Athletes
Daniil Donchenko | Seeking Beautiful Destruction
Emerging Welterweight Values Entertaining Above All, Aims To Do Just That Saturday
Daniil Donchenko knows the adjustments he should make each time he heads into battle inside the Octagon, but there is something primal inside of the recent Ultimate Fighter welterweight tournament winner that clicks on each time he crosses that threshold and wades into the fray against another man.
“I just should not load from the first 15 seconds,” Donchenko said with an easy smile when asked the greatest takeaway from his 15-minute fight with Alex Morono earlier this year. “I should be more patient. I have enough time to finish the guys. I should not hunt for a knockout from the beginning because I have everything (needed) to knock these guys out.
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“I should be a little but more patient and smarter, and then I will finish the guy,” he added. “Maybe not in the first 30 seconds, but in the first three minutes.”
Knowing what to do and actually doing it are two different things, and as Donchenko gets the opportunity to put his new ideas into practice this weekend in Baku, Azerbaijan, where he takes on short-notice newcomer Theodor Berggren in a preliminary card pairing, even he’s unsure as to whether or not he’ll be able to dial back his desire to chase excitement and violence and be a more patient fighter.
“I will do the same: I will step (forward), I will put pressure, try to fight, and I will hit him; it will be everything the same, just a little smarter; nothing will change,” he said. “I will be looking for a finish. I will be looking for a violent knockout; that’s how I fight.
“Even if right now I am thinking, ‘Do like this, do like that,’ once I will step inside the Octagon, and my body will just do it.”
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That self-awareness is sound for a 24-year-old, and there is only one thing that Donchenko wants when he steps into the Octagon: violence.
Throughout his career, the Tiger Muay Thai representative has been an all-action fighter who chases engagement and delivers exciting performances for the fans. Even when he was sequestered in the TUF house and working his way through the competition at the Meta APEX, the Team Cormier representative was actively looking to make things nasty by utilizing elbows with great effectiveness and growing increasingly happy and engaged once there was blood on the canvas and painted on both his and his opponent’s bodies.
Daniil Donchenko Fight Week Interview | UFC Baku
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Daniil Donchenko Fight Week Interview | UFC Baku
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“It’s my job and how I should know that I do my job (well) is the fans,” Donchenko said. “I can see their reaction: if they love it, they love how I fight, they wait for my fights, it means I do my job pretty good. That’s why it’s important to me is because I want to do my job really good, and I want to keep rising, going higher and higher. Highlights is one of the ways I can go there faster, so I should create more highlights.
“If I will fight — not maybe with this opponent, because this opponent, I should beat him with one eye closed,” he said. “But maybe if I fight with someone, top 15 or my level opponent, for me, I prefer to do Fight of the Year, take the bonus, but I will lose this fight more than I will fight, and people will 'boo' all of the fight, but the matchmaker will hate me.”
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So it goes: highlight reel win, Fight of the Night loss, and then everything else, with a tepid, uninspired victory resting at the bottom of the hierarchy and standing in direct contrast to the way the emerging welterweight wants to fight.
And after putting in a full training camp at Tiger Muay Thai alongside headliner Rafael Fiziev, Donchenko is eager to get back to his vicious, menacing ways on Saturday when he welcomes Berggren to the biggest stage in the sport.
“I feel much better with the weather, recovery, training,” he said. “I was there the past four years, and I know everything. I feel a really big difference when I prepare in Vegas than when I prepare in Thailand. I did more hard training in Thailand, and I feel fresher, so it’s good for me in Thailand.
“He’s a little bit older than me, but I have much more experience, much harder fights in my career,” continued Donchenko, shifting his attention to Berggren, who stepped in for compatriot Andreas Gustafsson. “I won The Ultimate Fighter, where it was only young and hungry fighters who want to win this tournament.
“Gustafsson was a more experienced guy; he had some wars he had passed already, so this is kind of easier challenge for me, I think, but let’s see how it will be in the fight.”
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Amped up by the opportunity to compete alongside Fiziev — an experience he called a “dream come true” when asked about it ahead of his debut last year — Donchenko knows the key to having success and potentially collecting that bonus he covets is to slow things down and just let everything come to him.
If he does that, the highlight reel finish he’s seeking should materialize.
“This weekend, I just should relax, and my body will do everything,” he said with a smile. “I’m ready. I have so many things I can do during the fight — I have Plan A, B, C, D, and if I just relax, I will feel everything, and I will rise.
“I will show an amazing show. It will be so beautiful, not just going crazy and swinging hooks; I can finish him in a really beautiful way.”
UFC Fight Night: Fiziev vs Torres took place live from National Gymnastics Arena in Baku, Azerbaijan on June 27, 2026. See the final Prelim & Main Card Results, Official Scorecards and Who Won Bonuses - and relive the action on UFC FIGHT PASS!
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