Welterweights
Nicolas Dalby (23-6-1, 2 NC; 7-5-1, 1 NC UFC) vs. Saygid Izagakhmaev (22-2; 0-0 UFC)Former One Championship star Izagakhmaev makes his long-delayed UFC debut against the veteran Dalby, who needs to prove that his blood-and-guts approach isn’t completely bled out at age 41.
Dalby is impossible not to root for. As a fighter, he is exactly the kind of gritty, overachieving action fighter that hardcore fans have loved since the dawn of MMA. As a person, he offers the sort of vulnerability, and a story of overcoming personal struggles, that is frankly inspiring. Having said that, Dalby has always been a fighter who used smarts, conditioning and preternatural toughness to outlast opponents, usually after taking a load of punishment. Never forget that Dalby’s second UFC invite came courtesy of a Cage Warriors title fight that ended in a no-contest because the cage surface was so bloody that he and Ross Houston were slipping and falling all over the place.
That was never going to be an approach that aged gracefully, and it was remarkable that Dalby remained as competitive as he did into his late 30s; it was almost exactly two years ago that he handed super-prospect Gabriel Bonfim, a man 13 years his junior, his first and thus far only career loss. However, in his pair of losses since then, Dalby has begun to show cracks. He lost last summer to Rinat Fakhretdinov in the kind of razor-close fight he used to win reliably, but was unable to dig deep late, and in getting flatlined by Randy Brown in April, he showed that his once rock-solid chin might be going.
Dalby remains a relentless, come-forward, high-volume striker and an underrated wrestler, and even if his once legendary cardio and recovery have faded, they are still above average for the division. It will remain to be seen whether they are enough to spoil the debut of Izagakhmaev, but many of the same questions can be asked about the Dagestani. Izagakhmaev enters the UFC on a five-fight win streak, but the most recent of them was three full years ago. Since then, he has been on the shelf, including some injury layoffs. Still just 31 years of age, if he is physically good to go, he could make a serious impact in his new organization.
Izagakhmaev is a longtime teammate of Khabib Nurmagomedov and Islam Makhachev, and while he doesn’t have quite the explosion and indefinable meanness of those two, he is in the same neighborhood. He is a good striker who moves well, throws in combination and has good power. His relatively low ratio of knockout to submission wins is not an indictment of his punching power, but an indicator of his dedication to his wrestling.
Izagahmaev, at least when we last saw him in 2019-2022, is a big, athletic wrestler who can shoot a double-leg from outside, or make someone’s life absolutely miserable against the fence in true Dagestani fashion. Once he hauls an opponent down, he favors a Makhachev-like approach, suffocatingly heavy on top, throwing sporadic but very hard punches while waiting for an opportunity to take the back, at which point the fight is usually over. Fighters who explode up from the bottom, or who try to take him down, can run afoul of his front headlock.
If Izagakhmaev is healthy and makes his first UFC weight cut comfortably, this is a serious mismatch, as he should have overwhelming physical advantages over the aging Dalby. It’s easy to envision a path to the upset, where the Russian perhaps struggles with the weight cut, Dalby survives and early onslaught and turns things up late in classic Dalby fashion, but that feels like the outside chance. The pick here is that Izagakhmaev jumps all over Dalby early, stinging him on the feet, taking him down and either pounding or choking him out in the first round.
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