Serghei Spivac

Picks Spivac only while admitting he doesn't know if he can trust him and is picking him to 'hope for the best.'

His hands are only decent, but his grappling is on another level, and the analyst expects it to carry this matchup if he leans on it: he chains takedowns well, has good throws across single leg, double leg and body lock, catches kicks, and finishes with punishing top strikes plus a crushing squeeze once he locks up a submission. His striking is only decent, built around a high guard, a decent jab and decent kicks. The analyst's entire hesitation is behavioral, not skill-based: Spivac has lately been willing to stand and strike instead of using his clear grappling advantage, which the analyst calls a mistake he isn't sure Spivac will avoid repeating.

says he has to go with him here and lays out a specific feet-first finish plan

Our paraphrase: not much of a threat on the feet -- a few usable kicks and a tall guard, nothing more -- but his real game is on the mat: a smooth chain-wrestler who links entries, body locks, catches and both single and double legs together, with heavy top pressure and a dangerous, tight neck squeeze once he gets there. The analyst separately notes he hasn't looked like himself recently, which feeds directly into picking against him here.

Closes by calling his own pick "not a confident read" -- a direct admission of low conviction, not price talk -- after already conceding the opponent is "kind of a live dog."

As of 2025-11-18, surprisingly enough a decent kicker for his frame who keeps a high guard, but the analyst says he really wants to grapple, where he is much more rounded: he chains takedowns well, has good throws plus single-leg and double-leg entries and a body lock, catches kicks, finishes with heavy ground and pound, and locks on a tight submission squeeze on the mat. The analyst says he no longer looks like the fighter he used to be and calls that a downtrend, floating a recent gym change as a possible, unconfirmed factor.

He calls the matchup 'tricky' but still commits plainly ('Spivac is getting this one done'), citing a strength-of-competition edge and the grappling gap as the deciding mechanism.

Painted as a man who throws no strikes whatsoever, living purely as a grappler: he strings together single legs, doubles and bodylocks, grinds on top in a mauling style with heavy ground strikes, and finishes with an extremely tight choke once he locks it in. He is expected to take over wherever this fight ends up on the floor, with credit given for having faced the stiffer overall opposition of the two men.

Struggles to picture any route to a Spivac win outside of a finish, and doesn't rate him as a real knockout threat -- so the pick goes to Almeida with essentially no qualifier attached.

A solid grappler with a mauling style: heavy ground and pound and a tight squeeze once he gets control, chaining takedown entries well across throws, singles, doubles and the bodylock. Decent striking that the analyst frames as mostly a byproduct of his wrestling threat rather than a standalone weapon. A submission attempt off his back in his most recent fight is noted as a wild, uncharacteristic one-off the analyst doesn't expect to see repeated.

The explicit pick sentence is unqualified -- he states it has to be Tybura, acknowledging Spivac's youth but going with Tybura regardless. States he does not understand why Tybura is the underdog, reading as confidence the market undervalues him. The only hedge present concerns the STYLE of the fight -- he expects a grinding, uneventful decision -- not who wins.

He is credited with modest improvement in striking and takedowns since his first meeting with Tybura, but is judged clearly behind at range -- described as throwing wide, looping punches rather than clean combinations -- and expected to be reversed and controlled when he tries to use the cage himself. He is also coming off a recent loss the analyst calls a bad performance against a different opponent, in a fight he says exposed a general lack of good striking.

Names Spivac as the pick but immediately undercuts it -- calls it his least confident pick of the night and says outright that without the underdog price he would stay away entirely. An explicit conditional stay-away on the win itself caps confidence at coinflip even with a named winner and a stated mechanism.

A strong, mauling grappler who chains takedowns (throws, singles, doubles, bodylock), can mat-return an opponent trying to scramble up, has a tight submission squeeze, and brutal ground-and-pound once on top. His glaring weakness is that he does not handle being hit well on the feet, which is the central risk in closing distance against Gane.

The analyst picks Lewis by knockout but says he's not mega confident and probably won't bet it.

A 28-year-old heavyweight and the betting favorite, coming off a run where he has looked great, though the quality of that competition is itself an open question the analyst raises but does not resolve. He has very strong grappling -- clinch takedowns, hip tosses, leg entries, amazing top control, and live submission skills -- and gives away very little space once on top, making him hard to escape. His striking, by contrast, is poor, and in a recent fight he showed little interest in striking at all. He has more paths to victory here than Lewis does and is called the 'smart' pick, even though the analyst's own conviction ultimately favors Lewis.

Unambiguous and repeated: says he'd be 'dumb not' to take Spivak, and separately states plainly that he likes the pick and is taking him to win. He explicitly separates this from his disclosed rooting interest in Lewis, stating the two as distinct things in the same breath, and his only hedges concern which bet structure to use, not the win itself.

A grappler whose best and explicitly stated path to victory is the takedown into ground-and-pound, with cage control as a secondary tool; the analyst frames trading strikes with Lewis as a serious risk he does not expect Spivak to take given how badly that strategy has burned other opponents. His one loss on the recent record is to a top-tier opponent, framed as no mark against him.