UFC Fight Night 123 Betting Tips, Picks and Predictions

UFC Fight Night 123 is a card packed full of fighters young in their UFC careers or fighters making their UFC debuts. We often see fight cards with this structure taking place in Europe and Asia, but we rarely see them in the United States.

This type of event will be a challenge for bookies and myself because we will both have to spend a lot of time familiarising ourselves with the athletes competing at UFC Fight Night 123. I promise you that I will work extremely hard to hunt for gold and identify solid prefight betting opportunities.

I will also be working extremely hard to learn as much as I can about each of these fighters so that we can use this knowledge to make money in Live Betting.

Please leave a comment at the bottom of this post to let me know how you feel about my betting tips for UFC Fight Night 123.

Gabriel Benitez vs Jason Knight Betting Tip and Prediction

Jason Knight is the kind of fighter that I love to bet on because win or lose he always shows up and fights to his full potential. Knight has plenty of holes in his skillset, but what he lacks in ability, he more than makes up for in heart.

Jason Knight is branded as a wild brawler, but his grappling is where he shines. Over the last 2 years Knight has developed strong wrestling that enables him to take his opponent’s down and put them in all kinds of trouble with his high-level Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Having studied all of Knight’s recent fights, I firmly believe that he is the best in the UFC at taking the back of an opponent. He can take his opponent’s down, move to the back and trap them in a body triangle before they even have time to process what is happening. This makes him a nightmare to deal with because he can put you in a terrible position before you even have time to think about defending.

Gabriel Benitez is a well-rounded fighter with a world-class kicking game, but his takedown defense isn’t great, and he doesn’t respond well to pressure. This makes him a good matchup for Knight, who likes to fight at a high pace and walk his opponent’s down for 15 minutes. If you go back and watch any of Benitez’s fights, you’ll see that he has poor takedown defense and gives up his back when trying to scramble back to his feet. This is suicide against a high-level grappler like Knight who can take your back and lock in a body triangle if you give him the slightest opening.

When it comes to striking, Benitez can cause Knight big problems because his kicks are nasty and Knight doesn’t have the best striking defense. However… Benitez lacks 1 punch KO power and Knight is extremely difficult to put away. Even if Benitez badly hurts Knight, it is unlikely he’ll be able to do enough to win the fight by KO or TKO because Knight is simply too tough to go down without a fight.

I expect the standup exchanges between Knight and Benitez to be competitive and Benitez’s leg kicks will be enough to make us sweat this bet early on, but eventually, Knight will start to use his grappling, and when that happens I believe he’ll dominate.

Benitez does not have good enough takedown defense to keep this fight standing and Knight has the skills to dominate him on the ground. At the current odds of around 1.37 | -270 | 37/100 I believe Knight is a decent bet.

Reasons for betting on Jason Knight