Worldwide MMA Preview – WSOF 26 and ACB 27

WSOF 26 takes place Friday night in Las Vegas and is headlined by a featherweight title fight between Lance Palmer and Alexandre Almeida. Team Alpha Male’s Palmer has a 10-1 record with his lone blemish coming against Bellator fighter Georgi Karakhanyan for the WSOF title. He bounced back to claim the title from Rick Glenn a year ago and successfully defended it against Chris Horedocki in June. Almeida has mainly plyed his trade in Jungle Fight and he captured their featherweight title before signing with WSOF. In his American debut he beat Saul Almeida to earn this opportunity. Both of these men are primarily grapplers, with Palmer’s wrestling against Almeida’s jiu-jitsu.

The co-main event will see Ozzy Dugulubgov take on Nic Herron-Webb at lightweight. Dugulubgov is a Russian who trains with Renzo Gracie in New Jersey and he has gone 4-1 in WSOF with the defeat coming in a split decision. Herron-Webb competed on season 16 of The Ultimate Fighter but most of his career has been spent in his home state of Alaska.

Former bantamweight title challenger Sheymon Moraes will be trying to get back on track against Robbie Peralta. This is Peralta’s first fight outside the UFC after being released following loses to Clay Guida and Thiago Tavares so both men are looking to turn things around.

Josh Hill, who is also a former Marlon Moraes victim, will also be competing on the main card. Hill is known to Irish fans for being the man to deny Paddy Holohan a place in The Ultimate Fighter house in 2013. The Moraes loss is the only blemish on the Canadian’s record. He will fight an undefeated Russian Bekbulat Magomedov. A 16-0 record and only 25 years of age, Magomedov will be facing the toughest test of his career against Hill. Magomedov was extremely active in 2013 and 2014 but has not fought in over 12 months so it is good to see him back in action. The preliminary portion of the card will feature UFC lightweight star Khabib Nurmagomedov’s younger brother Abubakar in action. He is 10-1 and this will be his second fight for WSOF.

Sunday evening brings us a card from Tajikistan, Absolute Championship Berkut 27. The event is headlined by a lightweight bout between Brian Cobb and Musa Khamanaev. Khamanaev came up short in his American debut against Jason Knight at Titan FC recently but he is still a well-regarded fighter. A submission over Daniel Weichel is his best victory to date. Cobb has been out of action since losing to Justin Gaethje in WSOF which was in the summer of 2013 so it remains to be seen what type of shape he will be in.

The co-main event will also be contested at lightweight and it will see former Bellator fighter Frodo Khasbulaev take on Eduard Vartanyan. Frodo went 5-0 in Bellator and has recently returned after over a year out. He last competed at an ABC show in September where he won to improve his record to 22-5. Vartanyan was once scheduled to fight SBG’s Philip Mulpeter but that fight never took place. He competed in an ACB lightweight tournament this year and reached the final and he has a record of 11-2.

I have never heard of a name MMA show taking place in Tajikistan before so this could be interesting. It is always a pleasure to see Frodo Khasbulaev in action so try to catch this show.