Previously, the 34-year-old athlete fought in medium weight (-83.9 kg), but on Saturday he went to the ring in semi-heavy weight, where wrestlers may not exceed 93 kilograms.
The pass was “damaged” by the opponent – Paul Krzysztof Jotko, who won the decision of the judges. Two judges with 29:28 preferred the pole, one with the same result – Cirkunov.
Polis fought the fight, keeping Cirkunov at a distance and not allowing him to approach
“I was a little worried,” Jotko said of the judges’ decision. “However, in the end I knew I was winning the fight. I kept the pace of the fight very high from start to finish.”
In the first fight in the new weight category, Cirkunov tried to divert the fight to the ground floor, but Jotko avoided it.
With five minutes left until the end of the fight, Cirkunov was finally able to divert the fight to the ground floor with a couple of methods, but Jotko got out of hand and got up.
Although Jotko did not cause much problems for his opponent, he still continued to give Cirkunov blows in the third round, which helped him secure a victory.
Cirkunov has lost his second fight in a row, but Jotko has won four of the last five fights.
In professional MMA Cirkunov, he participated in 22 duels, in which he won 15 victories, five of them – with a slaughter, and eight – with pain techniques.
Meanwhile, the 32-year-old Jotko in the UFC has 28 fights, of which he won 23. In a previous duel, he lost to American Sean Strikland in May by unanimous decision.
Cirkunov made his UFC debut in August 2015. He emigrated to Canada with his parents about 20 years ago, where he still lives, but has not lost touch with Latvia and, for example, announced his debut in the UFC in his “Twitter” account in Latvian.
Cirkunov is only the second Latvian wrestler who has signed a contract with the UFC – in 1997, under the flag of this organization, one duel was played by the two-time European amateur boxing champion Jurijs Vauļins.
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