Preview: Di Chirico vs. Kopylov
Roman
Kopylov needs to establish a foothold in the
Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight division before the
opportunity he long sought slips through his hands.
The heavy-handed sambo practitioner will square off with
Alessio
Di Chirico in a featured
UFC Fight Night 209 attraction this Saturday at Accor Arena in
Paris, where neither man can afford another misstep. Kopylov enters
the Octagon on the heels of back-to-back losses. He has not
competed since he was outpointed to a three-round unanimous
decision by former Absolute Championship Berkut titleholder
Albert
Duraev at UFC 267 on Oct. 30.
As Kopylov approaches his critical confrontation with Di Chirico at
185 pounds, here are five things you might not know about him:
1. Harsh realities are not foreign to him.
Kopylov was born on May 4, 1991 in Kemerovo, Russia—a city in
southern Siberia where temperatures can plunge as low as -55°F
during the brutal winters. Home to 550,000-plus people, it has
given rise to a number of professional athletes. They include
former WBC flyweight boxing champion Yuri Arbachakov and Vyacheslav
Ivanenko, a race walker who struck gold at the 1988 Summer
Olympics.
2. His early returns opened some eyes.
The twice-beaten middleweight won his first eight bouts as a pro,
seven of them finishes. Kopylov made his debut under the World
Combat Self-Defense Association banner in 2016 and took a
three-round unanimous decision from
Felipe Salvador Nsue Ayiugono. He then rattled off seven
straight victories by knockout or technical knockout before landing
in the UFC.
3. He educated himself inside and outside the cage.
Kopylov, who idolized former
Pride Fighting Championships titleholder
Fedor
Emelianenko while rising through the mixed martial arts ranks
himself, holds the Master of Sport designation in hand-to-hand
combat and earned economics and physical education degrees from
Kemerovo State University and the Novokuznetsk Institute.
4. He was once a big fish in a small pond.
The 31-year-old Russian remains one of only three men who have
captured the Fight Nights Global middleweight championship.
Abusupyan Alikhanov and
Vladimir
Mineev are the others. Kopylov laid claim to the title when he
prompted a fourth-round corner stoppage against Alikhanov at FNG 85
on March 30, 2018 and retained it on one occasion—he cut down
Yasubey
Enomoto with a punch to the body in the fourth round of their
FNG 91 pairing some nine months later—prior to vacating the throne
to sign with the UFC.
5. Sturdy defense contributed to his rise.
Kopylov has only been finished once in his 10-fight career. He
bowed to a third-round rear-naked choke from
Dana White’s Contender Series graduate
Karl
Roberson as part of the UFC Fight Night 163 undercard on Nov.
9, 2019.