Zubaira Tukhugov vs Nate Landwehr added to UFC Vegas 59

UFC Vegas 59 has come along quite nicely, as the UFC has finalized the card with 12 total match ups. The event is to go down on August 6, 2022, live from the Apex Center in Enterprise, Nevada.

Headlining the card is a light-heavyweight encounter between former title challenger Thiago Santos and fellow top ranked Jamahal Hill. Co-headlining is another pairing of ranked contenders, this one to be contested in the welterweight division between Vicente Luque and Geoff Neal.

Another exciting bout that’s recently been added to the card comes in the featherweight division between Zubaira Tukhugov and Nate Landwehr.

Russian talent Zuba Tukhugov came to the UFC back in the beginning of 2014 with a record of 15-3, and he quickly went 3-0 inside the promotion before losing a very close split decision to Renato Moicano.

Tukhugov took a three-plus year absence from the sport following this defeat and returned in 2019 to battle to a draw with highly touted prospect Lerone Murphy. A first round TKO victory over Kevin Aguilar would follow, before losing another razor-thin split decision, this one to Hakeem Dawodu.

Since then, Tukhugov has fought once, where he defeated another highly touted prospect in Ricardo Ramos via unanimous decision last October.

Nate Landwehr came to the UFC much more recently, in January of 2020, with a record of 13-2 as the M-1 Challenge featherweight champion.

While Tukhugov was competing in the UFC, Landwehr was winning title fights in Tukhugov’s home country’s biggest promotion.

Landwehr has since gone 2-2, defeating longtime UFC staple Darren Elkins (UD), as well as Ludovit Klein (anaconda choke), marking the first submission victory of his career, and losing to Herbert Burns and Julian Erosa, both via flying knee knockouts.

This is a fight we could’ve seen in M-1 Challenge, perhaps for the featherweight belt, had Tukhugov not been in the UFC for the last eight years.

Who comes out of this featherweight match up on top at UFC Vegas 59?

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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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