Excluding the two title fights (Strickland vs. Du Plessis and Pennington vs. Bueno Silva), Neil Magny vs. Mike Malott is arguably the most exciting fight on the UFC 297 main card. We’re now going to analyze this bout, sharing our top prediction along the way
Neil Magny (28-11) is coming to Scotiabank Arena in Toronto as a +300 underdog against Ontario-based Mike Malott (10-1-1). “The Haitian Sensation” might have experience on his side, but “Proper” is fighting on his turf and is determined to make himself a new UFC star.
Neil Magny is a 36-year-old fighter from Brooklyn who’s been fighting professionally since 2010. He made a name for himself after impressing in The Ultimate Fighter in 2012, after which he got a contract with the UFC, making his promotional debut in 2013.
It was a year later when he really caught the headlines after breaking the UFC record for most wins in a calendar year – he won five bouts.
He continued fighting on a regular basis over the next couple of years, but the UFC never gave him a shot at the title. Magny did, however, get to fight many fighters who later turned into real elite athletes – Rafael dos Anjos, Shavkat Rakhmonov, Gilbert Burns, and most recently, Ian Machado Garry.
Unfortunately for Magny, he lost to all of the aforementioned fighters. In fact, that’s been the story of his career lately. He tends to lose to up-and-coming athletes; will the same happen this time?
Magny will certainly try to derail the Mike Malott hype, but the UFC 297 odds suggest his plan is going to fail.
Mike Malott has 10 wins in his portfolio, along with one loss and one draw, which happened one after the other. First, Hakeem Dawodu ended his 4-fight winning streak with a TKO win at WSOF 14 in October 2014. It was a featherweight fight, in which Malott missed weight.
He wasn’t in great shape for that fight, so Dawodu – who’s an expert striker with incredibly powerful fists – wasn’t much of a surprise. For his next fight, Malott moved to Bellator MMA, where he made his debut against Ousmane Thomas Diagne in a fight that was scored a majority draw.
The fight in question happened in September 2015, after which he took a year-and-a-half hiatus from fighting. At this point he started working as one of the coaches at Urijah Faber’s Team Alpha Male in Sacramento.
Then, in early 201, he made his comeback to the cage. Malott went on to win two fights in XFFC and CFFC, before catching the eye of Dana White in 2021.
It was October 2021 when Malott took part in Dana White’s Contender Series 42, which saw him beat his opponent with a guillotine choke after only 39 seconds. The performance earned him a UFC contract, after which he started training even harder.
With a background in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, he’s always been a fantastic grappler, but since joining the UFC, he’s really upped his striking game. The proof of this is that on his UFC debut, he beat his opponent Mickey Gall by TKO in Round 1.
In his next two fights, he came back to his roots – he defeated Yohan Lainesse with an arm triangle and Adam Fugitt with a guillotine choke – winning the Performance of the Night bonus each time.
Mike Malott is a BJJ black belt who had spent years as a kickboxing coach at Team Alpha Male, working with such elite strikers as Cody Garbrandt and T.J. Dillashaw. All this means he’s a well-rounded fighter with a high fighting IQ.On top of everything, he’s one of the most powerful fighters in the welterweight division.
