Good afternoon all! If you guys didn’t have a chance yet, make sure to take a look at my Strategic Classes, Tactical Classes and new STeloR models which provide added context to the analysis I will be doing here! This week's main event is sure to be a firefight between Cyril Gane and Jairzinho Rozenstruik.

First up Ciryl Gane. Gane looks like if you added a heavyweight frame to a highly technical middleweight striker keeping all of the speed and agility. He, in my opinion, looks like the most talented mixed martial artist at heavyweight not named Stipe Miocic or Jon Jones. He is a highly technical kickboxer and a skilled distance fighter who has the technique, hand speed and raw power to put you away if you close the distance while also having serious submission skills. He has exceptional striking defense which was exposed against Junior Dos Santos. Otherwise, he has simply outclassed every opponent he has faced. Cyril is what I imagine a young, pre-USADA Alistair Overeem would’ve looked like.

Jairzinho looks to me a lot like a kickboxing centric version of Derrick Lewis; power dependent and lacking in any real weapons if the fight hits the ground. Rozenstruik also has a tendency to fight flat footed at times. Movement will be one of his main weapons to combat Gane so he doesn’t have any leeway in this regard. One big thing to note is that this fight will be in the UFC Apex which will affect Gane’s ability to fight at distance since the cage is smaller. Overall, I don’t have much to add on Jairzinho that hasn’t been said already by others.

Here are a few links if interested.

With the introduction of my STeloR algorithm, I am going to switch up the format of data analysis to keep it from getting stale. Instead of adding in tables for every class, I will only highlight the interesting areas and summarize the rest through text.

From a strategic standpoint, Gane presents as a striking heavy fighter that mixes in some grappling when the opportunity presents itself. My model has him never losing a round in his 9 UFC rounds fought. All of his opponents choose to go striking heavy with him and all have failed so far.

Jairzinho also shows up as a striking heavy specialist, a strategy he has used in each of his fights to date. He however only wins these rounds at a rate of 62.5%.

Here is where we see the interesting splits. Jairzinho has won only one round when his opponent used a balanced grappling approach. While not something Gane has employed much, I have seen in my visual analysis that he has a strong arsenal of clinch trips that could take Rozenstruik to the canvas.

From a tactical standpoint, Gane shows a near even distribution of rounds between head hunting, balanced and tree chopper which, from a data perspective, shows his skilled all around striking portfolio. Out of his 9 rounds, 7 of them had his opponents trying to fight Gane using a striking heavy head hunter strategy. He won all of these rounds and has shown in the past that his head movement is on par with that of the middleweight comparison I made earlier. While he is prone to getting caught, Gane is a much more skilled defensive striker than his average heavyweight counterpart.

Jairzinho splits his tactical rounds near evenly between headhunting and tree chopper. He won 2 out of 4 headhunter rounds and 2 out of 3 tree chopper rounds. From an opponent’s perspective, grappling is how to beat Jairzinho in the points column. His win percentage in rounds that are Anaconda, ground and pound or clinch is at 25%.

Now, let's factor in some of the results from the STeloR algorithm. As was written in my write up on the model, Gane ranks as the second best heavyweight prospect behind only Junior Dos Santos through their first 9 rounds.

He accomplishes this mainly thanks to his massive contributions in winning rounds as well as his submission game. Jairzinho’s weakness in the grappling department could for sure be exposed by Gane. However, I question the likelihood that Gane gameplans for grappling. I believe he can outstrike Jairzinho so I doubt that he will try to bridge the distance and take him down, especially after the end of last week’s main event between Blaydes and Lewis. Gane does not rank highly in power however, coming in 38th out of 117. This is partially due to a bad non-stoppage in the first round of the fight against Don'Tale Mayes. That fight did however lead to the heel hook in the 3rd round which ended up displaying his all around game and contributing to him being ranked 2nd as a submission threat in our table.

Looking at Jairzinho, he has fought in 12 rounds and ranks 3rd in KO probability, trailing only Derrick Lewis and Francis Ngannou. That is fantastic company for a KO artist at the highest level. He is, however, a superior points fighter than them, ranking 3rd overall to Francis' 11 and Lewis' 4. This speaks well to Jairzinho’s ability as a striker but when we consider that Ciryl has a 20% higher cumulative points score while having 3 fewer rounds than Rozenstruik, it is my opinion that it is unlikely that Jairzinho wins on points.

Cyril Gane looks like a world beater at heavyweight to me. I have not seen many heavyweights that move like him while having such high technical skills. I would not be surprised to see him win another one or two fights and then face the winner of Jon Jones versus the winner at UFC 260. Jairzinho Rozenstruik, like Lewis, has a boom and bust heavyweight win style. He could knock Gane out with a tricky punch in the first minute and all of this analysis would be for naught. However, I try to write these articles without the flash KO in mind. Gane’s striking defense, movement, striking offense portfolio and superior ground game give him the edge in every category that isn’t power. I see him winning the fight and since it is at heavyweight, I predict he does so in under 5 rounds by KO or submission which Fanduel has at -120.