Preview: Spivak vs. Sakai
Sergey
Spivak may not be able to operate outside the Top 15 much
longer.
The promising 27-year-old Moldovan will try to draw ever closer to
on-paper relevance in the
Ultimate Fighting Championship heavyweight division when he
challenges
American Top Team’s
Augusto
Sakai in a featured
UFC on ESPN 40 attraction this Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las
Vegas. Spivak has rattled off four wins across his past seven
outings. He last appeared at UFC 272, where he took care of
disgraced ex-NFL star
Greg Hardy
with punches just 2:16 into the first round of their March 5
pairing.
In advance of Spivak’s upcoming confrontation with Sakai, here are
five things you might not know about him:
1. He did not shy away from the fast track.
Spivak made his professional debut at the age of 19 when he turned
away
Andrey
Serebrianikov with punches in four-plus minutes at a Real Fight
Promotion show on Sept. 28, 2014. He went 2-0 as a teenager, as he
submitted
Evgeniy
Bova with a first-round kimura in his second assignment less
than two months later.
2. Some regional gold paid his toll.
“The Polar Bear” captured the vacant World Warriors Fighting
Championship heavyweight title in 2017, as he submitted
Travis Fulton
with a rear-naked choke in the WWFC “Cage Encounter 7” main event.
Spivak retained the championship on two subsequent occasions—he
victimized
Ivo Cuk and
Tony
Lopez—before signing with the UFC.
3. He tends to sprint.
Spivak rarely needs the judges’ services. He has gone the distance
only three times as a pro, losing to
Marcin
Tybura at UFC Fight Night 169 before defeating
Carlos
Felipe at UFC Fight Night 172 and
Alexey
Oleynik at UFC on ESPN 25.
4. He prefers to forego the feeling-out process.
The Chisinau, Moldova, native features nine first-round finishes on
his resume. However, eight of the nine took place before Spivak
arrived in the UFC in May 2019—the aforementioned rout of Hardy
being the lone outlier.
5. Quite a few miles have piled up on his rearview mirror.
Spivak has already fought in seven different countries during his
17-fight career. The well-traveled heavyweight has gone 7-0 in
Ukraine, 3-2 in the United States, 1-0 in the United Arab Emirates,
1-0 in Kazakhstan, 1-0 in his native Moldova, 1-0 in Australia and
0-1 in Canada.