Dustin Jacoby to face Khalil Rountree at UFC Fight Night 213
Kicking off UFC Fight Night 213’s main card is a very intriguing light-heavyweight affair between a pair of talented strikers in Dustin Jacoby and Khalil Rountree Jr.
The event is to be headlined by a five-round featherweight main event between no. 5 ranked Calvin Kattar and no. 6 ranked Arnold Allen, and it is to go down on October 29, 2022, at the UFC Apex in Enterprise, Nevada.
Reverting back to our main card opener, this matchup between Jacoby and Rountree may very well end in a violent knockout. One way or another, we’re going to see an incredible showcase of kickboxing.
Dustin Jacoby first came over to the UFC in October of 2011 with a perfect record of 6-0. Following back-to-back defeats, Jacoby would be released by January of 2012 after a very short stint with the promotion that dropped his record to 6-2.
Jacoby would go 4-3 over the next three years, securing three knockout victories, and only losing to great opposition, before he decided to make the full-time switch to professional kickboxing.
You see, he began kickboxing in 2013 to aid in his MMA striking, and it really worked for him.
Despite going 10-8 as a professional, Jacoby fought some of the very best the sport had to offer, such a Simon Marcus twice, Alex Pereira, Wayne Barrett twice, and fellow UFC talent Karl Roberson. He even defeated Barrett on both occasions, who unanimously defeated multi-time champion Joe Schilling, and Jacoby also defeated Roberson.
Since making his return to MMA in 2015, following a four-and-a-half-year absence, Jacoby has gone 8-0-1, and he’s gone 6-0-1 (3 knockout, 3 decision) since returning to the UFC. It’s been incredibly impressive to witness.
Then we have Khalil Rountree Jr, who, following 6-1 amateur run, and a 2-1 stint on The Ultimate Fighter 23, came to the UFC in 2016 with a record of 4-0. Rountree, like Jacoby, would fall 0-2 inside the octagon in just a few-month span.
However, he’d rebound to go 3-0 (1 NC) over his next four, securing all three victories via knockout. The latest victory in that streak came over Gokhan Saki, an 82-16 professional kickboxing champion. He also finished Paul Craig in that time.
Rountree would then get KO’d by Johnny Walker, before handing out one of the worst beatings, and one of the most impressive performances any of us will ever see against Eryk Anders. He’d gone out to Thailand for that camp to work on his striking and it showed.
Rountree always had a lot of potential, but this performance showed his true capabilities.
But, unfortunate for him, he’d suffer another pair of back-to-back defeats over his next two outings.
These two defeats came to Ion Cutelaba, who’s 1-4-1 in his last six following his TKO victory over Rountree, and the other came to Marcin Prachnio, who was 0-3 in the UFC at the time, all three losses via knockout.
It was kind of like the UFC was giving him favorable opponents, but he faulted badly.
Nonetheless, he’s coming into this bout on a two-fight win streak, having secured violent knockout victories in both encounters; the first over Modestas Bukauskas with a vicious oblique kick, and the next a straight up beatdown over Karl Roberson himself.
Both men have TKO victories over Roberson, but in different sports. Just an interesting fact.
One’s a former professional kickboxer, and the other has trained at Tiger Muay Thai since 2019.
This is going to be a good one! Who comes out the victor at UFC Fight Night 213?
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