UFC 278 Fighter to Watch: Alexandr Romanov
The unbeaten heavyweight faces his toughest test to date this weekend, squaring off with veteran Marcin Tybura on Saturday's main card
Name: Alexandr Romanov
Nickname: King Kong
Record: 16-0 overall; 5-0 UFC
Division: Heavyweight
Team: Lion Club
Opponent: Marcin Tybura (22-7 overall, 9-6 UFC)
For the second consecutive week, the Fighter to Watch is a promising heavyweight set to square off with a Polish adversary, but unlike last week’s pairing between Martin Buday and Lukasz Brzeski, this week features more seasoned competitors and a spotlighted fighter with a more clearly defined place in the heavyweight ranks.
Romanov is 5-0 in the UFC with four finishes and a split decision victory in a strange fight against Juan Espino where he was unable to continue after getting hit with a low blow and landed on the happy side of the scorecards. Outside of that meeting, he’s thoroughly dominated the competition, choking out Roque Martinez and Marcos Rogerio de Lima prior that fight before getting Jared Vanderaa and Chase Sherman out of the Octagon inside the distance in his two fights since.
While each of those efforts was dominant, the one against Sherman stood out even more because in addition to making quick work of the Louisiana native, Romanov debuted a new tucked up physique, looking far more trim and conditioned than in his previous outings. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not out here looking like Sergei Pavlovich or Francis Ngannou with muscle on muscle and extremely limited body fat, but the transformation looks like the kind of thing that happens when someone decides they really want to commit themselves to getting into better shame, and given his career pursuits, that’s a very good thing.
And he looks to be in even better shape this time around as well.
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Romanov is one of those tricky fighters to deal with because his style is just so different than what most of these heavyweights are used too dealing with inside the Octagon.
As I joked with Sean Sheehan on our latest State of the UFC podcast, he’s graduated from the Aleksei Oleinik School of Submission Grappling and will attack you with chokes you’ve never encountered before.
He put de Lima to sleep with a forearm choke, literally mashing his hefty forearm into the side of his neck until it cut off the flow of blood to his brain momentarily. He tapped Sherman with a keylock last time out, the first time I’d seen anyone hit a keylock in so long that I honestly can’t remember the last time I saw anyone hit a keylock in the UFC.
He’s got a Greco-Roman wrestling background and doesn’t attack conventional takedowns, and while he used to look, well, a lot like me in terms of physique, Romanov was very, very good at finding the right leverage and approach to twist opponents to the ground with relative ease. And once he gets you to the canvas, there is a real good chance he’s going to keep you there until the round is over or he’s made you give up.
What I really like about him is that he’s not a heavyweight that needs to find that one shot to get opponents out of there — he’s capable of beating guys in multiple ways, and the shift in physique speaks to an increased focus on conditioning, as I mentioned earlier, and that only makes him even more appealing as an emerging name in this division.
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Saturday’s fight with Tybura is perfect matchmaking — a significant step up in competition after storming through the lower ranks, without elevating him so high as to throw him into the deep end.
The Polish veteran has historically lost to the best competition he’s faced, including Fabricio Werdum, Derrick Lewis, and most recently, Alexander Volkov, which snapped his five-fight winning streak. He’s a durable grinder with reasonable power, a good gas tank, and strong clinch work, which will make it interesting to see who gets the better of those positions when they get there on Saturday.
He is the ideal gatekeeper for the heavyweight Top 10 and the exact type of divisional stalwart Romanov should be fighting at this point in his UFC career because while a win over Tybura would certain advance him to the next tier in the heavyweight hierarchy, it by no means answers all the questions that remain about the undefeated ascending fighter.
This is the entrance exam, and there would still be a mid-term and maybe a couple additional tests to pass before reaching the Top 5, which comes with an entirely different set of exams that need to be passed as well.
But it’s unquestionably a matchup that is going to provide some clarification about where Romanov stands at the moment and give us a better understanding of where his ceiling might rest, and I cannot wait to see how it plays out this weekend.