Normally this would have come out Friday, but I had a bit of a hectic day, so this preview is coming out some time on Saturday and then my picks are coming out probably immediately after. This preview may be a tad shorter just because I'm working with limited time and it is already after midnight, so we'll see if I can give you guys at least something to work with for this fight. The main event of this of the return to London features the British fighter who may have the brightest future ahead of him in the form of Tom Aspinall. He's a young fighter in a division that is really looking for an infusion of some younger talent. Heavyweight is looking for someone to take them into the future and Aspinall, at the very least, has the potential to be that guy with his combination of size, speed, explosiveness, and technique. He'll face his toughest test to date in the veteran Alexander Volkov. I think Volkov gets more hate than he really deserves because he's not really spectacular in any way, he's just really good. If Aspinall gets a win here, it proves that he is ready for some really big fights in the immediate future. If Volkov can get the win, he inserts himself right back into the title conversation. Let's get into the breakdown now.
So, the blue corner in this fight will be Aspinall since he's lower in the rankings. Tom Aspinall is a really good fighter who is making his rise up the division. He's in a situation where as long as he keeps winning, his next opponent will be the best opponent he's ever fought. That is exactly the case here against Volkov. Aspinall will be getting his first crack at the top 10 despite having at most, 1 ranked fight. I think his last opponent, Serghei Spivac, was ranked 15 at the time they fought, even though he is out of the rankings now. He comes into this fight 11-2 overall and 4-0 in the UFC. His losses came via disqualification due to 12-6 elbows and a submission loss to a heel hook. Despite getting this huge opportunity so quickly, his UFC resume isn't really all that great. His wins have come against Jake Collier, Alan Baudot, Andrei Arlovski, and the aforementioned Spivac. I think it is more so the way that Aspinall has been winning that is getting him this big of a leap up. Additionally, it is the potential of Aspinall that people see, maybe more than the actual evidence we have seen. His style is very exciting and is really impressive to watch when he is at his best. Tom Aspinall is in that new breed of heavyweight fighter than is a little smaller, but is extremely athletic and explosive. Aspinall really doesn't have a traditional weakness. We've seen him have tremendous success in both the striking and grappling departments. On a technical level, his striking isn't necessarily next level or anything, but his combination of speed and power is just really hard for most heavyweights to deal with. When Aspinall explodes into his combinations, most heavyweights just don't have the quickness to avoid extended striking combos. Once Aspinall lands flush, his opponents have fallen basically every time, so the power is clearly significant. He throws strikes with a ton of volume as well at over 7 strikes per minute. He isn't really the most diverse striker as he really doesn't go to the legs or the body much, but it has worked for him so far. I think the next evolution in his game is to start mixing up his target and adding kicks to his offensive arsenal as well. Despite being so devastating in the striking, Aspinall's background is that of a wrestler. His dad has been his wrestling coach his entire life and when you learn that his dad is a coach, it makes sense because his wrestling has always been great when we've seen it. He has 100% takedown defense, not that Volkov will test it, and he has 100% takedown success rate. He averages a little over 2 takedowns per 15 minutes and over 1 submission attempt for 15 minutes as well. In terms of skills, there really isn't anything that Aspinall can't do. His "weaknesses" mostly stem from the fact that we just haven't seen him in the cage a ton yet. His longest UFC fight has been 6:09, so that just doesn't provide us a ton of opportunities to see how he deals with certain situations. The main thing is that we just haven't seen Aspinall face a ton of resistance to this point. We just don't know how he reacts when he is in a tough fight where his opponent is also having success. We haven't seen him in a situation where his opponent has the momentum and he has to try and turn the tide back in his own favor or how he reacts to being hurt or dropped. We already know that Aspinall is really talented and a special athlete, that much has been clear for a couple of fights now. We just need to see the things that separate the great fighters from the good fighters. I don't expect that he'll be able to destroy Volkov early like he's done with so many opponents to date, so I think we will at least get to see some of our questions answered one way or the other. That brings me to my second point on Aspinall's weaknesses and that is his cardio. Again, we don't know that it is for sure a weakness, but we just haven't see what he looks like in the back half of a fight. It isn't typical to see a heavyweight be able to sustain explosive actions late into fights, especially in 5 round contests. If Aspinall only has 8 minutes of the type of fighter we have seen him to be, then that will create major issues in the final 3 rounds for him. However, may Aspinall is just a cardio machine and he can fight like that all night. We just haven't really seen him pushed at all, so everything I'm saying is pure speculation. We can't really say one way or the other until an opponent can force him to do so and if nothing else, I think Volkov is certainly that guy.
If there's one thing Alexander Volkov is, it is consistent. He is about as steady a presence as the heavyweight division has besides Stipe Miocic. He's been in the UFC since 2014 and he's 8-3 in that time. He was briefly the Bellator champion in 2012 before that. Volkov has been functioning as a gatekeeper of sorts and as I've said a million times now, I don't say that in a negative way. Volkov sits in a spot in the rankings where he is the buffer between the real title contenders and the lower level. Unfortunately for him, I think he ends up fighting down in the rankings more than he should, but that just is what it is. Whenever he fights anyone beneath him, he usually comes out with the win. The problem is, whenever he fights someone above him, he hasn't been able to get over that hump yet. His losses have come to Derrick Lewis, Curtis Blaydes, and Ciryl Gane. His best wins have come against Tim Johnson, Fabricio Werdum, and Alistair Overeem, which probably doesn't speak to how good he actually is. Volkov has a very particular style that, when at his best, is really hard to overcome. He does an excellent job of forcing his opponents to fight the fight that he wants. This starts with the fact that Volkov is extremely tall and long. Now that Stefan Struve is retired, I'm pretty sure he is the tallest fighter in the UFC and has one of the longest reaches too. This allows him to stand on the outside and land his strikes from a distance where his opponent simply can't get to him. He uses his jab and his kicks very effectively to keep his opponents off of him. Volkov isn't flashy by any means, but he's just really good at sticking to his strengths and not allowing his opponent to do what they want to do for the most part. The only things that have defeated him in recent times are the other worldly power of Derrick Lewis, the dominant wrestling of Curtis Blaydes, and a next level athlete combined with technical striking in Ciryl Gane. In other words, you have to be able to do something special in order to defeat Volkov. If it wasn't clear, Volkov is purely a striker. He doesn't have much power, but he's really good at throwing his strikes with volume and keep the fight at range. He throws both punches and kicks with good diversity to keep his opponents off balance. He mixes up front kicks to the body and leg kicks that not only maintain distance, but are damaging strikes that he has used to finish fights in the past. After he lost to Curtis Blaydes, I think a lot of people concluded that Volkov is a terrible grappler. While it obviously isn't his strength, he's really not as bad as people were saying coming out of that fight. His takedown defense is actually pretty good at 73%. Now, he's not going to start throwing up triangles and arm bars, but he's not as lost as some seem to suggest. If there's any other weakness to his game, it is that Volkov really doesn't diverge from his game plan ever. He is pretty much locked into winning fights in that one singular way. He needs to slow the fight down, use his jab and kicks to keep the fight at a distance, and put on a pace that most heavyweights can't keep up with. He uses this to break fighters down and either wins by decision or he grinds them down so badly that he gets the finish late. However, it his opponent finds a way to neutralize those skills or can beat him at his own game, he really doesn't have something else to go to. At his size, he really isn't fast enough to consistently counter strike. He doesn't really have the power to finish a fight on an isolated shot and he doesn't have the grappling or wrestling to steal rounds with top control. He's really good at doing what he does, but if his opponent can impose their will on him and force him to fight their fight, Volkov doesn't have any easy way of getting that momentum turned around. He sort of just is what he is and isn't what he isn't. That isn't to say that Volkov is just a limited specialist because he's not, he's ranked 6 in the division for a reason, but I think that is what has held him back from really making it close to the title. I sort of mentioned it in passing, but Volkov also has really good cardio and a pretty good chin. He's only been knocked out twice and one of them came to Derrick Lewis, so that almost doesn't even count. His cardio is really good for the division as well. He averages almost 5 strikes per minute with an average fight time over 15 minutes. He has pretty good striking defense too. He doesn't get hit much and even when he does, it usually isn't flush. Alexander Volkov isn't the most spectacular fighter in the world, but he presents a skill set that is really difficult to deal with, especially over a 25 minute fight.
Ok, so, what are the keys to this fight? Well, the first one is the obvious one. Alexander Volkov needs to do what he does best and push the fight into the second half. If he can force Aspinall to fight at the pace that he wants, while avoiding the big strikes, he can bring Aspinall into the deeper waters that we've never seen him in before. Aspinall is going to be athletic and explosive early on, but he is goin to slow down to some degree. Now, if Aspinall can largely maintain that same pace and power for 25 minutes, then I don't think he was ever going to lose. However, the more realistic scenario is that Aspinall won't be able to fight at that pace and will begin to slow and become more ordinary as the fight goes on. If he starts to lose some of his power, then Volkov's distance management will become more and more effective. For every minute that this fight goes beyond the second round, it becomes more and more likely that Volkov will have success. In order to get this fight to the deep waters and to the decision that he wants, he's going to have to survive those first 2 rounds though. Aspinall always comes out hot, but with his home crowd behind, he's going to have a little extra juice. Volkov is going to need to weather that storm and keep himself in the fight. Aspinall is going to blitz him at some point, but he needs to manage the distance enough to limit those scenarios. The second key to this will be Volkov's kicks. To keep it real, he's at a noticeable athletic disadvantage and he has to find a way to even that playing field as much as he can. Obviously, his length is one way to deal with that, but I think using leg kicks will be an effective tactic for him. By consistently using calf kicks, he should be able to slow Aspinall's movement and limit some of that explosiveness a bit. Unless he goes full Justin Gaethje, he won't be able to damage Aspinall's legs enough to completely even the playing field, but he can at least narrow the gap a bit. He can limit Aspinall's movement as well as not allowing him to push off and explode into his punches and takedown attempts with as much force as he normally would. While there is minor things I think Volkov could or should look to exploit, he largely just needs to do what he does best. Keep Aspinall at a distance, drag him into the later rounds, beat him with volume strikes...pretty simple. As for Aspinall, he's going to have to find a way around what Volkov does well. He's going to have to close the distance and win on the inside. The easiest way for him to win would be to land a big shot early and get the knockout as he's done so many times in the past, but that is much easier said than done. In order for him to win a decision, Aspinall is going to have to find a way to slow the pace of the fight and out strike Volkov to some degree. The easiest way to do this would be to grapple with Volkov. If Aspinall can come out and get his takedowns and top control, I think that is the easiest path to victory for him. This will win Aspinall rounds while not forcing him to expend a ton of cardio, assuming he can hold Volkov down once they get there. Even if he can't finish the takedowns, I think controlling Volkov in the clinch will go a long way to help him win minutes and rounds. Aspinall needs to use his athletic advantages in order to get the jump on Volkov. That is easy enough early on, but we just don't know how his cardio will hold up. If he gasses out after 2 rounds, then his methods of victory are much more limited. If he can maintain that explosiveness throughout, then he has a lot of exchanges to look for the finish. I think grappling and wrestling is by far the way to go for him. Once he gets Volkov down, I think he might be able to find a submission, but getting Volkov down is more difficult than anyone he's wrestled in the past.
Its almost 3 am and I haven't even started the picks yet, so this is it from me on this one. What do you guys think? Who do you like to get the win? Will Volkov out last Aspinall? Or will Aspinall just overwhelm Volkov athletically? Leave your predictions, thoughts, and keys to the fight below. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
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