Tonight in Hollywood, Florida we will see the conclusion of the PFL World Tournaments. Three more tournament champions will be crowned tonight and in the co-main event, the heavyweights will go at it. Oleg Popov (21-2) will be taking on Alexandr Romanov (19-3, 1 NC).
A few years ago, Romanov was being looked at as a legit contender in the UFC. He was 16-0 on his way to facing Marcin Tybura. A 2-3 stretch led to the UFC not re-signing him and he signed with the PFL. He ran through Tim Johnson in the opening round of the world tournament and then he had an odd fight against Valentin Moldavsky.
After a back-and-forth start, Romanov was blasted with knee that landed low. Romanov couldn’t continue and the fight was a No Contest and with the way the tournament is structured, the judges were asked who they thought won up until the foul. Romanov was declared the winner and advanced after the No Contest.
Now, he’ll take on Popov. Popov was submitted by Denis Goltsov in the PFL finals last year which was his first loss since 2016. He had a close call in the opening round against Karl Williams before winning a decision over Rodrigo Nascimento in the semifinals.
PFL Heavyweight Tournament Championship
The PFL Heavyweight World Tournament is not going to see an exciting conclusion. I’m just telling you that now as we are going to see a matchup between two large grapplers who are not good strikers at all. The big question is, who has the grappling advantage.
I think when you factor in cardio and everything we’ve seen over the past few years, I have to go with Oleg Popov. If Romanov has trained properly and comes in motivated, this is a toss-up, but Romanov has a history of not being motivated and not showing up so I’m going with more of the sure bet in Popov.
Champion Prediction: Oleg Popov
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