Preview: UFC Fight Night 207 ‘Volkov vs. Rozenstruik’

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The Ultimate Fighting Championship returns to the stage after a rare off week with UFC Fight Night 207—a lower-tier offering by all accounts—on Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. At least the main draw should provide some strong action.

Scuffling heavyweights headline the show, as Alexander Volkov and Jairzinho Rozenstruik pair up for the five-round main event. It is an important fight for both men in a vacuum, but the level of action on display could go any manner of direction. The clear highlight of the card is the co-headliner, with elite featherweight prospect Movsar Evloev getting his toughest test to date against Dan Ige. Beyond that, the UFC prioritized potential entertainment when it comes to this bout order, as three straight fights see the promotional debuts of flawed but aggressive fighters who should each be hunting for the quick finish. In the opener, Karolina Kowalkiewicz and Felice Herrig square off in the fight that figures to have the most name value outside of the headliner. However, like the main event, the stakes in Kowalkiewicz-Herrig mostly center around two veterans trying to turn around a rough patch in their respective careers.

Now to the UFC Fight Night 207 “Volkov vs. Rozenstruik” preview:

Heavyweights

#7 HW | Alexander Volkov (34-10, 8-4 UFC) vs. #8 HW | Jairzinho Rozenstruik (12-3, 6-3 UFC)

ODDS: Volkov (-155), Rozenstruik (+135)

This was not exactly a main event for which anyone was clamoring, but it should at least help sort things out in the heavyweight division. That is particularly true of Volkov, who finds himself in an interesting spot after a surprisingly difficult few years. After a successful run in Bellator MMA, Russia’s “Drago” made it to the UFC in 2016 and quickly carved out a niche for himself fighting against the heavyweight archetype. At 6-foot-7, Volkov cuts an impressive figure and can dictate range at times, but rather than have the typical heavyweight level of knockout power, Volkov mostly relies on his durability to win a slow war of attrition. That worked all the way up to an infamous 2018 bout against Derrick Lewis, which saw Volkov set to coast to a decision win until “The Black Beast” scored one of his signature come-from-behind knockouts in very typical heavyweight fashion. Since then, Volkov has hung around the fringes of the title picture and played spoiler without ever getting over the hump, owing to losses against Curtis Blaydes and Ciryl Gane. However, the Gane fight has kicked off a run of three straight fights where Volkov has not looked particularly impressive. He has appeared to add some additional weight to his frame, and the result has seen him look slower without much added benefit. Getting outslicked by Gane was not a particularly bad sign, but Volkov’s rebound win over Marcin Tybura was an ugly and flat affair, and the Russian looked outgunned before being quickly tapped by Tom Aspinall in a main event spot in March. Despite being so well-traveled, Volkov is still somehow just a 33-year-old heavyweight, so there is a decent chance this is just him figuring some things out on his way to another decade of an effective career; or this could just be 13 years of hard fights finally catching up to him. At any rate, this is an important moment in Volkov's career against a dangerous test in Rozenstruik.

Rozenstruik was much less of a known quantity upon hitting the UFC in 2019, though Suriname’s “Bigi Boy” had a particularly impressive rise once he made it to the Octagon. Rozenstruik made his debut that February, and by the end of the year, he had racked up four wins and knocked out Alistair Overeem in a December main event. If Volkov’s low-powered and attrition-based style goes against the heavyweight norm, Rozenstruik leans right into the typical approach. A former kickboxer, Rozenstruik is concerned with scoring the knockout and not much else. Early in his UFC career, Rozenstruik was able to catch the likes of Allen Crowder and Andrei Arlovski off-guard, knocking out both in a combined 38 seconds, but Overeem showed how a more patient and calculated approach could force Rozenstruik into complete inactivity. It was an interminable affair for the better part of five rounds. Overeem used his wrestling and range striking in a way that did not give Rozenstruik much of an opening with which to work, and Rozenstruik was more than content to do nothing but wait for his moment. With about 10 seconds left in the fifth round, Rozenstruik decided to spring into action in a way he had not for the previous 24 minutes and change, scoring a knockout with just four seconds left in the fight. Save for a 20-second knockout loss to Francis Ngannou, that has essentially been the Rozenstruik experience: long periods of his being neutralized via either wrestling or his opponent’s defense, leading to either an unwatchable decision loss or a sudden knockout when he hits a perfect counter. This fight is unlikely to light the world on fire until a potential finish, and Volkov will almost surely be in the driver’s seat. Even if he does not have much of a taste for dictating range, the Russian has enough wrestling chops to take this to the mat as an escape valve. That would normally be enough to bank on a Volkov decision victory, but the huge worry of this current iteration is that he has gotten tired in his recent fights; so at a certain point, he will probably gas enough that Rozenstruik can keep this fight standing. Volkov has historically been quite durable outside of the Lewis fight, but if he is going to eat shots from Rozenstruik, then the Surinamese fighter should be able to close the show. The pick is Rozenstruik via third-round knockout.


Jump To »
Volkov vs. Rozenstruik
Evloev vs. Ige
Trizano vs. Almeida
Silva vs. Botelho
Menifield vs. Mozharov
Herrig vs. Kowalkiewicz
The Prelims