UFC 221 Betting Tips, Picks and Predictions

Our losing bet on Tim Means at UFC Fight Night 125 last weekend derailed a strong winning streak that we had built up since the beginning of the year. Means did not look as sharp as he usually does on a night where almost all the non-Brazilians looked much flatter than usual. Despite his lackluster performance I still feel like he did enough to win, but unfortunately, the judges did not agree. This is especially disappointing because it was a big 5 unit bet and the vast majority of media members scored the fight in favor of Tim Means:

Leading up to UFC Fight Night 125 I spent most of the week in the Chat Room telling you guys that I thought it would be a bad event for Live Betting. Instead, we ended up banking another huge profit. UFC Fight Night 125 turned out to be one of our biggest winning nights in a long time. This is especially surprising because we didn’t place a single Live Bet until we were more than halfway through the card:

Initially, I thought that UFC 221 would be a good card for betting, but after finishing my main card research, I am not so sure. I am hoping that the prelims will present us with some good opportunities, but I am also conscious of the fact that we see much more variance and more unpredictable outcomes on the big PPV events. For some reason we more commonly see fighters underperform on the PPV cards, so I will need to feel extra confident in a specific fighter’s chances of winning before I pull the trigger on them.

Curtis Blaydes vs Mark Hunt Betting Tip and Prediction

I’ve been agonizing over the fight between Curtis Blaydes and Mark Hunt all week, because I do believe that Blaydes will win, but I can’t justify betting on him at the current odds. The implied probability on his odds right now are approximately 62%, and if I am truly honest with myself, I don’t give him much more of a chance than this of winning.

Blaydes is an exciting young prospect that I believe in time will develop into a top 5 Heavyweight, but right now he has big holes in his technique that could get him into trouble against a veteran like Mark Hunt. These holes were on full display in his fights against Daniel Omielanczuk and Francis Ngannou.

It’s easy to watch Blaydes’ in his fights against Aleksiy Oleinik and Adam Milstead and assume that he’s a good wrestler because he was able to take those guys down so easily and control them. The problem is, MMA is a complex sport and when you take a closer look at the grappling techniques that Blaydes uses you’ll notice very quickly that his wrestling is built upon grappling techniques that are ineffective against most top tier guys in the UFC’s Heavyweight division, including Mark Hunt.

If you go back and watch Blaydes in his matchups against Francis Ngannou and Daniel Omielanczuk, you’ll see that both guys were able to shut down his wrestling offense easily. Blaydes badly struggled to control both guys and neither Ngannou nor Omielanczuk are particularly strong grapplers. In the last few years, we’ve seen both guys struggle badly against wrestlers, so a big, strong, athletic guy like Blaydes should have had no trouble taking them down and controlling them on the ground. This was not the case, and both Omielanczuk and Ngannou were able to shut him down quite easily.

Blaydes has built up a reputation for being a strong wrestler by putting in dominant performances against Alexsey Oleinik and Adam Milstead, but both these guys were much easier challenges for Blaydes than most guys in the UFC. Oleinik, for example, is almost 40 years old and has badly injured knees. He is also a submission grappler with bad cardio, so he was more than happy to go to the ground with Blaydes. When Blaydes tried to take him down, he didn’t offer any resistance and didn’t even try to stuff the takedowns.

Milstead, on the other hand, took the fight on short notice, was making his UFC debut, had only fought a low level of opponent up until the point in time where he fought Blaydes and he also badly injured his knee in round 1.

The point I’m trying to make is…

Curtis Blaydes has only demonstrated strong wrestling in favorable matchups. As soon as he has fought someone with a moderate ability to defend takedowns he struggled.

So why is this?

The macro reasons could be a lack of confidence or a recurring back or knee injury, but the reasoning I lean more strongly towards is a lack of technique. If you go and watch Blaydes’ fights against Omielanczuk and Ngannou, you’ll notice that he shoots in for takedowns far too high above his opponent’s hips. This enables them to ground themselves, secure double underhooks, work back to the cage and defend the takedown.

This is a significant factor to take into consideration because Mark Hunt is EXTREMELY good at defending takedowns that come above hip height. He has an extremely strong core, and he’s very good at securing underhooks quickly, disengaging and circling out of danger. Blaydes’ past opponents have allowed him to tie them up and drive them to the cage or try to power through on a takedown attempt, but Hunt doesn’t play that game at all. Hunt treats any type of body contact like hot lava. As soon as you try to tie him up, he disengages and explodes out of the position and resets. This is one of the reasons why so many guys have struggled to take him down over the years. The only two opponent’s who have managed to take him down and control him on the ground was Brock Lesnar and Stipe Miocic.

So how did they do it? What makes their wrestling different to Curtis Blaydes?

If you go back and watch Hunt’s fights against Lesnar and Miocic, you’ll see that they were able to take Hunt down by shooting in deep on his hips, connecting their hands on a double leg and dragging him to the ground. Up until this point in his UFC career, we have not seen Blaydes use this takedown technique, and it almost cost him in his close fight against Daniel Omielanczuk. If he had used this kind of technique, he would have beaten Omielanczuk easily, who has also struggled to defend this kind of takedown in the past. Instead, he ended up being dragged into an awkward, scrappy fight.

Based on past performances I believe there’s a very good chance that this fight ends up in a close, awkward stand-up fight which could go either way. Unless Blaydes makes a major technical adjustment I don’t believe that he’ll be able to take Hunt down and based on Hunt’s recent performances I don’t believe he has the timing or reflexes to catch Blaydes with a KO strike.

For that reason, I feel more confident in predicting that this fight will go the distance than predicting who will win. Right now there’s not a major difference in the odds between betting on Blaydes to win or this fight to last longer than 1.5 rounds and I feel like the over 1.5 is a significantly safer bet.

Blaydes has not demonstrated KO power up until this point in his career and Hunt’s chin is legendary. We also know that in the unlikely event that Blaydes can get a takedown, Hunt can take an incredible beating on the ground, and he will not quit.

We have also seen that Blaydes has an incredible chin and Hunt’s reflexes, speed and timing appear to have declined significantly over the last couple of years. All of these factors and the huge size difference between both guys make it extremely unlikely that Hunt will win via flash KO. We have also seen Hunt start very slow in his fights over the last few years, which will help the clock tick down to the point in the fight where the over 1.5 rounds bet will cash in.

Anything can happen in MMA and finishes are obviously more likely to occur in the Heavyweight division, but based on how both these guys matchup, I do believe that this fight is very likely to go the distance, which makes the over 1.5 rounds a great bet at the current odds.

Reasons for betting on the over 1.5 rounds