Leading hitter and UFC heavyweight champion Francis Ngannou has gone 20 minutes and 24 seconds over his first four UFC wins. Sergei Pavlovich, who currently sits 11th in the standings but will enter the top ten on Monday or Tuesday, has spent eight minutes and 15 seconds on his first four wins. Granted, there’s a caveat here – Pavlovich started out with a loss, but now he’s beaten one of two fighters who defeated Ngannou in the UFC.
Comparisons between Pavlovich and Ngannou can only be mathematical for now, but Derrick Lewis knocked out by Sergey at UFC 277 is a big trophy indeed. Three Russians tried to beat him (Shamil Abdurahimov, Alexander Volkov and Alexei Oleinik), and all three lost.
In the 42nd second of the fight, Pavlovich bent Derrick’s head over his right shoulder with right hooks, then fed Lewis with two uppercuts and dropped him with a hard blow to the temple area. Three seconds later Dan Mirgaliotta stopped the fight and three hours later Pavlovich made contact.
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– Here we were talking on the phone before the weigh-in, and I said that I had done a lot of work before this fight. When you did it and got the result, of course, you feel satisfaction, ”Pavlovich said in a conversation with a correspondent.
– After the battle, about three hours passed – how did they spend it?
– Were in the arena, recently arrived. Thinking about ordering food to the room. A lot of guys write, it’s nice, you can feel the support.
– Among the harmful things, what do you desire above all?
– Provocative questions – I don’t drink or smoke so only some dirty stuff like cola, burgers. Before that, I had been sitting on proper nutrition for a very long time, I didn’t allow myself anything like that, so it’s possible, I guess.
– Now you can already say – how did you want to defeat Lewis?
I knew he would wait. He’s a guy who counterattacks, and my task was to keep him forward and “separate” him. I shivered and realized he was scared. And so, we had to start working. When I got there, I decided there was no need to let go.
– I heard such a thing that when you fight with a puncher, you still can’t get it out of your head. And the same factor can chain you down and give your opponent an advantage.
– I think that in the room we have a lot of guys who have a hit that is not weaker. I had a strategy, I stuck to it. Look, hold on. If you hit, then finish.
– Let’s say you saw how he knocked out Curtis Blades with an uppercut, how he hit Alexander Volkov. Doesn’t that cross your mind at all?
– It’s our sport. I always say we’re all people – it’s the same person in front of me. Like I said, I did a lot of work and went out more to finish the last part.
– Which shot, in your opinion, went the best?
– He hit him well with the right side, then hooked him with the left and grabbed him from below. I realized that his arms were shorter than mine. When he walked towards me, I took a step back and his hand didn’t reach me, but mine went straight for the target.
– What would be improved?
– Some shots did not hit, but there was a lot of speed, everything does not always go the way you want. There was also an operating time: side and uppercut, I didn’t finish it.
– I’ve heard of two types of knockouts: if they hit the jaw, the person’s light goes out. If behind the ear or in the temple, then you see everything, but you don’t control the body. You hit just behind the ear somewhere – was that intended?
– On the contrary, he hit the squares. It does not stand like a bag. The main target was the head, to land blows there, but it doesn’t matter where exactly it will fly.
– What were you afraid of low blows?
– Even when we approached, he held out his hand to greet me, and I waited for him to hit the side. Of course, I couldn’t touch it with a glove, but in Russia we are brought up a little differently, the guys are all correct concepts. I touched it with my glove, but I waited, I was alert. If he had immediately launched something, my attack would have started to develop sooner.
When did he cut you?
– Honestly, I didn’t even understand, I didn’t chat, there were no sparkles in my eyes. I do not know.
– In general, how did you imagine this fight?
– In principle, I imagined such a picture that he would retreat and it would have to be separated and moved. The only question was when the denouement would take place – in the first round or the second. The plan was to pull and watch him in the first round and start picking up the pace from about the second minute. If I decided to fight, I would be ready. And for the three towers – too.
– You said that Alexander Volkov imitated Derrick Lewis in your sparring, does that mean that your sparring was similar?
– In this regard, yes, Sanya helped a lot, because he directly imitated all these stories.
– They discuss stopping your fight whether it’s on time or not. How did it go for you?
The arbitrator is a professional in his field. I don’t think the UFC will take a non-professional. And if a professional does something, does it do it well or not, what do you think?
“They are wrong again.
– The person who is closest to everyone and sees everything with his own eyes can’t be wrong, I think.
– Alexander Volkov, after the fight with Rozenstruik, had the phrase “I’ll just finish him off a little later.”
– Yeah, if the referee hadn’t stopped, I wouldn’t have left him, no problem.
– After your fight, the audience buzzed a lot.
“There’s nothing like it, he’s a local guy, a local star, and they were supporting their own. We’re also very good at rooting. And by the way, I saw the Russian flag in the bleachers, so I also saw our fans.
– What do you think, who will be given to you next as rivals?
– There are no thoughts. I almost had no rest after this fight (March 19). I would like to recover a little longer now, but this year I want to have one more fight.
– You told in an interview that even in a small village in the Rostov region you bought records with MMA fights and Fedor Emelianenko in particular. Where did you buy them?
– Market. They sold records…DVDs, by the way, with the first UFC tournaments. The classic market – here are the products, here are the other departments. Including discs. I walked, watched, saw the UFC: at first I thought maybe it was some kind of match. Bought. There were also fights with Tank Abbott and Oleg Taktarov.
– Everywhere it is written that you started with Greco-Roman wrestling, but how did you learn to beat?
– We grew up in the village (Orlovsky village, Rostov region. – “”), we had to fight a lot on the street. Not because there were hooligans, but just because they lived. They played football from street to street – then the losing team expresses some discontent. Someone pushed someone, someone looked the wrong way, that’s all, you have to figure out if there was intent or not. It was normal – they fought, hugged. It sounds crazy, but it was fun.
– You said you only heard about your knockdown from street fights – were you sent to knockdowns?
– Well, it was, yes.
– And before the army and hand-to-hand combat, were there any significant attempts to set up shock equipment?
– We had older guys who had already seen enough of something somewhere. And we went crawling in the forest belts, fighting with horsehair gloves. Come, for 4-5 people, two pairs of gloves. There is no technology, just waving in the street. The one who was bled, he rests, and the other enters. Also, at every disco funny things happened. And it turned out that you were engaged all week: bars, horizontal bar, wrestling, sparring in the forest belt.
– You served in the airborne forces – how many parachute jumps do you have?
– Four. From a helicopter. I was in the reconnaissance and airborne company, they were constantly running and jumping somewhere.
– When was the last time they tried to put you in conflict?
– I was already in Moscow, I fought in the UFC. But it’s good that common sense prevailed in me.
– Oh what happened?
– I would not like to go into details. Apparently, impunity drives some people to such things when they think they are going to rush into it. He shouted somewhere, the man didn’t answer him, and he decided it would always be like this. I was driving from a practice session, a man cut me off, I think, “What did I do?” A guy came out, big – he’s blowing into my chest.
“But you didn’t knock?”
– I explained to him in a very hard way, he got in the car and left.
Source : MatchTV
I am Sandra Jackson, a journalist and content creator with extensive experience in the news industry. I have been working in the news media for over five years. During this time, I have worked as an author and editor at various outlets producing high-quality content that attracts readers from different demographics.
