UFC on ESPN+ 58: Strickland vs Hermansson - Card Preview - 02/05/22

After a weekend off to recover from UFC 270, we head back to the Apex Centre Saturday, February 5th. This one is headlined by two top 10 middleweights in Jack Hermansson (6th) and Sean Strickland (7th). Both guys are UFC vets with plenty of experience. This will be Hermansson’s 14th UFC fight and 3rd time as a headliner. The Swedish grappler holds a record of 22-6 (9-4 in the UFC). Despite his grappling accolades, half of his career wins have come from KO/TKO.

Sean Strickland has been getting more attention over the past year and his crazy personality has come into light. Random sparring footage incidents have made headlines recently and there’s no denying he’s an intense dude with a few screws loose. That serves him well for the toughness/fearlessness departments but he’s actually a very technical striker who pumps out a lot of volume. Translation - this should be a great fight. Strickland makes the UFC walk for his 15th time. He holds a record of 24-3 (11-3 in UFC and currently on a 5 fight winning streak).

I took a bit longer to talk that one up because the rest of the card is pretty weak. However, the bulk of the fights are welterweight and above so there’s promise for a lot of finishes. Check out the lineup below.

Main Card

Sean Strickland vs Jack Hermansson

Nick Maximov vs Punahele Soriano

Shavkat Rakhmonov vs Carlston Harris

Sam Alvey vs Brendan Allen

Bryan Battle vs Treason Gore

Steven Peterson vs Julian Erosa

Preliminary Card

Miles Johns vs John Castaneda

Hakeem Dawodu vs Michael Trizano

Chidi Njokuani vs Marc-André Barriault

Jason Witt vs Phil Rowe

Alexis Davis vs Julija Stoliarenko

Jailton Almeida vs Danilo Marques

Malcolm Gordon vs Denys Bondar