Preview: UFC on ESPN 61 ‘Tybura vs. Spivak 2’

The Ultimate Fighting Championship on Saturday heads back to the UFC Apex in Las Vegas with a card that has struggled to stay intact. The UFC on ESPN 61 main event was a curious choice from the jump, as Marcin Tybura and Sergey Spivak run back what was a clear win for the Pole four and a half years ago. While their rematch initially came with a decent amount of support, difficulties arose and changes ensued ahead of fight week. As a result, a showdown between featherweight scrappers Damon Jackson and Jose Mariscal serves as the clear highlight, with most of the other intrigue found in a few fresh prospects getting some interesting tests. Promotional newcomer Quang Le gets thrown into the fire against bantamweight mainstay Chris Gutierrez, while welterweight Danny Barlow draws Nikolay Veretennikov in a potential showcase at 170 pounds.

Now to the UFC on ESPN 61 “Tybura vs. Spivak 2” preview:

Heavyweights

#8 HW | Marcin Tybura (25-8, 12-7 UFC) vs. #9 HW | Sergey Spivak (16-4, 7-4 UFC)

ODDS: Spivak (-155), Tybura (+130)

Tybura’s 2020 victory over Spivak didn’t seem to leave many unanswered questions, but the two run it back four years and change later. That win was much-needed for Tybura at the time. He had put together a solid campaign since signing with the UFC in 2016 but had lost four of his last five, including three knockouts that suggested the Pole might be on a permanent downswing. However, the win over Spivak was back to basics for “Tybur,” who leaned on his wrestling and grappling for a fairly one-sided decision victory. Since then, Tybura has settled back in as a gatekeeper to the heavyweight elite. In a division built around durability and knockout power, Tybura has essentially hit the ceiling for how far someone can get without either. Against most of the division, Tybura can survive enough to outpace his opponent over the long haul and get to those solid skills on the mat, but a clear decision loss to Alexander Volkov in 2021 and a quick knockout loss to Tom Aspinall in 2023 continued to establish the ceiling that he has hit throughout most of his career. If nothing else, a March win over Tai Tuivasa was a nice bit of business against the type of opponent capable of knocking Tybura out. It would’ve been nice to see him back testing a striker here, but instead, he gets the chance to run back the Spivak fight.

Spivak had made his UFC debut less than a year prior to his first fight with Tybura, and at that point, it wasn’t clear if the Moldovan would stick in the UFC. He showed some interesting wrestling and grappling skills on the regional scene, but it wasn’t a positive sign when he got quickly knocked out by Walt Harris in his UFC debut. Spivak rebounded with a submission win over Tuivasa, who was going through his own career nadir at the time. After Spivak lost to Tybura in one-sided fashion, it was easy to write that result off as saying more negatively about Tuivasa than positively for “The Polar Bear.” However, Spivak wound up charging his way up the rankings with six wins in seven fights, losing only to Aspinall over the next three years. He still did so on the back of a one-dimensional approach, but the lack of standout wrestlers at heavyweight allowed Spivak to make a lot of hay, particularly once he started developing some skills as a finisher on the mat. Like Tybura, Spivak recently got reminded of his ceiling. In Spivak’s case, his last fight against Ciryl Gane some 11 months ago saw him accomplish little. The Frenchman was able to keep the fight standing and chip away at Spivak before a second-round knockout. If this fight hadn’t happened already, it’d be an interesting battle to sort things out in terms of the pecking order of heavyweight wrestlers. Those questions have already been asked and answered. If there’s any drama, it’s whether or not Tybura can finish this within 25 minutes. Given his improvement as a finisher on the mat, the call is that he can spare everyone this fight going the full five rounds. The pick is Tybura via third-round submission.

Jump To »
Tybura vs. Spivak
Gutierrez vs. Le
Barlow vs. Veretennikov
Mariscal vs. Jackson
Santos vs. Chandler
Grigoriou vs. Kazama
The Prelims