Abubakar Vagaev vs Jacob Malkoun Preview & Prediction — UFC 333: Volkanovski vs. Evloev

This one looks like a mirror match on paper: two grinders who want the same real estate on the fence and the same minutes on top. The desk has this as an official PLAY on Jacob Malkoun, and the case is less about who wants control and more about who has actually held it when it mattered.

Abubakar Vagaev

Vagaev is a cage-wrestling specialist who makes fights ugly in the right way for him: reactive doubles off punches, a heavy top game, and fence control that chews up rounds. The approach has produced results against lower-level competition, and in theory it travels, since control-based grinders tend to find a way to get fights to the floor at any level.

The concern is what the one UFC look showed. Vagaev was outlanded in his debut, and the tape has a documented adverse phase: he got swept out of a kimura exchange, spent time on bottom late in the fight while visibly tired, and had to defend both an arm-triangle and an armbar. That is not a small wrinkle. It is the exact terrain Malkoun's top game is built to create. Vagaev also carries three KO/TKO losses on his record, though the phase of those stoppages isn't documented, so that is weak evidence at best. More tangible is the striking look in the pocket: an upright head that lets straight punches through, which matters if this fight has any standing exchanges before the clinch.

Jacob Malkoun

Malkoun is the more proven version of the same archetype. Across nine UFC bouts he has repeatedly produced dominant control, and his most recent outing was the clearest statement yet: a lopsided decision over an unbeaten opponent in Finney, with a real gap in significant strikes landed, over five minutes of control time, and scorecards that were not close. That is a fighter who is winning rounds decisively against the kind of level this card represents, not just accumulating control for its own sake.

The other data point in his favor came in his most recent fight before that, when Meerschaert held him under control for over four minutes. On its face that looks like a mark against Malkoun. But it actually confirms something useful here: Malkoun can be controlled and still win the fight, because his guard work, his scrambles, and his top-half game when the position flips are good enough to survive it and still take the cards. Durability under control is part of his profile, not a hole in it.

How the fight plays out

Strip away the stylistic overlap and this comes down to a simple question: which grinder's control actually holds against a UFC-level body on top of him. Malkoun has already answered that question with a nine-fight sample and a recent lopsided decision over a previously unbeaten opponent. Vagaev has answered it with exactly one data point, and that data point is a fighter who got outlanded, swept out of a submission exchange, and spent the late stages defending his neck and his arm while gassed.

That matters because Malkoun's game is not generic top pressure. It is specifically a top-half, guard-passing, submission-threatening style, which is the precise picture painted by Vagaev's one bad patch on tape. If Vagaev's doubles land and he gets the fight to the fence early, the worry for him is what happens in the second half of the rounds, when his own tape shows him fading and giving up his back or his limbs. Malkoun has already shown he can absorb a control phase of his own and still walk away with the decision. Vagaev showed the opposite in his lone UFC look.

Add in the striking variable. Vagaev fights with an upright head in the pocket, which means any exchange that stays standing, even briefly before a clinch entry, carries risk against a fighter who does not need to win the standup to win the fight. Malkoun does not need a knockout. He needs rounds, and his path to them is better established and more recently proven than Vagaev's path to his.

The verdict

The pick is Malkoun. His nine-fight UFC sample of dominant control, capped by a clearly lopsided recent win, is simply more proven than Vagaev's one UFC look, a look that already showed him getting swept, tired, and stuck defending submissions in exactly the position Malkoun's game produces.