Preview: UFC on ESPN 63 ‘Covington vs. Buckley’

Light Heavyweights

Vitor Petrino (11-1, 4-1 UFC) vs. Dustin Jacoby (19-9-1, 7-6-1 UFC)

ODDS: Petrino (-298), Jacoby (+240)

Two light heavyweights look to get back in the win column in this confrontation. Petrino entered the year as one of the division’s top prospects, as the Brazilian had a game built for 205 pounds. Petrino’s approach wasn’t always the prettiest, but he had the size and the aggression to keep throwing out ideas until something worked, usually in fight-ending fashion. His combination of knockout power and effective—if ugly—wrestling was enough to run through the bottom half of the division, but his March win over Tyson Pedro was the first cause for some alarm. Pedro offered some similar size but little else, and that was apparently enough for Petrino to put in a much more cautious and lackluster performance. The good news? Petrino was back to his more aggressive form against Anthony Smith two months later. The bad news? The actual result: He quickly marched into a fight-ending guillotine choke in two minutes flat. It’s unclear exactly how Petrino will rebound, particularly since Jacoby isn’t an easy opponent.

Jacoby has had a long and winding career in combat sports, as he was initially signed by the UFC as an extremely raw prospect in 2011, washed out of the promotion within months and eventually fell into a kickboxing career before making his way back to mixed martial arts. After earning his UFC return with a win on the Contender Series in 2020, “The Hanyak” went undefeated in his next seven trips to the Octagon, improving along the way. While still primarily a kickboxer, he clearly found more comfort with the go-anywhere nature of mixed martial arts as time went on, and a quick finish of Da Woon Jung raised some hopes that Jacoby was turning a corner in terms of knockout power. However, Jacoby has instead hit a hard ceiling, as while he has still shown some power, he can’t match up to the hardest hitters in the division. Besides his most recent knockout loss to Dominick Reyes, Jacoby has consistently run into fights where minutes of strong work is outweighed on the scorecards by an opponent clocking him with one good shot. Petrino would clearly mark the worst loss of Jacoby’s second UFC stint, but with him rediscovering some of his aggression even in a loss—and having some wrestling in his back pocket—it’s still hard not to give the Brazilian the benefit of the doubt. There’s a clear trend of Jacoby being unable to get over the hump against harder hitters, and Petrino certainly fits that description. The pick is Petrino via decision.

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Covington vs. Buckley
Quarantillo vs. Swanson
Kape vs. Silva
Petrino vs. Jacoby
Marcos vs. Yanez
Stirling vs. Tokkos
The Prelims