Preview: UFC Fight Night 217 Prelims

The UFC's first card of 2023 comes with a prelim slate low on stakes, but high on potential excitement. The featured prelim is all about the knockout, as Claudio Ribeiro meets Abdul Razak Alhassan in a clash of middleweights that have never won via decision. And past that, it's mostly a parade of fighters looking to carve out a niche in the UFC in what should be fun fights; highlights include surging bantamweight prospect Javid Basharat getting a surprisingly hard fight against newcomer Matheus Mendonca, and Jimmy Flick's return from retirement in a flyweight bout against Charles Johnson. This isn't the most loaded slate but should be a much-welcome return for the UFC to set up a solid main card.

Now to the preview for the UFC Fight Night “Strickland vs. Imavov” prelims:

Middleweights

Claudio Ribeiro (10-2) vs. Abdul Razak Alhassan (11-5)
Odds: Alhassan (-110), Ribeiro (-110)

This should be violent. Alhassan's had an inconsistent UFC career in terms of results, but his approach has remained quite consistent – he hunts for a quick knockout and figures out the rest later. A 2018 win over Niko Price marked four victories in five UFC fights for Alhassan and raised some hope he could be a contender, but that record has since inverted and left Alhassan slotted as an action fighter; a decision loss to Joaquin Buckley early last year showed he's at least getting better at maintaining his gas tank, but the fact remains that he has yet to win a fight outside of the first round. He'll look to rebound from the Buckley loss here against UFC newcomer and Contender Series alum Ribeiro, another knockout artist. The Brazilian scored a 25-second knockout in August to earn his contract, and that's basically the sum of his game - he can carry that power into later rounds, but all of Ribeiro's ideas involve swinging for the fences. This should be a race to see whoever lands a knockout blow first, and as a result it could easily go either way - Alhassan gets the nod here as a bit more of a proven entity, but this is a coin flip. The pick is Alhassan via first-round knockout.

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Ribeiro vs. Alhassan
Rebecki vs. Fiore
Basharat vs. Mendonca
Nascimento vs. Hernandez
Argueta vs. Aguirre
Johnson vs. Flick
Cachoeira vs. Eubanks