Ciryl Gane

Picked against, with the analyst arguing that repeated leg-kick damage accumulates over five rounds in the opponent's favor even though either man could finish it.

Owns one of the best teep kicks in the sport's upper weight classes, arguably the single sharpest at heavyweight, thrown from a Savate base. Always either firing a combination or setting up a feint, which makes him genuinely hard to read, and he mixes tempo well to stay unpredictable. Accurate, very good striker with a real advantage in the Thai clinch -- very good control there, mixing in knees and elbows well. Solid overall striker, sometimes too defensive but very good defensively: excellent movement shuttling in and out of range with strong range control overall, fights from either stance and switches often to close distance, keeps his hands low but raises them to parry, and rolls with punches. Cuts off the cage well using that range control. The one real hole in his defense is checking kicks -- being light on his toes rather than sitting in a stance makes it hard for him to check leg kicks, which is a real, exploitable gap against this specific opponent.

He admits Gane wins this matchup on skill nine times out of ten, and picks Tuivasa mainly on a hunch about a clinch-and-fade path to a finish, explicitly calling his own confidence low.

Gane is framed as the clear standard-bearer for heavyweight striking skill, combining elite range, sharp in-and-out footwork, and enough power to make opponents pay for chasing him. His one real crack is a takedown defense that's been exposed before by a top-level wrestler. The analyst thinks the path to beating him runs through closing distance and working him against the cage — difficult against someone this good at controlling range, but not impossible.