It wasn’t too long ago that 18-3 knockout artist Sergei Pavlovich was being touted as the man to dethrone Jon ‘Bones’ Jones as UFC heavyweight champion.
After back-to-back defeats in the octagon, the 32-year-old is now fighting to put himself back into title contention; with his return to action set for this coming weekend.
Ahead of his highly anticipated showdown with ‘Bigi Boy’ out in Saudi Arabia, it’s time to look back at the pair of insane knockouts that put him on the UFC championship radar.
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Sergei Pavlovich needed under two minutes to knockout Tuivasa and Lewis
Sergei Pavlovich’s UFC tenure couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start; starched by Alistair Overeem via vicious ground and pound inside the very first round back in 2018.
The Russian rebounded from that shock debut loss in quite literally, the best way possible, i.e., six enormous consecutive knockouts, each of which arrived firmly within the opening stanza.
Yet out of those six consecutive first-round knockouts, two stood head and shoulders above the rest – finishes over fellow KO artists Derrick Lewis and Tai Tuivasa, arriving after just 55 and 54 seconds respectively.
Lewis was first to be served up at UFC 277: Pena vs Nunes 2 in July 2022, and it took just half a minute for Pavlovich to badly rock ‘The Black Beast’ with powerful hooks as the American rushed in.
With blood in the water, Pavlovic unloaded with 10 unanswered punches; referee Dan Miragliotta called a halt to the contest, although that stoppage was later labeled ‘premature’ by Dana White.
‘Bam Bam’ was next up and at UFC Fight Night: Orlando in December 2022, the pair of KO artists began swinging for the fences almost as soon as the opening bell sounded.
Despite being cracked a number of times by Tuivasa, Pavlovich walked through the fire to score three big knockdowns before the referee stepped in to save the popular Australian.
The Russian would land another first-round finish over Curtis Blaydes a few months later, before running into British sensation Tom Aspinall and most recently, Alexander Volkov – can he get back to winning ways in the dunes of Arabia?
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Sergei Pavlovich returns to the octagon at UFC Fight Night: Adesanya vs Imavov
After seven months on the sidelines, Pavlovich is set to return to action on the main card of UFC Fight Night: Adesanya vs Imavov on Feb. 1 against popular Surinamese juggernaut, Jairzinho ‘Bigi Boy’ Rozenstruik.
“This is part of life; you’ve got ups, and you’ve got downs, [but] the most important thing is to come back to the gym, work on your mistakes, get better, train, and get back into it,” Pavlovich told UFC News.
“You start working on your mistakes, you start looking at what went wrong, and you start bettering those ends. Development is a way of layering things up; you layer, layer, layer and keep going up… I just need to come out and do my work, do my job.”
The Russian enters Fight Night as the #4 ranked heavyweight and is hoping that a big win this weekend could see him secure a number one contender’s fight against either Ciryl Gane, or even a rematch with Alexander Volkov.
“When it comes to what’s gonna happen in the future, let’s first win on Saturday and then we’ll see about that,” stated the heavyweight on his plans for 2025.
“Of course, I wanna fight as much as possible. I don’t like having to only have one fight per year — that’s not what I’m satisfied with; I want to fight more often.
“It doesn’t matter who they put in front of me, as long as I’m healthy and can keep moving forward, I would like to fight often.”
UFC Fight Night: Adesanya vs Imavov goes down live from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on Saturday, February 1.