UFC 225 Betting Tips, Picks and Predictions

Being a Professional Gambler is based on the art of being able to silence your confirmation bias and try to see the truth for what it REALLY is. This is difficult because Cognitive Bias is hardwired into our brains. I guess this is the reason why so few people make money gambling.

A few years back Bet365 announced at a Gambling Conference that less than 5% of people who open accounts with them go on to make a profit. With multi-accounting being so popular amongst profitable players, I am guessing that the number of people who actually do make a profit gambling is much, much smaller than 5%. The majority of that 5% probably consists of people who multi-account when they get limited. Hell, our community probably makes up a good 2% of that 5%!

Before USADA I averaged 60 to 70 units of profit in prefight betting every year, and it wasn’t that hard to achieve. I work much harder now than I ever did back then. The sport was much more predictable before USADA, and I was much more rigid in my thinking. If you were a member of our community back then you would often hear me say in the Chat Room and Forums that “If you consistently bet on the more skilled fighter, you will always make money”. That statement was true for many years, but it’s not true anymore.

If UFC 225 took place before USADA, Charles Oliveira and Alistair Overeem would be insta bets, because they are better than their opponents in every single aspect of MMA. 9 times out of 10 both guys would show up and perform to their full potential and win easily. Can you remember before USADA when Oliveira was able to hang with Jeremy Stephens striking and toyed with him on the ground? Who can forget Overeem neutralizing the grappling threat of Brock Lesnar, Fabricio Werdum and Frank Mir like he was fighting children?

USADA changed the sport forever, but it also changed the way that we must think about MMA. For the longest time, I was rigid in my thinking, and this caused us to record a significant annual loss in prefight betting back in 2016. Since then I have learned that you must continuously evolve your thinking and you must always question everything. You must be radically open-minded and assume that anything is possible.

Everything came to a head in July 2016 after I recorded a huge loss at UFC 200. Up until this event, I had put our losses down to bad luck as we watched killer after killer show up and perform NOWHERE NEAR the level that we knew they were capable of. We saw guys like Anthony Pettis go from running up the side of cages and roundhouse kicking dudes in the face to conceding bottom position against low-level wrestlers like Eddie Alvarez.

By UFC 200, 2016 had shown us a long list of fighters who had changed beyond recognition. By this point, it became clear that my losses were not down to bad luck. They were a direct result of the sport changing forever and me not being able to adapt quick enough.

One of our big losses at UFC 200 was Cat Zingano losing to Julianna Pena. Going into that fight, I could not have felt anymore confident in Zingano winning. It was an easy fight for her.

Even to this day when I am researching fights, I’ll often have to study some pre UFC 200 fights from Zingano and Pena and still to this day I understand why I went big on Zingano. Pena barely had a chance in this fight. She was second best by a considerable margin to Zingano everywhere. This was the exact type of fight where my mantra of “If you consistently bet on the more skilled fighter, you’ll always make money” helped me to pay the bills. Pena didn’t have a chance. She gave up takedowns and position too easily on the ground, and Zingano’s world-class ground game should have been enough to cause Pena all kinds of problems. If you go back and watch that fight, you’ll see that Zingano did dominate Pena… At least in the 1st round. Then for no reason she fell apart.

At UFC 200 I had to watch loss after loss rack up, but when it came to the Pena vs. Zingano fight, I was confident that Cat would get us back on track. I literally could not believe my eyes when I watched her completely fall apart in the 2nd round and repeatedly accept bottom position.

Still to this day I have found it difficult to accept this loss, because Zingano demonstrated in round 1 how much of an advantage she had everywhere. She was ragdolling Pena. If she had looked bad straight out of the gate, then you could perhaps blame the loss on an injury or illness, but Zingano looked great in round 1 and had never shown cardio issues in the past. One of the things that made her such a formidable opponent was that she was able to fight at a high pace and outwork everyone.

By now you are probably wondering where I am going with this because nothing I am saying has anything to do with UFC 225.

Well, I just wanted to let you know that Cat Zingano has made me change the way I look at MMA. She recently appeared on the Joe Rogan podcast and spoke at length about her career. I highly recommend that you take a listen because I believe it will help you view the sport differently. You should then be able to use that new perspective to make money:

During the podcast, she talks at length about the Julianna Pena fight. It turns out that between the Amanda Nunes fight and the Julianna Pena fight she had been diagnosed with PTSD, developed Hyperthyroidism, she had suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury, and she was also taking two different types of anti-depressants. Each of these pieces of information would have been a huge factor in my decision making when researching this fight, but when I bet £12,000 on Cat Zingano to beat Julianna Pena, I had no idea about any of this stuff. I was betting blind.

Would I have bet on Zingano had I known she was suffering from these issues? Not a chance…

So what to do we about losses like this? Because I guarantee you they happen very, very frequently in this sport. Do we just cry about them and put them down to bad luck? Or do we try to evolve and look at the sport differently? We should try to be like water. Move around the rock, not move the rock. These issues will always be present in MMA, so how do we profit from them or at the very least avoid losses?

Before USADA I firmly believe in my mantra “If you consistently bet on the more skilled fighter, you will always make money,” but now I think we need to look at fighters differently.

Fighters were Superheroes before USADA came into effect. They had Diuretics to help them cut weight. IVs to re-energize their body after cutting weight. They had Steroids to help them train harder. EPO to help them improve their cardio and Human Growth Hormone to help them recover from injuries.

Take all that away, and we are left with a sport where on any given day someone can show up tired, hurt and broken. This is unavoidable.

Would you want to bet thousands of dollars on a fighter who is tired, hurt or broken?

We are never going to be able to gain access to the type of sensitive medical information that would have enabled us to avoid that Cat Zingano bet, but we can look at the sport through a different lens which could help us avoid some of these losses in the future. It may also help us make money in situations where we can anticipate that a fighter may show up and underperform.

Cat Zingano told Joe Rogan that her poor performance against Julianna Pena was a direct result of the Traumatic Brain Injury she suffered from all the damage she took in the Amanda Nunes fight. So maybe it’s time that we started to look at fighters as Batteries. A finite resource that will one day run out. Sure, it may sound like common sense now. But it wasn’t common sense back in 2015 when aging veterans like Vitor Belfort were still wheel kicking people’s faces off.

How then, does that affect the way we bet moving forward?

Well take a look at this:

Alistair Overeem suffered that devastating KO at the hands of Francis Ngannou just 6 months ago. He has also been KO’d over 15 times in his pro-MMA and Kickboxing career against some of the hardest hitting fighters that have ever lived.

If Cat Zingano suffered memory loss, vision problems and significant motor skills decline after enduring 5 minutes of ground and pound against a 135 pound female, what kind of damage do you think Overeem has suffered getting flatlined over 15 times against some of the hardest hitting fighters to ever live?

Based on my old mantra, Overeem is a solid bet tonight because he is better than Curtis Blaydes everywhere, but based on everything we’ve learned since USADA, he is most definitely not. If Overeem was a battery, his charge would be flat.

This is only one example, but I think we can make money and save money from this new perspective. Jose Aldo vs. Jeremy Stephens is an excellent potential opportunity coming up very soon. In recent years Aldo has been hurt badly by Chad Mendes, flatlined by Conor McGregor and suffered a horrific amount of damage in his two fights against Max Holloway. With all the head trauma he has sustained, is it possible that he could survive 15 minutes against a devastating power puncher like Stephens? Time will tell.

The stuff that Zingano said on the Joe Rogan podcast helped me to rationalize a lot of losses in the past that didn’t make sense, and it has also helped me to look at fighters differently.

Conor McGregor once said that a Gorilla is the King of the Jungle, until one day a younger Gorilla comes along, kills the King and takes everything he’s ever worked for. We’ve always known that the majority of fighters start to decline after the age of 33, but maybe we can use the information that Cat shared on that podcast to anticipate situations where fighters may begin to decline earlier or circumstances where fighters may not perform to their full potential because of damage sustained in previous fights. Robbie Lawler is a good example of this…

When Robbie Lawler fought Tyron Woodley back in 2016, he was just 34 years old and looked like a killer. I felt confident that he was going to run through Woodley, so I bet £6000 on him to win. I wasn’t the only one. If you were a member of the community back then, you’d remember that no one gave Woodley a chance after his lackluster performances against Kelvin Gastelum and Rory MacDonald. In hindsight, it seems ridiculous, but at the time it felt like Woodley was the sacrificial lamb.

How could a guy who gassed out in every fight stand a chance against a marauding, cardio king with a granite chin like Lawler? Lawler ended up getting flatlined within 3 minutes and added his name to the long list of Superheroes who had their careers derailed in 2016. He hasn’t been the same since.

Before Lawler’s loss to Woodley, I would have called you an idiot if you would have said you thought Woodley would win, but looking back with what we know now, was it really that hard to predict? Before the Woodley fight, Lawler had been in wars with Rory MacDonald, Carlos Condit and the prime Johny Hendricks who back then was knocking people 8 ft across the Octagon with his left hand. After each of those 25-minute wars, it seems obvious now that Lawler was heading into that Woodley fight with a flat battery.

Over the next few months, I’m going to be testing this hypothesis out by evaluating how certain fighters look after suffering a lot of head trauma in recent fights. Maybe we’ll learn something; maybe we won’t, but hopefully, in time we can use this insight to make more money and avoid some losses.

At this initial stage, I am not going to be placing any additional bets based on this new perspective because it’s just a hypothesis, but I will be paying close attention over the next few months to how fighters show up and perform after suffering significant head trauma in the 12 to 18 months prior to each fight.

Let me know in the comments how you feel about this stuff and if you disagree or agree with me. Take care guys. I luh you! Let’s make some money tonight.

Robert Whittaker vs Yoel Romero Betting Tip and Prediction

Chael Sonnen once said that:

When a younger fighter beats an older fighter, and then they rematch… The younger fighter wins again only easier. That is the rule of fighting and holds true in boxing, wrestling or MMA. You would have to go back and search two decades to find a scenario where that didn’t happen.

The first fight between Robert Whittaker and Yoel Romero may have been close on the scorecards, but if you watch the fight back in the cold light of day and pay close attention to what is happening you’ll see that it was a dominant win for Robert Whittaker.

The fight took an unfortunate turn for Whittaker early on when Romero blew Whittaker’s knee out with a Jon Jones style push kick in the first 30 seconds of the fight. This is significant because even with a blown knee the 1st round was very close.

Whittaker went back to his corner at the end of the first round and told his coach that his “knee was trashed.” He then struggled in the second round. Romero was able to take him down and hold him down. Romero won the second round decisively.

After adjusting to the injury, Whittaker was able to stuff all of Romero’s takedowns for the rest of the fight and walked Romero down, controlling the center of the Octagon.

The knee injury sustained in the first 30 seconds of the fight meant that Whittaker was unable to commit to shots and pull the trigger when he trapped Romero in bad positions. There were multiple times in the 3rd, 4th and 5th rounds where a healthy Whittaker would have found himself in a position to deliver a fight-ending shot to the gassed Romero, but the knee injury prevented him from pulling the trigger.

In all the interviews leading up to this fight, Whittaker has looked healthy, motivated and hungry. I strongly believe that a healthy, motivated and hungry Whittaker will KO Romero within 3 rounds.

If Whittaker can comfortably stuff all of Romero’s takedowns and outstrike him on one leg, imagine what he can do when he’s injury free?

Earlier on this week, we locked in a solid 4 unit bet on Whittaker to win, which I later updated to a 5 unit bet after seeing how badly Romero struggled to make weight:

Romero is a dangerous opponent who can finish anyone in a split second, but Whittaker is extremely tough and has a fantastic chin. If both fighters show up and perform to their full potential, Whittaker wins every time. I believe the current value in the odds on Whittaker is excellent. I expect him to win this fight dominantly and decisively.

Reasons for betting on Robert Whittaker

Alistair Overeem vs Curtis Blaydes Betting Tip and Prediction

Curtis Blaydes does not have the offensive wrestling to take Overeem down or the power in his hands to hurt him standing. Blaydes has also shown off a superhuman chin against big power punchers like Francis Ngannou and Mark Hunt. This makes it unlikely that even someone like Overeem could find a way to knock him out. This dynamic between both fighters makes it very likely that this fight will go the distance.

If Overeem’s recent fights are anything to go by it’s likely that he’ll use his K1 Grand Prix Championship level striking to control where this fight takes place. He’ll likely use his World Class clinch and footwork to neutralize Blaydes’ takedowns that usually come above hip height and are very telegraphed. Blaydes has a style of wrestling that Overeem should be able to shut down very easily, because Overeem is a tall guy and Blaydes struggles to get in deep on his opponent’s hips.

If Blaydes’ recent fights are anything to go by I, expect him to pump the jab and look for a way to get inside where he can land something more significant. This opportunity will most likely not come because Overeem has shown in recent fights against Fabricio Werdum and Mark Hunt that he can be extremely evasive. Blaydes is a low-level striker with nowhere near the offensive threat that the likes of Werdum and Hunt possess. If neither Hunt nor Werdum was able to KO Overeem, it’s unlikely that Blaydes will be able to get the job done.

Aside from anything crazy happening, I believe that this fight will go the distance. The only way I see this one ending inside the distance is if Curtis Blaydes drives Overeem into the cage and makes him work hard in the clinch in rounds 1 and 2. Overeem has gassed out in the past, which does potentially give Blaydes the opportunity to finish him late on when he starts to get tired. Either way, our bet would win because Overeem does not tend to get tired early on in a matchup.

Reasons for betting on this fight to go over 1.5 rounds

Dan Ige vs Mike Santiago Betting Tip and Prediction

This is an easy fight for Mike Santiago because he has a big size advantage over Dan Ige. He’s also a significantly better striker and a much stronger wrestler. So why are we only betting 1 unit on Santiago to win? Surely we should be more aggressive when a fighter holds such significant advantages over his opponents?

Well, if you go back and watch any of Santiago’s fights, it won’t take you long to see why he’s not the kind of guy you can ever risk too much money on.

Santiago is an excellent fighter, but he also doesn’t understand the importance of establishing solid positions and winning rounds. He’s a true old school fighter in the sense that he likes to fight. He’s more focused on inflicting damage than winning rounds. This style was super effective back in 2008, but in 2018 you need to be more tactical. I think Santiago could really benefit from training at a camp like Tristar, where all their fighters come in with a gameplan focused on winning rounds. If they get a finish, it’s just a bonus.

Mike Santiago should win this fight easily because he’s skilled enough to dominate wherever this fight takes place, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if he ended up doing something dumb in the last 30 seconds of each round and lost a close decision.

Under normal circumstances, I may have passed on this fight, but there are a couple of factors that pushed me into taking a gamble on Santiago to win.

The first factor is that this is his hometown. Many of Santiago’s friends and family will be in the crowd, and you’d hope he’d want to put on a good performance for them. It also doesn’t hurt that the hometown fans may sway the judges in his favor if the fight ends up being close.

Another factor that made me want to bet Santiago is that he’s 0-2 in the UFC. He has to be realistic. One more loss and his career is probably over. He’s had 30 pro MMA fights, and if he gets cut from the UFC, it’s unlikely he’ll ever make it back into the big show. If ever there was a time to fight smart and get a win, it’s now. If Santiago comes in with a solid gameplan and fights smart, he should beat Dan Ige easily. He’s 0-2 in the UFC. He can’t afford to make basic, fundamental mistakes like when he threw hammerfists in the clinch instead of fighting for underhooks against Mads Burnell.

Thirdly, I do believe that fighters learn from losses and Santiago can learn a lot from his two losses against Zabit Magomedsharipov and Mads Burnell. I am just a Nerd, who watches fights. If I can identify mistakes that a fighter is making, I am sure that a Pro Fighter and his coaches can also identify those same mistakes.

The great news about Santiago’s weaknesses is that they are all easy to fix. It’s not like he has bad striking defense or bad takedown defense or a low level ground game. Santiago is excellent at all the important stuff. It’s the minutia that lets him down. It’s the simple things. These can all easily be fixed with a bit of experience, and after 2 fights in the UFC, you’d hope that he has started to learn from his mistakes.

These are the mistakes that I believe Santiago needs to fix:

1. Stop starting so fast. In both his UFC fights, Santiago has come out the gate at 1000 miles an hour trying to kill his opponent. This has resulted in him slowing down significantly in the 2nd round. If he started a bit slower and paced himself a little better, he’d have a lot more success.

2. Focus on establishing strong positions instead of trying to inflict damage. Santiago is continuously trying to inflict damage on his opponent, even when he is in bad positions. Instead, he needs to focus on defending takedowns, focus on scrambling back to his feet and focus on maintaining dominant positions when he secures them instead of trying to finish fights with submissions and aggressive ground and pound. If Santiago used his skills to establish and maintain dominant positions he’d be a force in the UFC’s Featherweight division. MMA is a game of inches, and it’s the small details that keep costing Santiago.

3. Santiago is very well rounded with excellent striking and excellent wrestling; so use it. Stop getting sucked into crazy Rock em’ Sock em’ robot brawls and use your superior technique to chip away at your opponent and outstrike them. Stop getting involved in crazy scrambles on the ground. Use your strong wrestling to take your opponent down and control them from top position. Focus on maintaining position instead of aggressively pursuing the finish.

4. Win rounds. Simple. Use your skills to win rounds. Stop going for the kill all the time. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Save energy and finish each round strong. Be tactical!

Even if Santiago does not make any of these adjustments, I still believe he has a great chance of beating Dan Ige, but if he does make some of these adjustments he should win easily. At underdog odds, he’s a great bet. If he fights smart, I feel confident that he’s going to come through for us…

Now we just have to pray that he fights smart. Based on his past performances, I can’t guarantee that he will fight smart, but at the current odds I do believe that the risk is worth the reward.

Reasons for betting on Mike Santiago

Carla Esparza vs Claudia Gadelha Betting Tip and Prediction

By the time I had finished researching this fight, the odds on Gadelha had crashed to 1.18 | -556 | 9/50, giving her an implied probability of 85%. I felt strongly that she would win, but there was just no value in these odds. In the last 24 hours we’ve seen Gadelha’s odds improve by more than 25%, which means that I am now happy to bet on her.

It’s tough to visualize a realistic scenario where Carla Esparza could win this fight. She’s a strong wrestler, but Claudia Gadelha started her career at Nova Uniao, so she’s very difficult to take down. She’s also a Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, so even if Esparza were able to get this fight to the ground, Claudia is certainly no picnic in that department.

Gadelha should be able to use her strong grappling in reverse to keep this fight standing and dominate the fight with her superior striking. Gadelha’s striking is light years ahead of Esparza. There’s nothing that Esparza can do to keep the striking exchanges competitive. Gadelha should light her up like a Christmas tree.

Gadelha has a much higher level ground game than Esparza, and it’s interesting that Esparza struggled to do anything when Randa Markos was able to put her on her back. A common weakness amongst pure wrestlers is that they are weak on their back and Esparza is evidence of this. Gadelha has a powerful double leg shot, and she’s very heavy from top position. I would not be surprised if Gadelha chooses to take this fight to the ground, although I’d prefer it if she kept this fight standing.

There’s not much I can say about this fight other than Gadelha should dominate everywhere. Despite losing to Jessica Andrade, she showed vastly improved striking in the 1st round, and I do believe there’s a strong chance that she wins this fight by KO. Gadelha should win easily unless something crazy happens.

Reasons for betting on Claudia Gadelha

Holly Holm vs Megan Anderson Betting Tip and Prediction

Holly Holm was one of the fighters that I wanted to bet earlier this week, but her odds of 1.45 | -222 | 9/20 gave her an implied probability of 69%. The bookies capped this fight perfectly, and there was just no value for us in these odds. Luckily, the odds on Holm have improved significantly in the last 24 hours with some bookies offering her at odds of around 1.71 | -141 | 71/100. The odds on Holm right now range from 1.55 | -182 | 11/20 to 1.71 | -141 | 71/100 across different betting websites, so I strongly recommend that you shop around for the best odds before locking in your bet.

From memory, I thought that Megan Anderson was a technical striker with a questionable ground game and vicious knockout power. I could not have been more wrong. My mind was playing tricks on me. Megan Anderson does have a low-level ground game, but contrary to what I thought, she also has low level striking to go with it.

At 6ft tall, Megan Anderson has a massive frame for a Woman, which compared to other Women technically makes her a Heavyweight. The problem is, at 145 pounds she has none of the upsides of being a Heavyweight, but she has all of the downsides…

If you go back and watch any of Anderson’s past fights, you’ll see that she gets rocked, dropped or wobbled almost anytime she eats a clean shot. This is partly down to her poor striking defense, partly down to the fact that she fights with her hands low, but mainly down to the fact that her 6 ft frame means that she is very slow. Anderson’s slow, clunky and labored movement means that she is also slow to react to her opponent’s shots, so she feels the full impact of a strike when her opponent lands clean.

Megan Anderson has been badly hurt by strikes in her past fights against Charmaine Tweet, Amber Leibrock, and Amanda Bell. We have to assume that if super low-level strikers like these girls can hurt Anderson badly, then a striker as high level as Holm will be able to go one step further and potentially KO Anderson dead.

Megan Anderson’s style of fighting also plays perfectly into Holly’s style. Like we saw in Holly’s fights against Ronda Rousey and Miesha Tate, she loves to play the role of matador. She loves to fight on the outside and pick her opponents off as they try to close her down. Megan fights with this exact style. She comes forward aggressively and aims to take her opponent’s head off. This will leave her wide open to Holly’s fast and powerful counter punches. Holly is one of the few fighters in the UFC who has the cardio to maintain this exhaustive counter-striking style for a full 15 minutes, which means she should comfortably be able to outpoint Anderson over 3 rounds.

In Holly’s recent fights against Germaine De Randamie and Cyborg, we saw her show off a strong clinch game that will cause a lot of girls in the UFC’s Featherweight division a problem. Cyborg is historically extremely strong in the clinch, and Germaine De Randamie is widely considered to be the greatest Female Muay Thai fighter of all time. If Holly can control those girls in the clinch, you bet your ass she can control Anderson too…

The clinch is a significant talking point in this matchup because Anderson loves to wear on her opponents in the clinch. She uses it as an opportunity to recover after she has been hurt in open striking exchanges. This is excellent news for Holly because Megan’s inexperience in the clinch position makes her easy to control. Holly does a great job of securing double underhooks early and controlling her opponent’s body. I doubt that Anderson has the technique or cardio to match this over 3 rounds.

This bet is risky because Anderson does hit hard for a female fighter, but Holly Holm ate bombs off Cyborg and De Randamie and hung in there. I promise you that Anderson does not hit as hard as Cyborg or De Randamie. If both those girls failed to KO Holm, I don’t see Anderson going one better.

Anderson is young and improving fast, and Holm is in the tail end of her career, but I still feel like the skill gap is too big here for Anderson to cause the upset. I may be wrong, but Holly should win this fight relatively easily if she can weather the early storm.

Reasons for betting on Holly Holm