UFC Vegas 29 results: Serghei Spivac punishes Aleksei Oleinik to win grueling three-round battle

Serghei Spivac will likely find himselk a ranked heavyweight next week after putting on a punishing performance to get past Aleksei Oleinik in the UFC Vegas 29 co-main event.

While he did have to survive a few grappling exchanges with the noted submission specialist, Spivac was just relentless with his offense as he left Oleinik exhausted and bloody after three hard fought rounds. When the fight came to an end, Spivac earned the victory with all three judges scoring the fight 29-28 in his favor.

“It was a really hard fight,” Spivac said UFC, they know I never say no to a fight so whatever they will give me, I will fight.”

There wasn’t a lot of technique behind Oleinik’s punches but he was throwing with pure power behind his shots while looking to close the distance on Spivac. It was clear that Oleinik wanted to get the takedown to apply his suffocating grappling game but Spivac did a good job to avoid the ground for the majority of the opening round.

With less than a minute to go, Oleinik finally dragged Spivac down to the canvas with him where he attempted to look for a series of chokes as well as a scarf hold but he just couldn’t lock on any submissions before the round came to a close.

After some striking exchanges on the feet to start round two, Oleinik ended up pulling Spivac down on top of him in order to bring the fight into his world. While Spivac was careful not to allow Oleinik to grab onto any of his limbs, he seemed comfortable dropping elbows and punches from the top without giving up his position.

Spivac did make an ill-fated attempt at a late anaconda choke, which Oleinik escaped and then locked on another scarf hold just before time ran out again.

The submission attempts and surviving on the ground left Oleinik gassed as the final round began as Spivac was able to really begin teeing off with his punches. One glancing blow opened a cut on the side of Oleinik’s head that saw blood begin pouring down the side of his face.

While it was never pretty, Spivac continued to dish out ground and pound after the fight hit the canvas and that’s exactly where the action stayed until the final horn sounded.

Spivac has now won three fights in a row as he continues his climb up the heavyweight ranks while Oleinik drops to 0-3 in his past three performances inside the octagon.