Welcome to the UFC Alan Jouban

Fortunately for me, the UFC hasn't taken it upon themselves to sign every available prospect on the market this week, leaving a little more time to focus on just who they have picked up. Namely, former RFA welterweight Alan Jouban, who was made an official part of the roster on Tuesday, July 8th with the announced fight between him and Seth Baczynski at UFC Fight Night: Bader vs. St. Preux on August 16th in Bangor, Maine.

Who is Alan Jouban?

The 31-year old Black House and 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu product, Alan Jouban makes his way to the UFC with a 9-2 record built recently on a strong stint with the Resurrection Fighting Alliance. His only career losses have come to good regional prospects in Chidi Njokuani and current UFC fighter Mike Rhodes. Apart from his quality losses, he has quality wins over Ricky Legere Jr., former Strikeforce and UFC fighter Chris Spang,

What you should expect:

Jouban has a strong and diverse kicking game at distance, but can be a bit overly patient when looking for opportunities to strike. His bout against Mike Rhodes also showed some problems with his takedown game and perhaps, an over-willingness to work out of his guard to generate offense. He's shown some real power in the clinch when he gets the opportunity to work there and is a much better dirty boxer than he is using his hands at range.

What this means for his debut:

It's tough to say, in some ways Jouban and Baczynski are very similar fighters. They both do their best work with their hands inside, their both willing to take the fight to the ground from the top or the bottom and work for submissions (although Baczynski has shown himself to be a much more potent grappler to this point), and neither man has looked terribly great at the using wrestling to transition between their two disciplines. I'd say that Jouban is probably the better outside striker with his kicking game, but Baczynski has proven himself to be tough as nails and acquitted himself well against Thiago Alves in a loss. I'd give Baczynski the edge here, just on experience and steady improvement, but Jouban should be an exciting matchup.

To get us better acquainted, here's footage from his fight with Mike Rhodes: