Bellator 214 Betting Picks, Tips and Predictions

There’s no UFC this weekend, so our attention turns to Bellator where Fedor and Ryan Bader compete for the vacant Bellator Heavyweight title in the final of the Heavyweight Grand Prix.

It is also likely that Bet365 and William Hill will be offering Live Betting on these fights. I don’t provide Live Betting Tips for non-UFC MMA events for two reasons:

1. Bellator fights are not televised where I live in the UK, so I would have to rely on an illegal stream to watch the fights. Streams are usually 1 or 2 minutes behind the televised broadcast which means I would be acting on old information when recommending Live Bets. This is a bad idea because I would be making decisions and trying to gauge value in the odds on information that is out of date.

2. Liquidity is extremely low on Live Betting Bellator. This means that if I were to recommend a bet the odds would quickly decline or become suspended as soon as a small number of you would try to place the same bet as me.

Hopefully, sometime this year liquidity on Bellator Live Betting will significantly improve when European betting sites potentially start to offer their services to customers in the United States. I’ll be sure to keep you posted on any news which may change the Live Betting landscape for Bellator.

Fedor Emelianenko vs Ryan Bader Betting Tip and Prediction

A few days ago Ryan Bader was a 1.27 | -370 | 27/100 favorite to beat Fedor Emelianenko. Those odds would give Bader an implied probability of 79%, which I feel is pretty accurate. Since then Bader’s odds have improved to 1.41 | -244 | 41/100, which give us a decent 9% to 10% margin on where I cap this fight.

In Fedor’s last fight against Chael Sonnen, we saw him repeatedly give up easy takedowns and end up in bad positions on the ground. Under strange circumstances Sonnen randomly gave up these dominant positions, prompting a large group of people in the MMA community to question whether the fight was fixed:

Ryan Bader has been able to use his high-level wrestling and powerful double leg takedowns to dominate the majority of his opponents in Bellator, and I don’t see Fedor being able to keep this fight standing for long enough to score a KO win.

Fedor is going to come out extremely aggressive and try to finish Bader quickly and violently in the 1st round. In the early stages of this fight Bader is in real danger, but past that he should be able to cruise to a dominant win. If Bader can weather this early storm, it should be a comfortable night’s work for him.

If I thought that Fedor had the cardio to continue to be dangerous in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th rounds then there’s no way I would be betting against him, but his 2016 fight against Fabio Maldonado suggests that Fedor’s gas tank is not what it used to be:

Fedor also spoke this week about how injuries are becoming a problem for him and how he plans to retire very soon:

It’s a huge red flag when a fighter starts to talk about retirement because mentally they already have one foot out the door. It’s often a sign that they are not committed to fighting anymore.

Fedor is very dangerous early in the fight when he’s still fresh enough to land a KO shot, but after 3 or 4 minutes he should be too tired to stuff Bader’s takedowns. There is a genuine possibility that Fedor will KO Bader early, so if you don’t feel comfortable with that, please don’t tail this bet. On the flipside; Fedor repeatedly gave up easy takedowns in his last fight against Chael Sonnen and Bader is a much stronger wrestler than Sonnen. A bet on Bader currently gives us a 41% return on our money, which I personally feel is an outstanding return. Fedor could KO Bader, but it’s much, much, much more likely that Bader takes Fedor down and grinds him out, eventually winning via TKO ground and pound. Bader’s not a rock-solid bet, but in this instance, I do feel like the risk is worth the reward. Tail at your own risk.

Reasons for betting on Ryan Bader