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Missed Fists: Bruno Roverso’s reversal of fortunes leads trio of astounding comebacks, more

May 28, 2021
Bruno Roverso lands a knee on Aleksandr Grozin at an Open Fighting Championship event in Moscow on May 22, 2021 | @Grabaka_Hitman, Twitter

Welcome to the latest edition of Missed Fists where we shine a light on fights from across the globe that may have been overlooked in these hectic times where it seems like there’s an MMA show every other day.

We’re aware that this meme is probably well past its best-before date, but until it’s truly been beaten into the dirt and left to lay alongside such classics as All your base are belong to us and Rickrolling, you know we had to make at least one Call an ambulance... but not for me! edition of Missed Fists.

(Much credit as always to @Barrelelapierna, who compiled the majority of these finishes in their weekly rundown of top finishes, which can be found here and here, and the fight fanatics who regularly upload these clips. Give everyone here a follow on Twitter!)

Bruno Roverso vs. Aleksandr Grozin
Evgeny Erokhin vs. Vladimir Seliverstov
Valodya Ayvazyan vs. Radzhabmurod Ibodov

There was some serious violence and wackiness going down in Russia and Germany this past weekend.

Let’s first look at a show from Moscow last Saturday, Open Fighting Championship 4, which was co-promoted by Modern Fighting Pankration.

The aptly named Bruno Roverso turned things around (get it?) in dramatic fashion against Aleksandr Grozin, surviving a punishing wrestling attack in the first three rounds to score our first notable comeback of this feature.

It really looked like Roverso had no answers for Grozin’s grappling, but he sussed out his timing and then BOOM landed a perfect knee as Grozin changed levels, which all but ended the fight right there.

Roverso won a featherweight title and improved to 17-5, while Grozin fell to 15-4-1. Neither fighters is older than 26, so while Roverso is likely big show-bound soon, don’t think that Grozin is too far off from getting his own call-up.

In the very next fight, we had another wild comeback, as Evgeny Erokhin (22-7, 1 NC) had to awaken the beast to pick up a knockout of Vladimir Seliverstov (12-3).

The first round was pretty measured until the final minute when Seliverstov caught Erokhin with a straight right. A stumbling Erokhin then ate another one, sending him bouncing to the other side of the cage. He was never in any major danger, but clearly Seliverstov was in the lead.

That attack must have shaken something loose because Erokhin immediately went buck wild to start the second and he just overwhelmed Seliverstov. A sweet win for Erokhin, who unified the Open FC and MFP light heavyweight titles.

Before we get to our next comeback, let’s take a moment to appreciate this 17-second guillotine choke by Valodya Ayvazyan (9-2).

Probably took us longer to appreciate it than it did for Ayvazyan to actually do it.

Marc Doussis vs. Georg Bilogrevic
Robert Oganesyan vs. Trestle Tan
Eduard Evdokimov vs. Mohammad Makraou
Khurshed Kakhorov vs. Sylvain Sommereisen

Over at National Fighting Championship 3 (available on YouTube with a paid subscription) in Krefeld, Germany, we have our strangest comeback of the week as Marc Doussis survived getting Kevin Holland’d by Georg Bilogrevic and then actually won the fight.

I’m not a doctor, but that dude is knocked out. I mean, if the referee had stepped in there, it certainly would have been early, but I also would have been like, “I see what you saw there.”

Fortunately, he didn’t, and he outlasted Bilogrevic to stay perfect at 7-0.

On to another submission, we have Robert Oganesyan showing off the ideal set-up for an armbar: Throw an upkick right into your opponent’s mush and then grab that limb while they’re teetering on the brink of consciousness.

Shout-out to Bellator’s Leah McCourt by the way, who used a similar technique to set up a triangle choke at Bellator 259.

I’m just saying, next time you’re at jiu-jitsu class, practice kicking whoever you’re rolling with in the face first before going for the sub (but seriously, don’t do this).

We’ve enjoyed some great comebacks here, but there was no coming back for Mohammad Makraou after he face-planted off of this Eduard Evdokimov knee.

Perfect walk-off.

And we had another beautiful knee knockout courtesy of Khurshed Kakhorov, though it was really just the cherry on a brutal sundae. And by sundae, I mean a relentless series of strikes. And the knee is the cherry. You know what, just watch the clip.

There was also a horrific leg break off of a checked kick in the main event, in case you missed it, but the less said about it the better.

Adam Laguna vs. Mateusz Janur
Selim Topuz vs. Lukasz Ulinski
Cagri Ucar vs. Ismet Zuric
Karen Manukyan vs. Kelvin Ogonovore

Now on to some quick hits.

The NFC was busy last weekend as they also hosted NFC Series Preseason 1 in Bonn, Germany, on Saturday, an event meant to showcase less experienced fighters. It was highlighted by this elegant spin kick finish from Selim Topuz.

No follow-up needed and Topuz knew it.

We’re not done with the knees yet either as Adam Laguna authored this beautiful jumping switch effort at Babilon MMA 22 in Warsaw, Poland.

Eat your heart out, Jose Aldo!

Up next, big shout-out to Cagri Ucar for uploading his own highlight to Instagram. You know we love it when fighters promote their stuff and Ucar has every reason to be proud of this first-round finish.

He used his full arm length there. I call that a reach-out-and-touch-someone KO. Sometimes that’s all it takes to let them know you care.

And let’s close out with two debuting fighters from Spartak Fight Challenge 2 in Kharkov, Ukraine.

Fantastic killer instinct shown here by Karen Manukyan. Poor Kelvin Ogonovore, his body didn’t know when to fall down and he ended up taking a lot of unnecessary punishment even as it was clear that the lights were off upstairs.

That’s all for now, happy Memorial Day weekend to everyone in the United States. Please remember to celebrate responsibly.

If you know of a recent fight or event that you think may have been overlooked, or a promotion that could use some attention, please let us know on Twitter – @JedKMeshew and @AlexanderKLee – using the hashtag #MissedFists.

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