After his win at UFC Houston, what’s next for Serghei Spivac?

This past Saturday night on the main card of UFC Houston, we saw a heavyweight matchup between two top ten contenders. Former PFL champ Ante Delija (26-8) was looking to bounce back against the tough Serghei Spivac (18-6).

Serghei Spivac has been around the UFC for a long time and he’s been a guy who is always ranked near the back half of the top ten. He’s not a guy who is going to threaten the very best of the heavyweight division, but he’s a solid contender who will fraud check guys as they try to climb the ranks.

I joked with a few people that given how horrible heavyweight is, the worst possible outcome of this fight would be a Spivac win. Well, that’s exactly what happened on Saturday night. I didn’t think Spivac would have much success in the wrestling given Delija’s background.

With that, I expected Delija to really control the standup because Spivac’s striking has not been good at all. To my surprise, it was Spivac who controlled the majority of the striking. He did have a really dicey moment in the second round where he got hurt and survived an onslaught, but for the most part, his jab led the way.

He bloodied Delija and when the final bell sounded, there was no doubt as to who the winner was. Serghei Spivac got back in the win column with a decision win at UFC Houston.

What’s next after UFC Houston?

The reason I told people that Delija had to win for the division is the fact that we’ve already seen Serghei Spivac face the guys near the top of the division. We’ve seen him face Tom Aspinall, Ciryl Gane, and Waldo Cortes-Acosta. He went 0-3 in those fights getting finished in two of them.

He’s a very good heavyweight, but unless he makes even more improvements, he’s not going to come close to the guys at the top. That said, he did show some improvement on Saturday night and you know that he’ll look to continue that momentum after UFC Houston.

With that, I think the UFC should give him a guy he hasn’t faced at the top of the division just to test him against that level of competition once again. You could pair him against Sergei Pavlovich next since the former title challenger doesn’t have a fight booked.

You could also look at Spivac facing Rizvan Kuniev who is ranked one spot behind him and just dominated Jailton Almeida. That’s probably the best fight you could book at the moment.