Two powerful Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweights
angling for a successful rebound will battle it out on the final
card of the year.
On Thursday,
MMA Fighting reported that Bruno Silva
(22-8) will come to blows with Albert
Duraev (15-4) in the middleweight division. The two will fight
at a currently unnumbered UFC
Fight Night event on Dec. 17, which will serve as the last UFC
offering in 2022. The fight card will be held at the UFC Apex in
Las Vegas, and shortly after the bout’s announcement, Duraev
confirmed it on his Instagram page.
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Silva will come into this 185-pound pairing on just the second
multi-fight skid of his career, as he has dropped both of his
outings in 2022 to Alex
Pereira and Gerald
Meerschaert. Prior to the decision setback to upcoming title
challenger Pereira, “Blindado” had rattled off seven straight wins,
with all seven coming by knockout. This includes his first three
appearances in the Octagon, as he put Wellington
Turman, Andrew
Sanchez and Jordan
Wright away in an impressive 2021 campaign. The Brazilian
celebrates an 86% finish rate, with knockouts accounting for all of
his stoppages.
Russia’s Duraev had his momentum come to a crashing halt in June,
when Joaquin
Buckley battered Duraev and closed his left eye, forcing the
doctors to step in. This put an end to a 10-fight win streak that
included a UFC win, a contract-winning performance on Dana White’s Contender Series and brief title
run in the now-defunct Absolute Championship Berkut league. The
stoppage rate for “Machete” trails Silva by a small margin, with
80% of his victories coming inside the distance. Unlike Silva,
however, Duraev has recorded the majority of his wins by
submission.
The UFC will end its year with a fight card at the UFC Apex in Las
Vegas on Dec. 17, and it will be of the UFC Fight Night variety
airing exclusively on ESPN+ in the U.S. There is currently no
headliner announced for the event, nor much in the way of indicated
card position for the five bouts billed on its lineup thus far.
Beyond Silva-Duraev, other matches include a flyweight tilt pitting
ex-title challenger Alex Perez
against the surging Amir Albazi,
a 185-pound affair between Julian
Marquez and Deron Winn,
a scrap at flyweight between Sergey
Morozov and Journey
Newson, and a light heavyweight encounter when Jamal
Pogues takes on Tafon
Nchukwi.