Who Will Obtain the Vacant Light Heavyweight Championship at UFC 327?

UFC 327 will take place next Saturday in the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida. The entire card looks highly promising, filled with top prospects and grizzled veterans who want to put on their best performances. The main event sees former UFC Light Heavyweight Champion Jiri Prochazka face off against fourth-ranked UFC light heavyweight Carlos ‘Black Jag’ Ulberg, where the winner will obtain the recently vacated UFC Light Heavyweight Championship. Here is each fighter’s style, skillset, their tendencies, and areas of focus in order to gain the most success in this highly volatile matchup, along with how the fight will likely play out.

Let’s start with the former champ. Prochazka is one of the most unique fighters in UFC history. You’d think a guy in the UFC who constantly keeps his hands down, doesn’t protect his head most of the time, and pressures forward constantly wouldn’t have a successful career at the highest level of MMA. Prochazka completely disregards that and just does whatever he wants. He is the definition of creating and thriving in chaos, almost looking like he’s fighting purely on instinct. He is able to eat some of the most powerful shots in the Light Heavyweight Division and laugh it off. Not only that, he has finished nearly every person he’s fought. Prochazka has his unique body movements that help this disguise of no defense. While he doesn’t protect himself with his hands, he protects himself with his body movements, avoiding most incoming damage by getting out of the way. Prochazka also has some of the strongest strikes in the company, able to punish those who rush in thinking they can connect a knockout blow to Jiri’s chin.

As counterintuitive as this may sound, Jiri needs to double down on the chaos and just be himself. Sure, he should be protecting his head more, maybe checking a few more leg kicks, but getting hit with hellacious strikes and walking down his opponents after the fact adds to the fear he inspires in his opponents. His latest win against Khalil Roundtree, Jr. is the perfect example. For the first two rounds of their fight, Roundtree was absolutely dominating on the feet. His superb Muay Thai technique and power behind each of his strikes stopped Jiri from doing his unorthodox routines. If Roundtree had fought anybody else, he would’ve knocked them out. Prochazka is the definition of the exception. Roundtree started the final round in total control. All Prochazka needed was two minutes of pure chaos in the final round to put Roundtree to sleep. He incorporated a lot of delayed head kicks from awkward angles, unexpected spinning elbows, a couple of flying knees, and flying nothings, where he just jumped to get a reaction out of Roundtree. This is the type of chaos the former champ needs to bring. Two areas Jiri should also be working on are his conditioning and body movement. If he plans to weather his opponent’s storm of strikes and wait to attack when ‘Black Jag’ gets tired, Jiri needs to have enough energy to do significant damage in the later rounds. Simultaneously, if Jiri wants to lead with his chaos, he needs to produce a sustainable yet large number of strikes and defensible bodily movements. Both game plans require an extensive gas tank we haven’t seen since he took the gold from Glover Teixeira. Prochazka defended the majority of Roundtree’s body kicks, but the former champ did not do a good job of checking leg kicks. Ulberg has leg kicks that can chop trees down. Jiri would be doing a great disservice to himself if he absorbs too many leg kicks, reducing his unpredictability and power. Ulberg also has one-strike knockout power, especially with his lead hand. He would need to improve his head movement to avoid as much damage as possible and increase his chances of regaining his gold.

Now let’s focus on ‘Black Jag’. The first-time title challenger is currently on an impressive nine-fight win streak, the longest in the Light Heavyweight Division. With ‘Poatan’s move up to heavyweight, Ulberg is arguably the most dangerous, accurate, and technical striker at light heavyweight. He has incredible power in all of his strikes and mixes them up quite nicely. His knees, elbows, kicks, and punches are able to land whenever and wherever he pleases. Ulberg can stop a fight with one punch, as we saw against Dominick ‘The Devastator’ Reyes. He also has a solid ground background, with an impressive 85% takedowns defended against him and a rear-naked choke victory against Da Woon ‘Sseda’ Jung.

This is Ulberg’s biggest challenge in his UFC career; he has yet to fight anyone like Prochazka. Ulberg needs to work on his jab, leg kicks, check hook, increasing his stamina, and getting comfortable fighting with pressure beyond the Third Round, and utilizing more of his ground game. No one in Ulberg’s training camp is going to effectively prepare him for Jiri’s unorthodox and unpredictable fighting style. They need to understand that. They can work on stopping the momentum Jiri builds throughout the fight, though. Keeping the former champ off balance and out of rhythm will be the best way for Ulberg to win the belt. Prochazka doesn’t usually need much rhythm and has the power to put anyone out with one strike, but he usually needs some rhythm and flow to finish his opponents. This was the case in his most recent fights against Roundtree and Jamahal ‘Sweet Dreams’ Hill. The former champ is a heavy-handed volume striker, so Ulberg needs to find every way imaginable to minimize Prochazka’s output. Whether it be vicious leg kicks, wrestling on the feet, or stinging him with that lethal jab and check hook, Ulberg has to pull everything out of his toolbelt to control the pace of the fight. Should Ulberg want to keep the fight on the feet, he needs to watch both fights between Prochazka and Pereira to see how ‘Poatan’ set up the hook and head kick finishes on Prochazka. Ulberg has gained a lot of patience on his feet since his UFC debut, and he needs to stay patient in this fight. Pressuring Prochazka is only going to gas him out and fire the former champ up, which is the last thing ‘Black Jag’ wants to do.

Based on all the information, here is how I think the fight will go down next Saturday. The first few minutes of Round One will see both fighters feeling each other out. ‘Black Jag’ will look for specific tendencies of the former champ. Prochazka will look to set the pace with his controlled chaos to get a read on Ulberg’s reactions. During the last two minutes of the round, both men will slowly begin trading vicious blows to the legs and head, with Ulberg getting the better of the exchanges before the bell rings. The second round will start at a similar pace, only this time, Prochazka will start to land more and evade more of UIberg’s strikes. This will get Ulberg to grapple with Prochazka on the feet, only for both men to trade clinch control and land devastating elbows and knees. Both men will be bloody in the middle of the round. This will fuel the former champ and give him a late second-round wind to end the round in dominant fashion. Round Three sees ‘Black Jag’ get back in his range and rhythm, now understanding Prochazka’s movements, strikes, and tendencies. There will be more vicious exchanges, with one exchange resulting in the fight being stopped in the middle to the latter end of the third round.

This fight will not go to the judges; our chances of winning the lottery are higher than this fight going to the scorecards. In terms of which fighter gets the victory, I don’t know. Both men are good for completely different reasons, and their differences in striking styles are something that can’t be predicted. Based on previous fights, it seems more likely that Ulberg will be the new undisputed Light Heavyweight Champion. You genuinely can never count out Jiri’s power, heart, and instinct, however. No matter how many times he gets in trouble, the former champ has the rare ability to win at any moment in the fight. My heart says that it’ll be Jiri, but my brain says it could be Ulberg.