Preview: UFC on ESPN 16

Heavyweights

Yorgan De Castro (6-1) vs. Carlos Felipe (8-1)

ODDS: De Castro (-265), Felipe (+225)

These unranked heavyweights should bring some entertaining action, intentional or not. De Castro is a strange fighter. With a short and squat frame, he is not much of a physical specimen, but he makes up for it with a solid fundamental approach. De Castro could stand to be more aggressive, but he is more than willing to kick his opponents’ legs until they give him some sort of an opening he can exploit. Justin Tafa charged in and ate an absolutely brutal knockout. However, Greg Hardy obviously had the size and athleticism to isolate himself and coast to a win while De Castro did little to press the issue. De Castro looks to rebound from that Hardy loss against Felipe, a Brazilian the UFC certainly seems to like. Felipe failed a drug test prior to his slated UFC debut in 2017, and while the promotion subsequently cut him, it made the odd move of re-signing him once his suspension was up but before he had taken another fight. Felipe finally made his UFC debut in July but did not show much in a decision loss to Sergey Spivak. He was willing to press the action and keep moving forward, but that mostly meant Spivak could outbox or outwrestle him at will. While Felipe could test De Castro’s wrestling, this looks like a redux of his encounter with Spivak. If Felipe is just willing to march into De Castro’s offense, the Cape Verdean figures to have a field day. The pick is De Castro via first-round knockout.

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