UFC São Paulo: Almeida vs Lewis preview

The UFC are making their first trip back to São Paulo since 2019 when future light heavyweight Champion Jan Blachowicz took on Jacare Souza, and once again they’re bringing in the heavy hitters.

Ever since Jailton Almeida debuted in the UFC last year on the back of his Contender series win in 2021 he has looked unstoppable. His first fight was in the light heavyweight division where he stopped Danilo Marquez in the first round, but every fight since that has been at heavyweight where he has looked equally terrifying. He has stopped all of his opponents so far either via rear naked choke or ground and pound, and Shamil Abdurakhimov is the only one who managed to get out of the first round (after a borderline 10-8 round might I add). Almeida is a relatively small heavyweight, only weighing in between 220 and 230lbs for the most part, yet he is ragdolling opponents who have 30-40lbs on him, which is quite frankly ridiculous. He is somewhat one dimensional, but his grappling is so good that it hasn’t been a problem so far. I suspect that could still be the case against Derrick Lewis this upcoming weekend.

I don’t want to say anything bad about Derrick Lewis. He is a vet, a UFC title challenger and the holder for the most knockouts in the history of the company. But taking away the win over Marcos Rogério de Lima (which is a fight he should win, let’s be honest) we have seen him struggle in his last few outings, both against heavy hitters and strong grapplers. 4 of his last 6 fights have been losses, all by finish. Ciryl Gane, Tai Tuivasa and Sergei Pavlovich all stopped him with strikes, which in itself aren’t too bad as they all have either superb technique or serious power. The Spivac loss looked worse I thought. He is a very solid grappler, but that’s all he is. We saw when he fought Gane in Paris earlier this year that as soon as Gane managed to stuff the takedown, Spivac had nothing for him on the feet. Now don’t get me wrong, Gane is much more illusive and technical on the feet than Lewis, but to see Lewis taken down repeatedly and eventually submitted quite easily doesn’t look promising when he is now going up against what looks to be one of the more dominant grapplers in the heavyweight division.

Although I have learnt on multiple occasions to not bet against Derrick Lewis even when all logic points in that direction, I would be surprised if Jailton Almeida doesn’t get the job done here and I expect him to get the finish within two rounds, as has been standard Almeida procedure so far.

The rest of the card is also stacked with Brazilian fighters, without necessarily having a lot of big names on the card. Gabriel Bonfim is always exciting, Caio Borralho have been looking amazing in the UFC so far, and Fakhretdinov vs Zaleski dos Santos has the potential to be one of the best fights of the night.

Let’s just hope the Brazilian crowd acts better this time around as opposed to UFC 283 earlier this year, when they threw objects at newly crowned flyweight champion Brandon Moreno when he was exiting the octagon, as well as leaving a legend like Glover Teixeira to retire in a nearly empty arena.

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