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A stretch of weekly UFC events dating back to Aug. 31 winds to its conclusion Saturday, as the company heads back to one of its most reliable international markets, Brazil, for UFC on ESPN+ 22, before things shut down for a couple of weeks.
As is usually the case when the promotion goes to one of the sport’s true hotbeds, there’s an interesting array of matchups featuring several big names in consequential fights.
This includes the main event, an important light heavyweight showdown with potential championship-picture implications between [autotag]Jan Blachowicz [/autotag]and [autotag]Ronaldo Souza[/autotag].
UFC on ESPN+ 22 takes place Saturday at Ginasio do Ibirapuera in Sao Paulo. The card streams on ESPN+.
Without further ado, here are five burning questions heading into UFC on ESPN+ 22.
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How will the move up to light heavyweight go for ‘Jacare’ Souza?
After dropping two of his past three fights and three of his past five, former Strikeforce middleweight champion Souza (26-7 MMA, 9-4 UFC) makes the move up to 205 pounds for his main event bout with Jan Blachowicz (24-8 MMA, 7-5 UFC).
It’s hard not to draw a comparison to the other former champs who have recently attempted to refresh their careers with moves up in weight.
And, well, it hasn’t exactly gone so well.
Luke Rockhold made the jump earlier this year at UFC 239, where he get mauled in short order by Blachowicz. Chris Weidman tried it out last month, and he didn’t last two minutes before he was finished by Dominick Reyes.
Add in that “Jacare” is a month shy of his 40th birthday, and, well, it doesn’t look good on paper. Until you look a little deeper, that is.
Rockhold, who spent years sparring hard in the gym with bigger fighters in Cain Velasquez and Daniel Cormier at American Kickboxing Academy, was knocked out badly by Michael Bisping and Yoel Romero at middleweight before moving up. Weidman, for his part, was on an even worse string of results, including getting stopped by Souza and Rockhold.
“Jacare,” on the other hand, lost a debatable split decision to Kelvin Gastelum and accepted a dangerous short-notice foe in Jack Hermansson last time out, where he still went the distance before losing.
Blachowicz is no less dangerous for Souza than he was Rockhold, but the simple fact of the matter is this move doesn’t seem to present the same red flags as his fellow standouts who have made the jump.
[opinary poll=”whats-your-pick-for-jan-blachowicz-vs-ro” customer=”mmajunkie”]