Tale of the tape for Bruno Silva vs. Tagir Ulanbekov

In the first fight of UFC Fight Island 5, Bruno Silva will meet Tagir Ulanbekov in a flyweight bout on the preliminary card live from Fight Island in Abu Dhabi and available on ESPN+ this Saturday.

Ulanbekov will come in as a strong favorite, one of the most decisive in the entire event. 12-1 in his MMA career, the 5-foot-7 southpaw will be making his UFC debut. The Russia-born fighter has five of his victories via submission and a handful more via decision, so he’s clearly going to be wanting his fight on the ground.

His sole loss was via decision about two years ago. Since then, he’s won three straight bouts with two coming via submission in the second round. One notable fact about Ulanbekov is he’s associated with Eagles MMA, founded in part by current lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.

He’ll be fighting Silva, a 30-year-old with two UFC matches under his belt. He has one loss and one no contest at the UFC level with the most recent coming against #11 David Dvorak earlier this year.

His strength is grappling as well, averaging 2.68 takedowns per 15 minutes with a 22 percent accuracy. His striking leaves some to be desired as he averaged 2.32 significant strikes per minute, hitting on 44 percent of his strikes. He takes 3.72 per minutes though and defends just 52 percent.

Here are the betting odds at DraftKings Sportsbook for Bruno Silva vs. Tagir Ulanbekov at UFC Fight Island 5 on October 10th.

Money line odds

Bruno Silva: +317 (12% of action, 25% of bets)
Tagir Ulanbekov: -435 (88% of action, 75% of bets)

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