Sadykhov's UFC fights follow a pattern: he loses the first round on the strike count and then comes on. He has won one of seven UFC first rounds on the count, and three of the four knockdowns he has suffered came in round one. When he gets to round two he is much better — 25.8 landed at 56%, the Motta knockout, the McKinney choke — but the last two opponents did not let him get there comfortably. Ziam stopped him at the end of round two after nearly six minutes of control; Camilo knocked him out in 91 seconds.
Nascimento's only UFC fight is a useful guide. He won the first two rounds on the count against Tahir Abdullayev, working the body with more than half of his strikes, then was taken down twice in the third and stopped at 4:28. He took the fight at welterweight, 29 days after a lightweight title defence in LFA; this time he is back at his usual weight.
The model leans to Sadykhov because he has the UFC wins, the finishing record and the takedowns that beat Nascimento in his debut. Conviction is only 4 because Sadykhov's early rounds are exactly where Nascimento did his best work, and because Sadykhov has been knocked out in each of his last two fights.



