Fares Ziam

The analyst hands him a clean conditional path to victory — simply keep pace with Sola's output — and openly doubts Sola can absorb what Ziam lands, which adds up to a fairly settled pick.

Ziam profiles as a well-rounded, technical striker who blends his hands and kicks into real combinations, moves well, and lands a sharp jab along with good knee and elbow work — the analyst expects him to be the more polished striker in this pairing, going by his usual form rather than his most recent outing, which looked off for reasons that remain unclear and may just be a one-time blip. His grappling has genuinely improved: takedown defense used to be a weak point and is now a real asset, and he is willing to shoot his own takedowns as well. His unusually long limbs give him extra tools on both sides of a clinch or cage exchange. The swing factor is his output — when his volume dips, it opens a real door for a grinding, high-pressure opponent to take over rounds.

Picked on the reasoning that the fight stays standing, where he's rated the more technical striker and better able to stay safe.

Solid striking with good combinations mixing punches and kicks, very accurate, good movement, a nice jab, and use of knees and elbows -- rated as clearly the more polished striker between the two. The recurring flaw has been low volume in a number of fights, though he's shown real improvement there. Grappling is mostly defensive -- doesn't grapple offensively very often, has decent takedowns he rarely uses, leans on his long limbs to tie up opponents who do take him down, and has pretty good takedown defense.

He calls it razor thin and says he's only 'ever so slightly' leaning one way, treating it essentially as a coin flip nudged toward the debuting pressure fighter.

Ziam is unusually tall for lightweight, and the analyst likes how he leverages that reach with a varied striking attack mixing kicks and punches behind good hand and foot speed. He's also faced tougher recent competition than most fighters at this stage of their career. The concern is his grappling defense — when fights hit the mat he can make questionable positional decisions that expose his neck, though he's shown enough length and scrambling ability to fight back to his feet.