Preview: UFC 319 Prelims

Middleweights

Bryan Battle (12-2, 7-1 UFC) vs. Nursulton Ruziboev (36-9-2, 4-1 UFC)

BETTING ODDS: Battle (-162), Ruziboev (+136)

Battle moves back up to middleweight for the time being, and “The Butcher” is in an interesting spot. Battle was the middleweight winner on the 2021 revival season of “The Ultimate Fighter” and didn’t look like a particularly high-upside prospect. He wasn’t much of an athlete, and his approach tended to rely on absorbing whatever his opponents threw at him and banking on his outlasting them over the long haul. A cut down to welterweight appeared to unlock a great deal for Battle. Making the weight required him to get in much better shape; his newfound size advantage gave him some additional knockout power; and he appeared to improve from a technical standpoint from fight to fight. A September 2024 win over Kevin Jousset appeared to be a sign that Battle had turned a corner, going from dedicated counterfighter to someone who could press the action and lay a beating on his opponent before scoring a knockout. However, a lot of Battle’s momentum was lost in his last fight, despite the fact that he got the decision win against Randy Brown. Battle badly missed weight and then put in a flat performance, relying on ugly clinch work that the judges surprisingly decided to reward. Given the weight miss, it’s not shocking that Battle’s next fight would be back up at 185 pounds. He gets far from an easy return assignment against Uzbekistan’s Ruziboev.

A massive middleweight, Ruziboev had a pre-UFC resume built more on quantity than quality, as he mostly used his size to quickly overwhelm opponents using a combination of loopy strikes and aggressive submissions. Somewhat surprisingly, Ruziboev has stepped up his game since coming to the UFC and built things out to become a solid fighter. There’s still the sense that Ruziboev is trying to lead his opponents onto one of his tricky techniques, but his May decision win over Dustin Stoltzfus at least showed that he’s willing to embrace the grind and wrestle his way to a win if the assignment calls for it. It definitely calls for it here, particularly if Battle shows up as he did in his last fight and looks to take this bout into close quarters. If Battle shows up in his peak form, he should be able to scrap his way to a win, but this does look like a tough pairing if he shows up at anything less than that, particularly since Ruziboev will more than neutralize the size advantage the American has enjoyed during most of his fights at welterweight. The pick is Ruziboev via decision.



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Green vs. Ferreira
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Barboza vs. Klose
Battle vs. Ruziboev
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