Cutelaba has slowly been letting his rage carry his fighting style
to increasingly diminishing returns. Moldova’s “Hulk” came to the
UFC in 2016 at just 22 years old with some promising well-rounded
skills, enough so that he retained some prospect shine even through
a rocky start to his run in the promotion. However, after finding
most of his success via first-round finish, Cutelaba has pressed
things more and more, getting out to hot starts and eventually
imploding at some point during his fights. There was some hope
Cutelaba had turned a corner after his last fight of 2021, which
saw him lean on his wrestling to control Devin Clark
for three rounds. The end result has been Cutelaba running into the
same problem via a different fashion. His last two fights against
Ryan
Spann and Johnny
Walker have seen him pursue that wrestling, only to give up
quick submissions. Cutelaba looks to end his 2022 campaign on a
positive note here against Nzechukwu, who has had the complete
opposite problem. Cutting an impressive frame at 6-foot-5,
Nzechukwu got on the UFC radar at a ridiculously early point, as he
was on Dana White’s Contender Series by his third professional
fight. It would still be a bit until he eventually made his UFC
debut against Paul Craig,
but a lot of his performances were marked by a lack of aggression.
Even though Nzechukwu found success in the UFC, it was either in
slow fights where an opponent could not do much against his reach
or in bouts that saw opponents wear themselves out beating on him
until he turned things around. After two straight losses, the
“African Savage” may have finally found a new gear against Karl
Roberson in July. Nzechukwu immediately took the initiative and
never let go, mixing in an impressive amount of wrestling until he
pounded out a third-round stoppage. That is enough to give
Nzechukwu the edge here. There should still be some rough early
going against Cutelaba’s aggression, but Nzechukwu’s survival
instincts are never in doubt, and he showed enough against Roberson
to suggest he can actually take advantage whenever the Moldovan
starts to go off the rails. The pick is Nzechukwu via third-round
stoppage.
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