Jiri Prochazka vs Aleksandar Rakic -118
This will be an amazing fight between a former champion and a great contender. Jiri is still fresh off of a bad shoulder injury which happened almost two years ago in training. After he tried to come back to regain his title, he was thrown right into the ring with champion and UFC 300 headliner in Alex Pereira. Now I am not sure if Jiri was still compromised physically, but he certainly was mentally trying to take down Alex early and then losing the fight with hits to the head. The fight was stopped early into the second round last November. With all of this uncertainty, the very same could be said for Aleksander Rakic when he blew his leg abut against Jan Blachowicz back in May of 2022. I would almost rate the injury uncertainty as equal, but Jiri certainly wins the ring rust factor has he was just fighting less than six months ago. Rakic is a tall fighter at 6’4 who throws a lot of blows, but isn’t all that seasoned on the ground as he much prefers his fights on the feat. Jiri is the stronger contender here, and tends to finish his fights early against top competition. Jiri’s decision rate is only 3% while Rakic is at 23%. If you look at some of the ways that both fighters could win, I have to side with Jiri here. Maybe a stand up fight should be more of an equal match with Jiri throwing more blows at 5.31 significant strikes per minute to Aleksandar at 4.01, but the reason that Jiri should be the favorite is that he has the ground game to use if needed as we saw when he fought Glover Teixeira. Rakic hasn’t really fought a lot of guys that are great on the ground minus the fight that he broke his knee on against an aging Jan Blachowicz. I also think that the fact that Rakic called Jiri a fake samurai in a recent interview might add a little extra fuel to the fire here. I will take Jiri here.
Jiri Prochazka -102 – 1.5 stars
Parlays: Here are a few favorites that I like. Box them up right here.
Gaethje/Tsarukyan +135 – 1.5 stars
Green/Turner +115 – 1 star
