UFC Fight Night 131 Betting Tips, Picks and Predictions

UFC Fight Night 131 starts in around 1 hour, giving us a rare Friday night card to enjoy and hopefully make some money on. Although I don’t think it’s possible to enjoy a card that we lose money on…

We’ve been destroyed in the last couple of months losing bets in every way possible. We’ve lost three consecutive split decisions and don’t get me started on how frustrating it was to watch Nordine Taleb stop defending the Rear Naked Choke last weekend when the referee told him to stop holding the glove. It’s painful to watch. Check it out:

Claudio Silva vs Nordine Taleb fight

Taleb was doing a good job of fighting the hands and wasn’t in that much danger until the referee interfered. There’s a good chance that he would have survived the remaining 50 seconds in the round and gone on to win the fight if he had continued defending the choke. I get that he should have “protected himself at all times,” but this is just one more loss in a long list of recent losses where I feel like we’ve been hit hard with bad luck.

Live Betting hasn’t been any better as we’ve had to endure painful losses like Mads Burnell being submitted in round 3 last weekend against all the odds and before that, we lost a decent sized bet under bizarre circumstances on Merab Dvalishvili.

I don’t want it to sound like I’m making excuses, but I’ve had plenty of bad runs over the years and this recent bad run has featured much more bad luck than usual. Many of our recent bets have lost under weird circumstances, and it has got to the point where it feels like any bet we place will lose. I can only hope that our luck will turn around soon, but I wanted to talk about this because in my experience things can often get worse before they get better.

I was horrified to discover that tonight’s event is taking place in Utica, New York. When you’re trying to catch a break, New York cards aren’t generally the place where you catch them. The NY State Athletic Commission is well known for having terrible judges and terrible referees, so I expect more craziness to occur tonight. I just hope that we can avoid the madness or maybe even be the benefactors for once.

I just wanted to let you know that tonight might also be rocky because the NY State Athletic Commission and their crazy antics do not fill me with much confidence. But it is important not to be discouraged by our recent run of bad luck. Spring always follows Winter, and we’ll get back to winning ways soon. I don’t know when that day will come, but if we keep grinding and consistently betting on fighters who hold significant advantages over their opponents, in the end, we’ll make money. Like we always do.

Good luck – I don’t usually wish people good luck, but based on how things have been going lately I think we need it!

Daniel Spitz vs Walt Harris Betting Tip and Prediction

The odds have been improving on Walt Harris all week, but with UFC Fight Night 131 starting in around 2 hours time, it’s time for us to lock this bet in.

If you go back and watch Daniel Spitz’s UFC debut against Mark Godbeer, it won’t take you long to understand the reasons why we’re betting against him in this matchup. In that fight, he looked slow, clunky and he started to gas out in round 2. By the third round, he was a human punching bag.

Spitz’s cardio and technique did not look good against Mark Godbeer, but we can’t be too harsh on him because it was his UFC debut. It’s possible that Octagon jitters or an Adrenaline dump might have affected his performance. We can’t write him off just because he looked bad in one fight.

Spitz followed up his disappointing performance against Godbeer with a 1st round “KO” win over Anthony Hamilton. I put the words KO into inverted commas because we can’t give Spitz too many brownie points for this win because Hamilton is now 40 years old and his chin is completely shot. In Hamilton’s last few fights he has shown that he cannot take a punch anymore. His loss to Spitz said more about his inability to take a punch rather than Spitz’s ability to finish his opponents with strikes.

Before those fights, Spitz fought a guy called Colton Vaughn in KOTC. There’s nothing we can learn from that matchup because Vaughn slipped and broke his ankle within the first 10 seconds of the fight.

To discover whether Spitz’s lackluster performance against Godbeer was an anomaly or an accurate reflection of his ability, we have to go back to April 2016 when he fought UFC veteran, Wesley “Cabbage” Correia. As you can see from the footage below. The fight went the distance, and again Spitz looked very underwhelming:

That fight took place around two years ago, so it’s possible that Spitz may have improved quite a bit since then, but his more recent performance against Mark Godbeer suggests that he still has a long way to go before he is ready to compete against a guy like Walt Harris.

Walt Harris’ pro-MMA record of 10-7 won’t instill confidence in anyone looking to bet him, especially because he has gone 3-6 in his nine fights in the UFC, but at 34 years old Harris is very young for a Heavyweight, and he’s also one of the most technically gifted fighters in the division. I’ve been high on Harris for a long time because there aren’t many guys in the UFC’s Heavyweight division who are as fast or explosive, with the technical striking to cause almost anyone in the division a problem if he can keep the fight standing.

Harris has lost a lot of fights in the UFC because he’s very low level on the ground. If he gets taken down and can’t get back up quickly, you can pretty much guarantee that he will lose. This should not be an issue in this fight though because Spitz is not a grappler. He doesn’t have the body type, technique or athleticism to take this fight to the ground. Harris also has good takedown defense.

Harris shines when he fights guys who won’t try to take him down and based on Spitz’s past performances this should be a stand-up fight. When Harris can let his hands go without fear of being taken down, he is one of the best strikers in the division. Daniel Spitz in many ways has a similar body type, and style to Chase Sherman and Harris starched Sherman once he found his range. I am expecting a similar performance at UFC Fight Night 131.

Harris is never going to be a rock solid bet because he occasionally puts in an inconsistent performance, but his back is against the wall tonight. He’s 0-2 in his last two fights, and he needs a win bad. He cannot afford to lose 3 in a row. He needs to show up tonight. He cannot afford to flake out.

Harris is young for a Heavyweight, and he appears to be career focused and hungry on Social Media. Under the current circumstances, I believe it’s unlikely he’s going to flake out because he has to know that 3 consecutive losses will probably result in him getting cut from the UFC. Daniel Spitz is the perfect stylistic opponent for Harris. This is probably Harris’ easiest fight in the UFC.

Walt Harris should be a much bigger favorite over Spitz, but his recent losses and poor record on paper give us a good amount of extra value in the odds. Luckily for us, fights aren’t fought on paper, and if Harris shows up and performs to his full potential, he will win this fight easily.

Reasons for betting on Walt Harris