Dumas is probably going to get his ass beat. I wanted to believe in him after his DWCS performance, but he wouldn't be the first person by far to smash their opponent on Contender Series and then totally flame out in the UFC proper. We've had lots of those over the years. He had a decent amateur record, but was an absolute can-crusher at the regional pro level until he got to, like, his last opponent or two prior to joining the UFC. His performances inside the UFC have not endeared him to me. He got badly out-hustled and submitted by Josh Fremd who is... a decidedly average unranked Middleweight. He was also totally delusional after that fight with his whole "He knows I beat him nine times out of ten" silliness. To his credit, he's put together two wins since then, but the first involved Cody Brundage (and his legendary low fight IQ) jumping guillotine to hand the fight to Dumas on a silver platter while the second was a razor-thin low-output Decision against Abu Azaitar where both guys seemed hesitant to engage one another. His fundamentals have improved and I think he's very willing to learn and to do whatever it takes to win a fight, but the "super-athlete finishing machine" that was initially advertised seems to have evaporated and instead he's barely scraping by some fairly bottom-of-the-barrel competition in these spots.
On the other hand, Ruziboev just picked up a really good win over Ferreira. Even if we assume he "got lucky" and caught Brunno on the button (a premise I reject, but we'll roll with it), Ruziboev is still a dude with an insane amount of pro experience with a very high finish rate. Don't get me wrong, Ruzi has also crushed a shit-ton of cans (in addition to killing can-crushers), but it doesn't take much effort to find that the guy has some very legitimate wins on his record other than Ferreira. Ruziboev is historically hard to finish and is very good at finding finishes of his own. And while Dumas has recently embraced the ability to go out and stay safe while winning Decisions, I just don't see him out-hustling someone like Ruziboev. I think he'll get caught and likely submitted at some point.
