Alexander Romanov back to his winning ways, 30-27’s Blagoy Ivanov at UFC Vegas 76

The Ultimate Fighting Championships returns to us tonight for UFC Vegas 76, going down live from the UFC Apex in Enterprise, Nevada.

Headlining the event is a middleweight showdown between no. 7 ranked Sean Strickland (26-5) and Russian finisher Abus Magomedov (25-4-1).

Co-headlining the event is a lightweight encounter between Damir Ismagulov (24-2) and Grant Dawson (19-1-1).

Opening up the preliminary card today was a heavyweight bout between former EFC champion Alexander Romanov (17-2) and former WSOF champion Blagoy Ivanov (19-6, 1 NC).

Romanov came into the bout on a two-fight skid following a 5-0 start to his UFC tenure, while Ivanov had gone 3-4 in the promotion thus far, losing his most recent bout to former M-1 Challenge heavyweight champion Marcin Tybura, the first man to ever defeat Romanov.

Continue reading to see how this heavyweight encounter went down:

Official Result: Alexander Romanov def. Blagoy Ivanov via unanimous decision (30-27, 30-27, 30-27)

The first half of the opening round was very much a feeling-out process, with Ivanov landing the first significant strike of the fight, a nice one-two combination about three minutes in. Romanov lands a good left hand toward the end of the round, and each attack with good leg kicks of their own. Romanov is however unsuccessful in his takedown attempts throughout the first five minutes, though they were half-hearted attempts.

Romanov’s leg kicks begin to really effect Ivanov in the second. He’s able to secure his first takedown of the fight with about two minutes left in the middle stretch, where he remains on top reigning down ground and pound until the buzzer sounds.

Romanov continues attacking the lead leg of Ivanov in the third and final round, and also lands a series of hard left hands toward the end of the round before securing a takedown at the end of the bout.

Alexander Romanov had fallen from 16-0 to 16-1, and then 16-2 in the last year.

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Brady Ordway

I became a fan of combat sports when I was 12 years old. I was scrolling through the channels and landed upon Versus, where WEC was televised. Urijah Faber fought Jens Pulver for the second time that night. That's the first fight I ever saw, and I was immediately hooked. So eventually, I began covering the sport in the fourth quarter of 2018, and have since started writing about animals as well. If you'd like to see those pieces, be sure to check out learnaboutnature.com!

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