Preview: UFC 273 Prelims

Heavyweights

NR | Jared Vanderaa (12-7, 1-3 UFC) vs. NR | Alexey Oleynik (59-16-1, 8-7 UFC)

BETUS ODDS: Vanderaa (-115), Oleynik (-115)

After some late changes, it will be interesting to see if Oleynik can turn around this late-career slide. When the UFC picked up Oleynik as part of its 2014 expansion, he figured to be an entertaining curiosity and little else. Already nearly two decades into his career, Oleynik’s unorthodox style built around low-percentage chokes and neck cranks figured to have a clear ceiling, particularly after a major knee injury in 2015. As it turned out, Oleynik was skilled enough—or the heavyweight division was flawed enough—for “The Boa Constrictor” to have a surprising amount of success, rising to the level of fringe contender and viable main eventer for some of the UFC’s lower-tier events. However, it looks like age might finally be catching up with Oleynik. If nothing else, 2021 losses to Chris Daukaus and Sergey Spivak show that a new generation of talent has enough youthful athleticism and fight IQ to get around Oleynik’s various traps.



This time, he will take on a late replacement in Vanderaa, who has not shown much in his UFC career. A massive man who found most of his success in South Africa prior to the UFC, Vanderaa’s willingness to grind out a win figured to be his best path to victory inside the Octagon. Instead, Vanderaa has mostly gotten by when he has been able to trade shots in open space. Spivak and Alexander Romanov threw “The Mountain” around without much effort prior to his last fight—a close decision loss to Andrei Arlovski. At this point in his career, Oleynik is playing with thin enough margins that he may just lose to a blank slate like Vanderaa, particularly with the venerable sambo practitioner only having a few minutes of cardio left at this stage. With that said, the American does seem much closer to the level of opponent that Oleynik has historically been able to tap out without much trouble. The pick is Oleynik via first-round submission.

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