Introduction
Tuesday, September 26th, Kazakhstani flyweight prospect Sora Rakhmonova will be in action for Dana White’s Contender Series, where she will be looking continue his winning ways against Ernesta Karackaite. She will be looking for another win, as Rakhmonova looks to impress the UFC brass and score a UFC contract. She represents Dar Pro Team, a lesser-known camp in MMA. Let’s take a closer look at this prospect as this week’s “Prospect Spotlight.”
Strengths
Wrestling: Rakhmonova is a combat sambo and hand-to-hand combat expert, which shows in her fights. She has good takedowns and is strong in the clinch, where she often times has superior positions and lands damaging strikes, whether they be ground-and-pound or upright. She has submissions, but has yet to finish a fight by tapout. She likes to throw hammers on the mat, which has led to two of her finishes as a pro.
Boxing: On top of her combat wrestling ability, Rakhmonova has some strong boxing. She’s a southpaw that uses great hand combinations. She also has strong elbows, which admittedly is more Muay Thai, but she doesn’t really kick as much as a Thai fighter does. In her most recent fight with Valeria Karygina, she battered the Russian with excellent straight punches and uppercuts, but it was her elbows against the cage that caused the most damage. Rakhmonova is pretty well-rounded, all things considered.
Needs Improvement
Strength of Schedule: The one thing about Rakhmonova that has more question marks than answers is what level she is on right now. She was 1-2 as an amateur, which was the shocking thing when doing a deeper dive on Rakhmonova. Her most experienced opponent as a pro was the aforementioned Karygina, who was 5-6-1. The rest of her opponents had one fight, no fight or were well under .500. Her lone pro loss was to another prospect in Veronika Borisova, who was making her pro debut at the time.
Outlook
UFC Prelim Fighter: Rakhmonova has made steady improvements in recent years, and her performance against Karygina was encouraging. I think she still has a lot to prove and she gets a winnable challenge on the Contender Series in the form of Ernesta Kareckaite. Kareckaite is a decent prospect, but is similarly is unproven for the most part. She has a good striking background, so Rakhmonova will have to use her grappling chops here. A win likely gets her on the roster to join her brother Shavkat, where I think she is consistently on the prelims in her tenure.
MMA Intel 