Fighting out of his hometown of Sofia, Bulgaria, Blagoi Ivanov is a relatively green - but very intriguing heavyweight prospect currently signed to the Japanese promotion World Victory Road (Sengoku). A highly regarded judoka and sambo practitioner by trade, Ivanov shocked much of the mixed martial arts community in 2008 when he defeated four time Sambo World Champion, and the man widely considered to be the greatest mixed martial artist in the history of the sport - Fedor Emelianenko, en route to winning the 2008 Combat Sambo World Championships. Given his strong sambo and judo grappling background, it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Ivanov is capable of taking the fight to the ground and controlling his opponents from the top with a wide variety of trips, takedowns and throws at his disposal (see sambo match with Emelianenko below). As his bout with Kazuyuki Fujita showed (see below), Ivanov is still extremely raw and will need to greatly improve his guard game as he showed no discernable offense, was controlled on the ground and had his guard easily passed by Fujita when he was fighting off his back. Ivanov has also not showed much of his sambo skill in his early MMA career and it's slightly concerning that he had difficulties in defending against Fujita's takedown attempts, and will definitely need to continue working on his all-around grappling ability.

Although his technical striking skills couldn't be considered anything more than extremely basic at this stage in his career, Ivanov has displayed some good natural tools on his feet, which with further refining could make him a respected striker in the future. Ivanov does get reckless and wild with his striking; he tends to keep his hands low and throwing wild, looping "arm" punches, but at the same time is not averse to keeping the fight standing and has shown a definite willingness to stand and trade as he showed in his fight with Fujita. Ivanov showed he has good raw punching power in dropping Fujita - who's notorious for his iron jaw with a flurry of punches in the first round of their fight, and then continued to pepper him with hooks, crosses and uppercuts with his left hand leaving Fujita's face bruised, bloodied and swollen. Ivanov also displayed tremendous heart in the bout as it was revealed afterwards that he had broken both his hands on Fujita's head, but it had gone completely unnoticed as he had continued to punch throughout the entire fight. Ivanov would greatly benefit from training at a camp that would be able to really focus on his technical striking abilities and he will also need to work on his conditioning and his overall game, but at 23 years of age he is still very much a rookie at this point in his career and should continue to improve as his he gains experience and moves forward.