Ryan Bader vs Renan Ferreira Prediction: The Brazilian will win

On the 25th of February in Saudi Arabia will be held a grand MMA tournament, in which the champions of Bellator and PFL will meet. The main event will be the confrontation between Ryan Bader and Renan Ferreira.

Ryan Bader is the current Bellator heavyweight champion (with three defenses) and former double champion. As a reminder, Bader lost the belt in the light heavyweight division to Russian Vadim Nemkov, who spectacularly knocked him down and finished him hard.

Bader also has plenty of experience in the UFC, where he fought from 2008 to 2016, and his opponents included Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, Glover Teixeira, Vladimir Matyushenko, Lyoto Machida, Quinton Jackson, Tito Ortiz, and even Jon Jones.

Ryan is now on a run of three straight wins, and in this series, he has prevented Valentin Moldavsky from taking the belt from him and finally sending Fedor Emelianenko to a well-deserved rest.

Renan Ferreira won the PFL Grand Prix last year after finishing Denis Goltsov in the final.

Before that, he had knocked out two other contenders in the first round. During his career, only one fight of the Brazilian went to a judge's decision. Still, the level of opposition was generally lower than Bader's (although there were some pretty strong guys - Denis Goltsov, for example, or Ante Delia).

We can also remember the fight between Ferreira and Rizvan Kuniev in April 2023 - then the Russian won, but later he was found doping, and the result was canceled. This case became the third (!) in Renan's career when the fight was canceled. Earlier, the same fate happened to his fights with Fabricio Werdum (the referee didn't notice Ferreira knocking, and after the fight, Renan knocked out the legend) and Klidson Abreu (Ferreira lost, but the fight was declared No Contest because of Abreu's doping).

Bader has more experience, of course, but there is a suspicion that it's not experience that will decide everything in this fight. After all, Ryan is already 40 years old, he is quite worn out from previous wars, he loses a lot in size, and his opponent has gained a crazy pace. Ryan will have to look for luck only in the parterre and clinch, but it will not be easy - to break through the long arms and knockout punch of Ferreira at close quarters is a non-trivial task, on the verge of being impossible.