Undefeated heavyweight finishers are highlighted in the featured bout of Tuesday’s Dana White’s Contender Series card set for the UFC Apex.
Fight fans saw Talisson Teixeira stay undefeated, pick up a highlight knockout win and earn a UFC contract last week, and this week two more big fellas, Danylo Voievodkin and Bailey Schoenfelder, will each look to maintain a perfect record in the featured contest.
Ukraine’s Voievodkin, 24, is 6-0 without any of his fights lasting three minutes. Five of his six wins have been knockouts that have occurred in a combined 2:02; his total professional fight time to date is only five minutes.
South Dakota’s Schoenfelder, 27, is 5-0 with five finishes and only one of which happened outside of the opening round.
Suffice it to say both fighters have the styles and finishing ability to deliver a performance that could impress UFC president Dana White, who will be sitting cageside taking in the action like he does each week.
Italy’s Francesco Mazzeo is a powerful middleweight who possesses a particularly heavy overhand right. He faces Brazilian Kevin Christian, who’s 8-2 with a 100 per cent finishing rate. Mazzeo is 4-0, however, three of those wins have an unofficial asterisk.
Mazzeo’s debut required little effort against an overmatched opponent who was also competing in his first pro fight; one win was due to his opponent sustaining a fluky elbow injury a minute into the fight and a third, his most competitive fight to date, was a victory due to disqualification after he was on the receiving end of an illegal knee in a Cage Warriors bout with Angus Hewett more than 10 months ago. His most recent win was a clean first-round knockout two months ago at Cage Warriors 174 that lasted only 37 seconds.
Vadym Kutsyi is the most experience fighter on the card, boasting a 17-1 pro record, yet it has been nearly two full years since he last fought. The 33-year-old Belarusian faces Daniel Frunza, a 30-year-old from Romania riding a four-fight finishing streak.
Cam Teague went 2-2 as an amateur but is 7-0 as a pro. He faces Argentina’s Kevin Vallejos who is 13-1 at just 22 years of age. Teague, 26, coming off a victory over five-fight UFC veteran Austin Lingo at a Fury FC event in early August. Vallejos has nine wins by KO/TKO and fights out of the same gym that produced UFC lightweight Francisco Prado.
Brazilian strawweights will kick off the card when Alexia Thainara and Rose Conceicao meet. Conceicao won the LFA interim 115-pound championship last year after improving to 6-0. Thainara is 10-1 with eight consecutive victories including five by submission.
All 10 athletes scheduled to compete Tuesday successfully made weight on Monday. Projected bout order and official weigh-in results for DWCS Season 8, Week 7:
— Danylo Voievodkin (263) vs. Bailey Schoenfelder (231)
— Daniel Frunza (170) vs. Vadim Kutsyi (171)
— Kevin Christian (205) vs. Francesco Mazzeo (206)
— Kevin Vallejos (145.5) vs. Cam Teague (145)
— Alexia Thainara (116) vs. Rose Conceicao (114.5)