on his record.

Overall, this is Heavyweight MMA, and so it could easily go either way, but I’m favoring Parisian here. Assuming he doesn’t suffer bad Octagon shock then, he should be capable of recreating Daukaus’ bullying game-plan and taking out Porter, probably by TKO.

The Pick: Parisian via first-round TKO