Azamat Murzakanov had the same night in Abu Dhabi that he had against Paulo Costa. The fact that it keeps happening is the story Dominick Reyes handed us at UFC 333.
Reyes finished him by KO, head kick and punches, at 2:40 of the opening round on the prelims. He worked behind his kicks, caught Murzakanov up high, dropped him with a left hand, and finished with strikes on the floor. The replay complicates the highlight a little: the kick landed, but Reyes briefly lost his own balance and stumbled toward the canvas while Murzakanov stayed upright and came after him. Reyes had to reset his feet before the finishing left hand landed. One kick alone might not have put anybody out. Reyes needed a second chance, and he took it. He found the opening and had the composure to finish it, exactly what a fighter trying to climb back into contention needs to show.
Line it up next to April. Costa beat Murzakanov at UFC 327, a TKO by head kick in the third, the first loss of a previously unbeaten career. Costa got there by softening him with body kicks before switching upstairs. Murzakanov has now been finished in back-to-back fights, both times by a kicking game, both times finished high after being worn down. Two different opponents, same opening, same finish. When the same weapon beats you twice in a row, it's a hole in his game.
One loss shouldn't bury anyone, but this fight is the sequel to the Costa loss. Murzakanov came in ranked No. 8 to Reyes's No. 6, carrying a loss and left with another, and he's 37 in a division that doesn't wait around for slow fixes. He looked hesitant, like a man fighting the memory of the last kick that hurt him rather than the opponent in front of him. That caution feeds the flaw. You can't out-wait a striker like Reyes while flinching at the thing he's already decided to throw.
Reyes is doing the only thing that matters at this stage of a comeback: beating the live finishers and surviving the ones who've already beaten him. He's 17-5 with double-digit knockouts, and his only loss in his recent run came to Carlos Ulberg, who now holds the light heavyweight belt. That Ulberg knockout is roughly a year old, and Reyes has gone 2-0 since, a decision over Johnny Walker and now this. He called out Paulo Costa or Khalil Rountree Jr. next, both reasonable asks. The division has thinned out near the top, and Reyes is making a real case to be one of the names fighting over what's left.
The responsibility is on Murzakanov. He walked into the same finish twice because the adjustment Costa demanded of him never came, and Reyes was sharp and patient enough to collect on it. Murzakanov can still have a long career somewhere, maybe even a division down. But the question of whether that head-kick vulnerability is real has an answer now, and a rematch wouldn't change it. He's been handed the blueprint to his own undoing twice.
