Sergei Pavlovich is back to being a feared knockout artist.
Pavlovich took on Tallison Teixeira in a heavyweight matchup at UFC Macau on Saturday. Pavlovich took 39 seconds to shut the lights on Teixeira with a vicious combination. This was Pavlovich’s first stoppage win since 2023. The Russian knockout artist admits that he was trying to put on a technical display in his last few outings, which didn’t work out very well.
“Really great feeling,” Pavlovich said in a post-fight interview with the UFC. “Couple of fights back it was all about being technical, about trying to show some skills, but we weren’t able to do that. Now finally everything worked out and I’m really happy about it.”
Pavlovich and his team studied a lot of tape on Teixeira, who stands four inches taller than him.
“This is the second opponent I had that’s almost 2 meters in height, over 6 [feet] something,” Pavlovich said. “We looked at all of his fights, we did a lot of work, we really prepared, we dissected him and everything worked out.”
After suffering his first professional loss against Alistair Overeem in his UFC debut in 2018, Pavlovich (21-3) went on a six-fight first-round knockout streak. Pavlovich then found himself in a short-notice interim heavyweight title fight against Tom Aspinall, who knocked him out.
The Russian contender then changed his approach, introducing more caution and technique. This led to a lackluster decision loss against Alexander Volkov, followed by lukewarm wins over Jairzinho Rozenstruik and Waldo Cortes-Acosta. However, Pavlovich looked like his old self for the first time in years while beating down Teixeira at UFC Macau.
