Nursulton Ruziboev came back from knee surgery and made the kind of return that changes a division’s conversation, submitting Andrey Pulyaev in the first round on the UFC Baku prelims Saturday at National Gymnastics Arena.
The finish was decisive. Ruziboev caught a kick, dumped Pulyaev to the canvas, took his back and locked in a choke to end it before the round could settle. The win moved him to 5-0 at middleweight in the UFC, with four of those five wins coming by finish.
UFC Baku was held Saturday, June 27, with the prelims starting at 9am ET, 6am PT and the main card set for 12pm ET. For Ruziboev, the result mattered even more because it marked his first fight in well over a year after the knee surgery that kept him out of action.
The rest of the prelims kept moving at a fast clip. Kaan Ofli stopped Javier Reyes in the first round to earn his third straight win, while Daniil Donchenko beat Theodor Berggren by second-round stoppage and pushed his own streak to eight. Donchenko also said he wanted a shot at Paris later this year, and that request now lands with a record that is hard to ignore.
There was, though, one fight that did not resolve with the same clarity. Bekzat Almakhan dropped Jean Matsumoto with a one-two off a naked low kick in the opening round, but Matsumoto answered by closing the frame with pressure, a takedown and quick elbows. That kind of swing can leave a result looking cleaner on paper than it felt in the cage, and it is the sort of detail that makes the live prelims worth following as they unfold.
What Ruziboev did in Baku is the sort of return that can move a fighter from comeback story to contender. With his layoff behind him and another finish added to his UFC ledger, the next question is not whether he belongs at middleweight. It is how soon the UFC decides to test him against someone higher up the line.
