Khalil Rountree is ready for war in his fight against Jiri Prochazka at UFC 320 with the potential that both athletes could end up being carried out of the cage.<\/p>\n
A noted striker with a ton of power, Rountree has scored numerous devastating knockouts during his career and the same could be said for Prochazka. The biggest difference in the fight could come down to defense where Prochazka\u2019s creative and unorthodox attacks often times leave him exposed, which is largely how he suffered a pair of high-profile losses to Alex Pereira in UFC title fights.<\/p>\n
Rountree\u2019s head coach John Wood appreciates that Prochazka is always willing to take chances to win the fight, but he expects that game plan to backfire spectacularly on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a double-edged sword when you fight like that,\u201d Wood told MMA Fighting. \u201cYou\u2019re going to win a lot of fights because of that style, but you\u2019re also going to lose fights because of that style. I think this is a phenomenal matchup for us. I think it\u2019s going to be a great fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a fan, it\u2019s great, but as a coach, I love it. You\u2019ve got a crazy weird guy with that crazy weird stuff and it does open you up, and I think it really does play into our benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Because Prochazka\u2019s offensive output is so potent, Wood acknowledges that Rountree might have to walk through the fire to get the result he wants in the fight.<\/p>\n
Matching up two well-known finishers should result in a highlight-reel ending but if Prochazka and Rountree actually make it all three rounds, Wood expects the fighters could be forever changed as a result.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s going to be violent, bloody,\u201d Wood said. \u201cNothing in my bones tells me it\u2019s going three rounds. There\u2019s no thought process, no world where I go \u2018I think it\u2019s going to go to a decision.\u2019 If it does, they\u2019re going to be very damaged. There\u2019s going to be eyeballs falling out, ears falling off, type of fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Rountree\u2019s coach is obviously hoping for the best and prepared for the worst, he knows his fighter has done everything possible to get ready for this showdown against Prochazka.<\/p>\n
Ahead of his most recent fight and win over former UFC light heavyweight champion Jamahal Hill in June, Wood revealed that Rountree was actually dealing with a significant knee injury that hindered him during his training camp.<\/p>\n
This time around, Rountree was completely healthy, and Wood expects that\u2019s going to show in his performance in the fight with Prochazka.<\/p>\n
\u201cKhalil was very injured for that fight,\u201d Wood said about the win against Hill. \u201cFour weeks of no sparring. Four weeks, he fully tore his meniscus before that. We weren\u2019t doing anything but standing in place and trying to let the knee heal so we could perform. I believe you could have seen an even more vicious version of Khalil in that fight then we had. I\u2019m very proud of him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis camp, it really is the best Khalil I\u2019ve seen. It really is. We\u2019ve had some ups and downs in camps and last camp wasn\u2019t great but camp for Pereira was good. This one, he\u2019s leaving no stones unturned, he\u2019s doing the work and I can truly stand behind that and say he\u2019s actually competing like a mixed martial artist now. He knows he\u2019s at the top, and we\u2019re just making sure he\u2019s covering all his bases. I really think you\u2019re going to see the best Khalil Rountree out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Magomed Ankalaev defending his light heavyweight title against Alex Pereira in the main event on the same card, Wood knows that Rountree is in a great position to vault himself back into the championship picture with a win.<\/p>\n
While nothing is guaranteed and Carlos Ulberg just scored a vicious knockout of his own over Dominick Reyes in Parth, Wood expects an impressive win for Rountree on Saturday should secure him the next title shot.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hype behind Jiri and Khalil and the wins, I think that\u2019s where everything is primed right now,\u201d Wood said. \u201cI can\u2019t see, especially the way this fight is going to be won, that person isn\u2019t going to fight for the title. I truly believe that person is going to be Khalil.\u201d<\/p>\n
As far as who walks out with the title at UFC 320, Wood believes that Pereira can definitely get his revenge and beat Ankalaev but that\u2019s far from a sure thing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do see a path to victory for Pereira,\u201d Wood said. \u201cThe man has dynamite in his hands. That\u2019s always going to give you a path to victory. I don\u2019t know and I said this totally respectfully, when he was leading up to that fight I saw Pereira at a lot of events. I saw him all over the world. I saw him everywhere. I think the night before he was at LFA. He was at Karate Combat. He was here, he was there and for periods of time. So I would always question, maybe that method works for him and that\u2019s how they do things so I\u2019m not one to judge that. Maybe questioning how serious he took that fight and he had been fighting a lot. That burnout, that turnover of fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting. Sometimes when you\u2019re just so dominant, you kind of [get complacent]. So I question how involved he was for that fight. How hard of a camp he had. How healthy he was. So if we get a fully healthy, committed Pereira, that is a scary dude.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s clearly a path. Now Ankalaev obviously let\u2019s say that was the best Pereira and you\u2019re going to get the best Ankalaev, then I think we\u2019re going to see something very similar to that [first] fight. But I think he\u2019s going to throw a little more caution to the win and let those hands go and we\u2019ll see what happens.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Khalil Rountree is ready for war in his fight against Jiri Prochazka at UFC 320 with the potential…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":189692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702,3194],"class_list":{"0":"post-189691","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news","16":"tag-videos"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=189691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/189691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/189692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=189691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=189691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=189691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}