Which Aleksandar Rakic will show up against Jan Blachowicz?
Aleksandar Rakic came out of the box looking like a future contender in the light heavyweight division. After four fights, Rakic held a 4-0 record, a 1.29 knockdowns per 15 minute rate and a +3.61 striking differential. Among currently ranked fighters that knockdown rate would rank 10th and the striking differential would rank fifth. However, in two of his next three fights, he looked very mortal, and his stats came back down to earth.
As it stands, Rakic has landed 4.23 significant strikes per minute, absorbed 2.23 and therefore has a +2.00 differential. Those numbers compare quite favorably with his opponent on Saturday night. Jan Blachowicz has a +0.80 based on a 3.59 landing rate and a 2.79 absorption rate.
While that seems like a clear advantage for Rakic, let’s dig a little deeper. Like most fighters, Blachowicz sees the largest proportion of his significant strikes land at distance. Of his landed significant strikes in the UFC, 73.68%. However, this is not the case for Rakic. Only 56.80% of his landed significant strikes have come at distance, which is the 13th lowest.
With that being said, anyone who has watched the UFC career of Rakic would likely not consider him a ground striker. This statistical anomaly is actually due to one of his fights. In his second fight against Justin Ledet, he scored three knockdowns and landed 78 significant ground strikes. Those 78 significant ground strikes represent 74% of all of his significant ground strikes landed in the UFC. This one fight is also having an outsized influence on his striking differential since he outlanded Ledet 104 to 12 on significant strikes in the fight.
Without that one fight, Rakic’s number sink much closer to Blachowicz’s set. His striking differential falls from +2.00 to +1.08, and his proportion of distance strikes rises from 56.80% to 71.79%.
While dissecting Rakic’s numbers is fun and somewhat informative, it probably is not a best practice. There are a lot of currently ranked fighters who would have drastically different career stats if you excluded certain fights. However, the clear takeaways should be that, his numbers have expectedly declined as he has faced better opposition, and he has shown devastating takedowns and ground work but only in one fight.
Błachowicz represents perhaps the biggest challenge of Rakic’s career, and the former champion has similar divergence in his career stats. Early in his career, he was much more of a grappler. In his first 10 fights, Blachowicz was averaging 1.59 takedowns per 15 minutes. In his last seven fights, that average has been only 0.51 and all three of those takedowns came against Israel Adesanya.
During his last seven fights, his knockdown rate is up to 0.51 per 15 minutes compared to 0.37 in his first 10 fights. His proportion of strikes landed at distance in his last seven is 84.19%, while it was 66.37% in his first 10.
He has clearly made an effort to become much more of a distance striker, and the change took him all the way to the light heavyweight title. When he came up short against Glover Teixeira, it was the Brazilian’s grappling advantage that won the fight.
Rakic returning to the wrestling he showed against Ledet might be an interesting twist in this fight. Blachowicz looked very vulnerable on the floor in his last fight and allowed Teixeira to hold control positions for 66% of the fight time. Of course, it is more likely that Rakic and Blachowicz will engage in an extended distance striking contest. That appears to favor Rakic, but it will be interesting to see if his numbers hold up against an opponent of Blachowicz’s caliber.