UFC 325 Predictions:
Sydney, Australia, is the host city for this week’s UFC 325, a fight card populated with 10 legitimate UFC matchups and four Road to the UFC fights.
Sydney will utilize the larger 30-foot octagon, and these battles will be held in front of an always raucous Aussie crowd.
Start time in the USA is 2 p.m. PT for early prelims, 4 p.m. PT for preliminary fights, then 6 p.m. PT for the main card, which will be the norm for these Paramount events.
As an aside, this column handicaps UFC fights only, so this week we have 10 bouts populated with an international set of combatants. Nine Aussie athletes (and Fiziev from Phuket, Thailand) will benefit from the lack of travel, while fighters from the US, Mexico, Brazil and Wales will need to commute into Australia for their confrontations, all against local Aussie fighting talent.
Travel to any foreign fight slate is an important factor, especially regarding fighter weigh-ins, as plane rides bloat passengers. Another factor is when the athletes arrive to any foreign location. Altitude and time differences are real factors in fights and must be addressed by athletes and handicappers alike.
Handicapping this or any foreign event means understanding that local/regional athletes are often paired in somewhat favorable matchups to encourage the crowd to get hysterical, and, more importantly, to spread the UFC’s brand in that geographical area.
In other words, there can be a great advantage to being a local/regional athlete when the UFC travels abroad,
Last week, favorites went 8-3 in the UFC after realizing a 330-154-18 (65.7%) result in 2025.
Alexander Volkanovski -160 vs. Diego Lopes +145
Featherweight (145 pounds) Championship
This is an immediate rematch of a championship battle that transpired last April in Miami, where Volkanovski retained his featherweight title via a unanimous decision.
Current number two-ranked Diego Lopes debuted in the UFC in May of 2023 and took current UFC featherweight Mosvar Evloev, currently the division’s number one-ranked fighter, to a razor-tight split decision loss on five days’ notice!
Since that decision loss, Lopes, who has leapfrogged over Evloev for this second title opportunity, has dominated five highly decorated featherweight adversaries leading into that championship opportunity last April against Volkanovski, where he was exposed on several levels.
In that bout, Volkanovski, then 36, displayed keen footwork, world-class wrestling, and a depth of fight experience in remaining one step ahead of 30-year-old Lopes on his way to a definitive unanimous decision win.
Lopes, a BJJ blackbelt training in Mexico, will still hold that five-year youth advantage coming into this return fight. He remains six inches taller and will have an inch of reach advantage over the champion, but I question what he has accomplished physically over the last calendar year to close the skill gap between him and Volkanovski.
In fact, he was displaying similar difficulty keeping up with his last opponent, Brazilian Jean Silva, before Silva ran into a spinning elbow that ended the fight.
Lopes has substantial power. While he is tough, durable, and steps into this bout after that stunning knockout victory over Silva, my judgment is that what he needed to refine and improve the most, namely his footwork and quickness in order to compete with the current champion, have not been addressed appropriately from last year to this.
Volkanovski has not fought since these two last tangled, and he competes in his home country, Australia, as opposed to the travel he incurred for their last fight in the Latino mecca that is Miami, FL.
Volkanovski’s intelligence, his cardio, the completeness of his mixed martial arts weaponry, and his deft strike defense, together with his nimble footwork and depth of five-round championship experience, still provide him advantage over anyone in the division, let alone a young but hungry warrior he beat soundly less than one year ago.
Volkanovski opened -130/-135 for the first bout between these two and closed at -155/-160.
For this championship bout, Volkanovski opened -150/-155, where this line sits currently.
Total in this fight: sits 3.5 Rds -130 at some shops and 4.5 Rds. -110 at others.
When I see these early differences in totals, the end result almost always ends up being a fight lined at 4.5 rounds. There is advantage to be had if one considers attacking that 3.5 Rds. Over -130 (DK).
Mauricio Ruffy -120 vs. Rafael Fiziev +100
Lightweight (155 pounds)
Ruffy, the organization’s 14th-ranked lightweight, arrives to Australia prepared to rectify the beating he incurred at the hands of Benoit Saint-Denis last September. Prior to that fight, Ruffy, a Fighting Nerd from Brazil who is a long, lean striking machine, displayed tremendous aptitude, speed, and refined precision in decimating several worthy adversaries.
Not decorated with any awarded belts, Ruffy does display lightning-fast Capoeira tendencies, including spinning heel kicks, flying knees, and an overall aggressive display of striking aggression.
What exposed the aggressive, flamboyant striker in that last fight was his complete inability to grapple, wrestle or defend the takedown, a weakness that will soon need to be addressed, but not for this bout.
For this fight, Ruffy draws a great dance partner in Rafael Fiziev, who is the striking coach at Phuket, Thailand’s Tiger Muay Thai, a gym that is world-renowned.
Fiziev also packs great power in his diversity of strikes, kicks, elbows, and knees. What makes this fight so fascinating is that neither of these cats can even spell wrestling. Spectators watching this artillery launch will witness a short, compact, explosive Kyrgyzstani in Fiziev who holds a blue belt in BJJ compete against a man similarly equipped in UFC weaponry. However, Ruffy stands three inches taller, will hold a three-and-a-half-inch reach advantage, and will be three years younger.
Once this fight begins, my best advice is don’t blink. Ruffy will strive to maintain distance and bludgeon the incoming Fiziev with numbing strikes, which will emanate from every angle and limb.
For his part, Fiziev has Matrix-like defense, and it will be his chore to navigate his way inside on Ruffy, which will mute Ruffy’s length/effectiveness and simultaneously allow Fiziev to unleash his own artistic yet devastating array of knees, elbows, fists, and kicks onto the Brazilian athlete.
The clash of body types and the relative similarities in how each of these dominators wants to win should be epic to watch.
In the end, it is Fiziev, 7-4 in the UFC, who has faced a more qualified and capable set of opponents. It’s Fiziev who has the benefit of little travel as well. He’ll have the crowd on his side.
Ruffy, 3-1 in the UFC, will need to navigate that trip from Brazil, make weight, then fight the regional athlete in Fiziev’s hemisphere. But with that said, youth, speed, flash, and dynamic may well rest on the Ruffy side.
This bout opened a dead pick ’em (-110 each man), and current fight lines can be found from Ruffy -120 to Fiziev -115.
Shop wisely, my friends!
Total in this fight: 2.5 Rds Over -175
Strong lean over
Quillan Salkilld -1000 vs. Jamie Mullarkey +700
Lightweight (155 pounds)
It’s not often we write up a fight with such a cavernous spread difference between combatants, but this fight is going to be the fight that ignites the crowd for this event.
Salkilld is a dead finisher, having earned KOs or submissions in seven of his 11 professional bouts.
He was originally matched up with a Chinese mixed martial artist who was going to accommodate both him and the crowd in China’s Rong Zhu, a Sanda kickboxing-based fighter who is aggressive and powerful, but Rong Zhu was forced to pull out of the fight.
Salkilld pleaded with the UFC to keep him on the card because, as one may expect, being an Aussie and competing in front of one’s home compatriots is an honor, and Salkilld wanted to remain on the event desperately.
With its deft ability to always keep fight cards populated, the UFC found fellow Australian fighter Jamie Mullarkey to jump into this event on a few weeks’ notice.
While Salkilld is a finishing machine, Mullarkey, unfortunately, is a man who gets finished. Mullarkey, an uber-aggressive power striker, has 12 fights of experience in the UFC, realizing a 6-6 record. However, he’s been brutally finished in four of his last eight bouts, and the few victories he’s enjoyed were against athletes most of whom no longer compete in the organization.
Props for this fight are not available yet, but this total is listed 1.5 Rds. -165 Under.
It is safe to advise Salkilld via finish in this fight and further even look to Salkilld via KO/TKO/DQ in order to attempt to pry a price out of a fight where the result is almost certain.
Jacob Malkoun -220 vs. Torrez Finney +190
Middleweight (185 pounds)
This is the dinosaur fight. Not that these guys are old, but each is a wrestling-based fighter, and in this new Paramount age of violence, finishes and frenzy, 15 minutes of two men rolling on the canvas is not only distasteful to the UFC but the crowd as well. Too bad. Nonetheless, these two will face off in what I handicap to be the wrong man may be favored fight.
Malkoun, 4-3 in the UFC, has had an inconsistent career in the organization, which may be due to prolonged inactivity. After three bouts in 2022, Malkoun fought once in 2023 and once in March of 2024, so he’s been on the shelf and in the gym since then. Evolution in the fight game takes place in the gym, yes, but also in the octagon under the bright lights. The inactivity of Malkoun is of great concern here despite the fact that he’s primarily a wrestler with some degree of danger in his hands.
In Torrez Finney, we get a sawed-off American wrestling talent who is as stout as he is tall. Finney is mad athletic for his build and has had a deep history in competitive wrestling, but his strikes are telegraphed, wide, and easy to evade.
Once this fight begins, I believe it will be difficult for Malkoun to fend off the unrelenting forward-pressing wrestler that is Finney. Finney wants to win fights at this early stage of his career, so he will simply sell out in the wrestling and then hope to inflict damage on the Aussie from the dominant top position.
While Malkoun should hold a striking advantage, it may be difficult for him to create enough space to breath let alone throw a punch. The difference in wrestling prowess is too wide for the Australian Malkoun to overcome, as I handicap this bout.
UFC 325 Best Bet: Torrez Finney +190 (Circa)
The lines on this fight are all over the board, so shop accordingly to capture the best price on Finney available.
Total in this fight 2.5 Rds. Over -200
Strong lean over
Friday, the ‘Bout Business Podcast drops across all podcast platforms; it’s also available at GambLou.com. Thank you for reading, and enjoy the fights!
