5 Things You Might Not Know About Roman Kopylov

Roman Kopylov needs to establish a foothold in the Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight division before the opportunity he long sought slips through his hands.

The heavy-handed sambo practitioner will square off with Alessio Di Chirico in a featured UFC Fight Night 209 attraction this Saturday at Accor Arena in Paris, where neither man can afford another misstep. Kopylov enters the Octagon on the heels of back-to-back losses. He has not competed since he was outpointed to a three-round unanimous decision by former Absolute Championship Berkut titleholder Albert Duraev at UFC 267 on Oct. 30.

As Kopylov approaches his critical confrontation with Di Chirico at 185 pounds, here are five things you might not know about him:

1. Harsh realities are not foreign to him.

Kopylov was born on May 4, 1991 in Kemerovo, Russia—a city in southern Siberia where temperatures can plunge as low as -55°F during the brutal winters. Home to 550,000-plus people, it has given rise to a number of professional athletes. They include former WBC flyweight boxing champion Yuri Arbachakov and Vyacheslav Ivanenko, a race walker who struck gold at the 1988 Summer Olympics.

2. His early returns opened some eyes.

The twice-beaten middleweight won his first eight bouts as a pro, seven of them finishes. Kopylov made his debut under the World Combat Self-Defense Association banner in 2016 and took a three-round unanimous decision from Felipe Salvador Nsue Ayiugono. He then rattled off seven straight victories by knockout or technical knockout before landing in the UFC.

3. He educated himself inside and outside the cage.

Kopylov, who idolized former Pride Fighting Championships titleholder Fedor Emelianenko while rising through the mixed martial arts ranks himself, holds the Master of Sport designation in hand-to-hand combat and earned economics and physical education degrees from Kemerovo State University and the Novokuznetsk Institute.

4. He was once a big fish in a small pond.

The 31-year-old Russian remains one of only three men who have captured the Fight Nights Global middleweight championship. Abusupyan Alikhanov and Vladimir Mineev are the others. Kopylov laid claim to the title when he prompted a fourth-round corner stoppage against Alikhanov at FNG 85 on March 30, 2018 and retained it on one occasion—he cut down Yasubey Enomoto with a punch to the body in the fourth round of their FNG 91 pairing some nine months later—prior to vacating the throne to sign with the UFC.

5. Sturdy defense contributed to his rise.

Kopylov has only been finished once in his 10-fight career. He bowed to a third-round rear-naked choke from Dana White’s Contender Series graduate Karl Roberson as part of the UFC Fight Night 163 undercard on Nov. 9, 2019.