Las Vegas — Light heavyweight Nikita Krylov’s knockout of Modestas Bukauskas at UFC 324 was a buzzer beater that saw him shake a considerably large monkey off his back.
Krylov (31-11) landed the knockout blow at 4:57 of the third and final round. Just three seconds remained on the clock; “The Miner” in the process snapped a two-fight skid, earning his first victory since 2023.
Speaking with media outlets including Cageside Press following the fight, Krylov, 33, opened up about the struggles he’s endured in recent years.
“This actually has been the hardest three years probably of my entire life. First, there was an injury and a surgery, then the recovery, then this one thing I forgot, what was it called? Oh yeah, depression,” the former heavyweight stated. “But it’s not there anymore, that’s why I forgot about what it’s called. And then after that, I was so eager and so hungry to come back to the winning column that I bolted into these two matches, I bolted into these two fights. And I think I lost not specifically because of lack of skills or not knowing how to crack these opponents, but because mentally I wasn’t in the right place.”
Prior to the Bukauskas win, Krylov had been knocked out by both Dominick Reyes and Bogdan Guskov. In terms of any mental turning point, he believes that didn’t happen until he was in the octagon on Saturday. Krylov also expanded on the changes he’d made ahead of fight, and why he pulled the trigger.
“Because the mood swings or the emotional swings that happen with you after those type of losses that I experienced, those two losses,” stated Krylov. “Before those two, I’d never even been knocked down before. But this time around I lost twice, and both knockouts. So that’s a huge thing mentally for me to get over.”
“So a lot of things changed, I changed a lot of things after those two losses. You start asking yourself ‘what’s wrong? Is this time? What is it?'” Krylov changed his team, his gym, and his head coach. “There’s a lot of things that I changed. I can’t say that I specifically executed the entirety of the plan that the team had for me, that the coach had for me, but I think with a win like this, I think at least let’s say four stars out of five I must have received.”
Pretty high marks to be sure. And the win over Bukauskas comes almost 13 years to the day of Nikita Krylov’s first victory under the UFC banner.
“Tomorrow is the 25th of January which is an anniversary for me, because exactly on that date 13 years ago was my first and quickest victory in the UFC. It was a 13-second knockout of Walt Harris. And then today, just the day before that date 13 years later, I get a victory also by knockout, but the longest fight that led to a knockout in my career.”
Watch the full UFC 324 post-fight press conference with Nikita Krylov above.
