Edmonton, Alberta hosts this week’s UFC Fight Night production where an exuberant crowd, the larger 30’ Octagon and fourteen scheduled mixed martial arts fights will exhilarate fight fans. Preliminary action begins at 2pm PT.
Last week favorites continued their record setting pace by realizing an 11-2 result pushing favorites to 301-125-13 or 68.5%. This is as high a favorite rate as I have ever witnessed in my twenty plus years of chasing UFC underdogs!
Digital results were reduced by a unit with Kamzat Chimaev’s destruction of Rober Whittaker. Results this year stand 24-22 +7.65u despite the chalk parade thus far in 2024.
Brandon Moreno -150 vs. Amir Albazi +130 Flyweight (125lbs.) main event
This main event pits the number two ranked flyweight against its number three ranked athlete.
Albazi, an Iraqi purple belt in BJJ is 17-1 and ranked third in the division. Albazi is a furiously paced striker/grappler who has finished fourteen of his seventeen previous opponents.
After competing against nominally ranked fighters in the division Albazi stepped up in class in his last fight which was June of 2023 to squeak out an oh so close decision against Kai Kara France. I can tell readers that most everyone who viewed the fight scored it for France as did nineteen of twenty-one press attendees.
Brandon Moreno is a Mexican hero for being the first to capture a UFC title for Mexico.
He’s put himself through a torrid pace over the last seven years or so fighting the who’s who of the division and besting all comers save for a recent loss to Brandon Royval that convinced Moreno to go away for some time to refresh his mind in order to allow his body to recuperate and the ‘fight’ in him to be reinvigorated.
Moreno is the number two ranked fighter in the division. He’s the taller man by two inches with the same amount of reach advantage and he’s a year younger than Albazzi.
Size, experience, depth of competition faced, and well-rounded mixed martial arts aptitude all point me to Moreno in this five-round fight.
Total in this fight is 4.5Rds. Over -200
Mike Malott -240 vs. Trevin Giles +195 Welterweight (170lbs.)
Low hanging fruit.
Trevin Giles is a journeyman welterweight talent that has been given incredibly difficult fights recently. After a victory against a similarly versed foe, he has been finished by two absolute killers.
Giles is a former police officer, so he always earns my respect, but he’s been exposed to dangerous more pedigreed athletes in those last two bouts where one who submitted him then the next knocked him out.
Now he is assigned a date this Saturday to face a Canadian killer who was exposed in his last fight and is ready for a major bounce.
Mike Malott is the former top fifteen athlete in the division before Nel Magny, the current number fifteen finished him in Toronto in January. Now he gets a return fight, in Canada and against an athlete that seems ideally placed there.
This is a poor, poor spot for Giles as the UFC seems to be set on allowing Malott every opportunity to matriculate his way back into the welterweight rankings.
Malott -240
Total in this fight: 1.5Rds Over -140
Lean Over
Jhonata Diniz -180 vs. Derrick Lewis +155 Heavyweight (265lbs.)
Two ships passing in the night?
Diniz is a brazen Brazilian heavyweight. At 8-0 he’s shown himself to be a fast, powerful striker as he has KO’d seven of his eight professional victims.
However, Diniz 2-0 in the UFC steps up aggressively here to face ‘the Black Beast’ Derrick Lewis so he understands this opportunity offers both high risk with high reward.
Lewis is the all-time KO king in the UFC. He is more athletic than most give him credit for and for six or seven minutes, provided any fight remains standing like this one figures to, Lewis is as dangerous a heavyweight fighter as there is.
There is a reason this fight is situated where it is!
Props are not out but the total is and it’s 1.5 Rds. Under -145 which leads me to believe that one of these two is getting dusted…
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Enjoy the hostilities and Thank You for reading.
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