UFC 269: Santiago Ponzinibbio vs. Geoff Neal – Fight Analysis & Predictions

Another great event will be held at T-mobile Arena. The headlining of the event will be a highly anticipated lightweight title fight between Charles Oliveira and Dustin Poirier. All the attention is on this title bout, but the card is stuck with great fights, too. 

One of the banger battles will be held in the welterweight division between Santiago Ponzinibbio and Geoff Neal. 

Geoff Neal is a black belt in karate and Brazilian jiu-jitsu under Ricardo Almeida. He has excellent striking and knockout power. His stand-up game is based on his arsenal of kicking techniques and knees. Santiago Ponzinibbio is a complete mixed martial artist who possesses first-class stand-up, grappling, and wrestling skills. He has big hands and uses them most of the time to knock out his opponents.

Neal is a fantastic striker, but he is not the best one. He also has excellent wrestling skills but suffered a loss against wrestler Neil Magny. For this moment, he is on two losing streaks, against the best striker of the division Wonderboy Thompson, and Magny. However, before suffering those losses, he was on seven winning lines. He defeated several notable victories over names like Niko Price, Mike Perry, Belal Muhammad, Frank Camacho, and many others.

Like his rival, the Argentinian fighter is a real banger with excellent ground skills. For 2018 he was on seven winning streaks, but he had a three-year break after his last victory in that year against Neil Magny. He returned in 2021 and suffered the loss against Chinese fighter Jingliang Li. However, this year he managed to earn the victory against Miguel Bieza via unanimous decision.

From my point of view, both fighters can finish the fight anytime. However, I still think that Santiago has been a different fighter since his break from 2018 to 2021. While Argentinian was on break, Geoff held seven fights and earned five victories. Also, the fact that Santiago has already suffered KO losses three times means that his striking defense is not good enough. I think Geoff will earn another KO or decision victory. Their odds are the same between 1.9-2.