His excitement over hard sparring rounds with Fiziev, where they’ve been known to give each other matching black eyes, and his joy when recounting the “50k rounds” he’s logged at Syndicate in the build to this weekend’s bout with Morono feed into the second piece of what makes Donchenko a fascinating fighter to track in the 170-pound ranks.
Simply put, he’s aggressive and violent (in the best ways possible) and wants nothing more than to step into the Octagon and deliver the most exciting fights possible.
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This was evident during his run through The Ultimate Fighter, where he battered Richard Martins in the opening round before stopping Matt Dixon in the semifinals. In the finale against Rodrigo Sezinando, Donchenko continued to showcase his attacking style and penchant for using his elbows expertly, as the moment he cut his fellow Team Cormier representative was the beginning of the end for the Brazilian.
“When I arrived at The Ultimate Fighter, they asked me, ‘What can you say about your fighting style?’ and I tell them, ‘I don’t know? I just want to put a lot of damage on my opponents,’” Donchenko said excitedly, addressing his approach and the obvious enjoyment he gets from being in blood-soaked battles. “There is blood, there is a lot of damage, and I know how it looks from the side when you’re full of blood, your opponent full of blood.
“When somebody cuts me too, I’m not going ‘Oh I’m bleeding;’ I get more excited like ‘I am bleeding! It will look sick!’” he added, happier than a child on Christmas that got everything on the wish list. “I’m just so excited, and the fans, the people watching, get so excited, and they make me fight the way that I fight because they will talk about this for my fights. They will say, ‘This guy is a beast. This guy is a big problem. He’s really savage.’”
