Bellator 222 Betting Tips, Picks and Predictions

We took a small loss on our prefight bets last weekend at UFC 238, but we’re still in profit for the month thanks to our winning bet on UFC Stockholm. We now turn our attention towards Bellator 222 on Friday night to help us get back on the horse. I will put just as much time and effort into researching Bellator 222 as I do every card, but with a smaller number of matchups, I can’t guarantee we’ll have any bets. I’ll do my best to find something, but if there’s no value I won’t force bets.

Last weekend’s performance on prefight betting was disappointing, but we made up for it in Live Betting by banking another profit. We have now made a profit in Live Betting on the last 13 consecutive UFC events. Can we take that streak to 20 straight wins? Why not? Remember that WE DON’T TAKE LOSSES!!!

Live Betting on Bellator 222 kicks off this weekend at 3 am British Time on Friday Night / Saturday morning. The countdown clock on the Live Betting Page should display the exact start time for your time zone.

Please understand that Bellator Live Betting is only available on a small number of betting websites like BetDSI, Bet365 and William Hill, so you won’t be able to tail my live bets if you don’t have an account at one of these websites. It is also important to remember that Live Betting on Bellator has a lot less liquidity than Live Betting on UFC. This may mean that odds decline or become suspended faster than usual.

Patrick Mix vs Ricky Bandejas Betting Tip and Prediction

A lot of people are taking an interest in Bellator 222 within the MMA community, but remember that the people who will be betting on this event are hardcore MMA fans. 95% of people who watch and bet on the UFC will not care about Bellator 222. For this reason, liquidity will be much lower on Bellator than it will be on the UFC, and that can lead to sudden shifts in the odds.

The odds have been improving on Ricky Bandejas all week from an opening line of around 1.50 | -200 up to around the current odds of 1.80 | -125. I’ve seen a lot of people online say that they are betting Patrick Mix in this fight, so it’s very possible that the odds on Bandejas will continue to improve. The problem we have is that the odds seem quite off because Bandejas should be a much bigger favorite. With many people betting Mix this weekend there’s a good chance that Bandejas’ odds will continue to improve, but I don’t want to play Russian Roulette and hold off betting him because liquidity is so low on Bellator 222 that his odds could crash at any time. I would rather lock in a bet on him now when we know we are getting value and then if his odds improve, so be it. It’s better to get your money into a strong position than be greedy and risk completely missing out on the opportunity to lock in a solid bet. I hope this makes sense. I just want to illustrate this point so that you don’t become annoyed if you lock in a bet on Bandejas, only to see his odds continue to improve throughout the rest of the week.

After studying footage of both Bandejas and Mix, I can tell you that the odds feel very off in this fight. I believe that the opening odds were very accurate capping Bandejas as around a 1.50 | -200 favorite. I believe that people are betting Mix because on the surface this looks like a striker vs. grappler matchup and Bandejas lost his last fight against a grappler. Mix is undefeated and a “strong” grappler training out of Jackson’s MMA, so on paper he looks like a good bet.

To Wikicappers and people who don’t understand the intricacies of grappling positions this may look like a tough fight for Bandejas, but remember that the devil is in the detail and just because a fighter has struggled against one type of grappler, it does not mean that they will struggle against ALL types of grapplers. RDA vs Kevin Lee and RDA vs Kamaru Usman are great examples of this.

Ricky Bandejas is a young, hungry, tough fighter with a good chin and cardio for days. He’s primarily a striker, but he can hold his own on the ground too. This isn’t surprising when you take into consideration the fact that he is training partners with Frankie Edgar, Zabit Magomedsharipov, Timur Valiev, Marlon Moraes, Corey Anderson, Claudia Gadelha, Edson Barboza and Eddie Alvarez.

Ricky Bandejas lost his last fight to Juan Archuleta, but within that fight, he demonstrated excellent takedown defense and MMA grappling. Archuleta is a much more skilled grappler than Patrick Mix, and yet Bandejas was able to pop right back up to his feet every time Archuleta took him down. He also worked very hard to quickly break the grip and prevent Archuleta from establishing dominant positions. Even though he lost that fight, you could see that Bandejas has high MMA grappling IQ and he always finds a way to quickly pop back to his feet when he does get taken down.

Patrick Mix is primarily a grappler, but there are different levels to grappling, and Mix is not that high of a level. His takedown entries are predictable and often above hip height, and he gives his opponents a lot of time and space to get underhooks in place and stuff takedowns. He also frequently gives up position chasing long shot submissions, and he’s a low-level striker.

I never like to judge fighters based on their MMA record, but I’ve watched all of Mix’s recent fights and they did confirm my suspicion. This guy’s record is very padded. KOTC is a promotion notorious for filling their cards with extremely low-level fighters, and this has meant Mix has been able to build an impressive 10-0 record by fighting absolute bums. All his recent fights are available to watch online. I recommend checking them out to see for yourself. Here is his record:

Based on what I’ve seen in their past fights, I believe that Ricky Bandejas can keep the majority of this fight standing and comfortably win a Kickboxing match. I don’t expect him to dominate the fight because Mix is tough, but at the current odds, I feel that there’s value.

Please remember that liquidity is low on Bellator betting so the odds may decline very fast on Bandejas. You will also find that not all betting websites will list odds for Bellator and some won’t list odds until fight day. You will also find that the odds can differ dramatically from betting site to betting site. I know that this is not ideal, but unfortunately, this is the environment that we have to work with. It’s better for me to put out some bets for promotions like this and help a few people make money than not to help anybody at all. I hope you understand.

Reasons for betting on Ricky Bandejas

Eduardo Dantas vs Juan Archuleta Betting Tip and Prediction

I pride myself on giving you a very honest assessment of the fights that we bet on, so I don’t want to sugar coat things for this betting tip…

Whenever you bet on Eduardo Dantas, it’s going to be a sweat. He is a frustrating fighter who lacks urgency, fights passively and will often completely flake out, setting fire to your money in the process.

Dantas is an infuriating fighter to bet on, but he’s also an excellent fighter, which is the reason why I recommend taking a gamble on him to beat Juan Archuleta at odds of around 2.80 | +180 | 9/5. I need to make it very clear that this is a risky bet because Dantas has no urgency and sometimes underperforms in a big way. If you struggle to deal with losing or cannot understand that fighters are complex athletes that sometimes underperform, then please do not tail me on this bet. I feel like there’s excellent value on Dantas, but that doesn’t mean he’ll win. There’s no right or wrong when it comes to this fight. Only strong positions and weak positions and at the current odds Dantas is a very strong position. Hopefully, he comes through for us. The only thing certain about this matchup is that he’ll have us shouting at our TVs and sweating the judge’s decision…

In terms of technique, Eduardo Dantas is probably in the top 5 best Bantamweights in the world. On his day he’d give guys like Marlon Moraes, Henry Cejudo, Cody Garbrandt, and Aljamain Sterling huge problems. Unfortunately, Dantas does not have the fight IQ to match his high-level skills, which means he always gets himself into close matchups because he lacks urgency and makes poor choices in fights where he almost always has the technical advantage.

Juan Archuleta is a stereotypical Wrestle Boxer with average grappling. If he can’t take his opponents down, he really struggles to put his stamp on rounds because he’s a low-level striker. This makes Dantas a difficult stylistic matchup for him because Dantas is almost impossible to take down and even harder to hold down. Archuleta really struggled to take down and hold down Ricky Bandejas in his last fight, which means it’s unlikely he’ll be able to cause Dantas any problems with his wrestling.

Eduardo Dantas has trained at Nova Uniao for almost his entire MMA career. Nova Uniao is a gym famous for producing fighters with superhuman takedown defense such as Jose Aldo, Renan Barao, Claudia Gadelha, Junior Dos Santos, Hacran Dias, and the list goes on and on. Dantas is no different. He has gravity defying takedown defense, and if he does get taken down, he can usually immediately pop back up to his feet.

Even if Archuleta can get Dantas down, there won’t be a picnic waiting for him on the ground because Dantas is a super high-level Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt. If this fight does go to the ground, it’s possible that Dantas uses his more technical MMA grappling to dominate.

Standing up is where Dantas has a massive advantage over Archuleta. If this fight stays standing, it should be a very easy fight for Dantas.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Dantas is significantly better than Archuleta in every single aspect of MMA. Skill for skill he can dominate this fight and cruise to an easy win, but Dantas is one of those infuriating fighters who you can’t trust.

Remember when we bet Jose Aldo to beat Alexander Volkanovski last month and instead of fighting to his full potential he decided to get into a 15-minute staring contest? Well, it was an abnormally tentative performance from Aldo, but Dantas shows up and does that kind of thing a lot. That’s why he’s never a safe bet…

If both guys were to show up and perform to their full potential, I’d cap Dantas as having an 80% to 90% chance of winning this fight because of just how damn good he is. But because you can never trust him to show up and perform to his full potential, the best I can cap him at here is 50%.

That might sound overly risky to you, but remember that the key to making money in this game is to put your money in strong positions consistently. If you keep putting money into strong positions, over the long term you will make a profit. The current implied probability on Dantas to win at the current odds of around 2.80 | +180 | 9/5 is just 36%, and I give him AT LEAST a 50% chance of winning this fight. This means that if we bet him at the current odds, we’re getting a very generous 14% margin over the betting sites. I don’t know whether Dantas will win this fight or not, but I do know that this is an excellent value bet. Please don’t tail this bet if you hate losing, but if you’re with me for the long haul, I recommend coming along for this ride. Trust me when I tell you that Dantas is a great bet at the current odds. He’ll probably make us sweat. But I’m hoping he can come through for us.

Reasons for betting on Eduardo Dantas