UFC 230 Betting Tips, Picks and Predictions

We returned to winning ways last weekend by banking a substantial profit on both our prefight and Live Betting Tips for UFC Fight Night 138. It felt great to put a solid amount of money in the bank, and I am confident that we can do it again this week. I hate to keep repeating myself, but we tend to do exceptionally well during the Autumn / Winter run of UFC events, so why should this year be any different? We now have a UFC event every weekend between now and Christmas, and I am looking forward to making a killing over the next few months.

You can now keep track of how we’re doing from week to week on our brand new Results page. The big gaps between UFC events over the last few weeks gave me a lot of time to build new stuff for the website. I’ll be rolling out a lot of new content and features over the next few months.

I’ve also built a new Betting Tips page which features a countdown clock that lets you know exactly when my Live Betting Tips for UFC will begin. The page also contains a Betting schedule that shows all the upcoming MMA events and also the exact times when I’ll be offering my free Live Betting Tips for Football matches. I’ve coded the schedule to display the correct start times depending on your time zone. Please let me know in this Forum thread if you notice any issues with it.

Roxanne Modafferi vs Sijara Eubanks Betting Tip and Prediction

Betting on Roxanne Modafferi to beat Sijara Eubanks is a gamble because Eubanks beat her when they last fought 15 months ago on season 26 of the Ultimate Fighter. Despite the outcome of their first fight, I believe the odds are way off in this matchup. Eubanks is not the kind of fighter that should be this big of a favorite over anyone in the division.

The odds don’t make much sense for this matchup because it’s not like her performance against Roxanne last time they fought was so dominant that we could not see a different outcome on a different day. My recommendation to you would be to watch their first fight [which I’ve added below] and make your own decision on whether you feel comfortable betting Modafferi at the current odds.

The odds on Modafferi currently carry a 19% implied probability which means that a 1 unit bet on her returns a 400% profit. In situations like this, we have to ask ourselves what could have changed since their first fight and how this may impact the outcome of the rematch.

The first thing that has changed is that both fighters will be coming into this matchup with their own teams behind them. On the show, Modafferi was coached by Justin Gaethje. She has spoken this week about how it makes a big difference having her own team behind her when going into a fight. Modafferi is a unique fighter with a very specific style, so it’s no surprise that her coaches are the ones who know how to get the best out of her. Modafferi’s performances outside of her two stints on the Ultimate Fighter have been much better than her performances on the show. This trend suggests that we should get a much better version of Modafferi at UFC 230 than what we saw on season 26 of the Ultimate Fighter.

We also have to take into consideration the fact that Eubanks has been caught up in the Flyweight title picture and was booked to be in the main event of UFC 230 against Valentina Shevchenko. That fight was canceled in favor of Daniel Cormier vs Derrick Lewis, mainly because of a public outcry. People were upset that Eubanks, a fighter with a 3-2 Pro MMA record could be put in the position of headlining a major PPV card at Madison Square Garden. We have to question what type of impact this Circus has had on her confidence levels. Eubanks has now been relegated to the Prelims to take on an opponent that she has already beaten. What has this done to her motivation levels heading into this fight? All of this added psychological baggage can have a big negative impact on a fighter’s performance.

Sijara Eubanks is a fighter who has always struggled with making weight. Her weight cuts got so bad on season 26 of the Ultimate Fighter that some of the contestants who had already been eliminated from the competition would also cut weight and prepare for a fight in anticipation that Eubanks would fail to make weight and therefore be unable to compete. On more than one occasion she came close to dropping out. She ultimately failed to make weight for the main event title fight of the Ultimate Fighter 26 Finale, which resulted in Roxanne Modafferi stepping up on short notice and fighting Nicco Montano for the title. Based on her history of weight cutting issues, it is of no surprise that she failed to make weight this morning for this fight against Modafferi. She weighed in at 127.2 pounds, 1.2 pounds over the Flyweight limit. This year fighters who have missed weight have a pretty good record of winning, but there are two very different ways to miss weight. The first type is a fighter who misses by 3-5 pounds after abandoning their weight cut several hours before the deadline. This means that they then have extra time to recover and they don’t spend as much time as their opponent’s killing their bodies to make the weight. These kinds of fighters tend to do pretty good because they are fresher on fight night than they would have been if they had gone the extra mile and made the weight. Not killing themselves to make the weight actually gave them an advantage. The second type of weight cut is where a fighter narrowly misses weight by just a pound or two. Eubanks falls into this category. Eubanks only missed weight by 1.2 pounds which indicates that she had a really tough cut and tried hard to make the weight. This kind of cut will probably have an adverse effect on her performance. After everything she has been through in recent weeks, after all the trash she has talked, now she has to face the world with the embarrassment of not even being able to make weight for a regular fight, let alone a Championship weight fight for a title. What kind of impact will this have on her mental state and also on her performance against Roxanne Modafferi?

Skill for skill I believe that this is a close matchup. Both girls are strong grapplers, and they’re both very heavy from top position. Whoever finishes the most rounds on top is going to win, it’s as simple as that. Eubanks got the better of Modafferi in their first fight, but Modafferi is smart enough and skilled enough to make some adjustments and make it much closer in the rematch.

Based on all the factors I’ve discussed here and based on how their first fight played out, I believe there’s a good chance Modafferi can win this rematch. Eubanks appears to have a lot of drama surrounding her and who knows what kind of impact the bad weight cut will have on her performance. She’s an inexperienced fighter who has upset fans, upset Dana White, and she will be carrying a lot of pressure on her shoulders coming into this matchup. This kind of pressure can be exhausting, and it often leads to fighters breaking in the Octagon. I am not sure if Eubanks is strong enough to carry this kind of weight on her shoulders but we often see fighters significantly underperform on big PPVs. On pretty much every big PPV event we see fighters break under the pressure of competing under the bright lights. Eubanks has created the perfect storm for failure. If you had to bet on which fighters were most likely to flake at UFC 230, with everything going on with Eubanks at the moment, she’d be top of the list, maybe with Jason Knight a close second!

Modafferi has a habit of winning fights that no one gave her a chance of winning. She can definitely defy the odds and beat Eubanks at UFC 230. This is not a safe bet, but at the current odds, I believe Modafferi is worth a gamble.

Reasons for betting on Roxanne Modafferi