UFC on ESPN+ 19 Betting Tips, Picks and Predictions

We kicked off October with a solid win on prefight bets last weekend. Live Betting also went great. We went 3-1 across Bellator 229 and UFC 243 for a total profit of around 5 units.

We now turn our attention to Bellator 230 and UFC on ESPN+ 19. Both events take place this Saturday night.

Last month I recommended a big 4 unit bet on Marvin Vettori to beat Andrew Sanchez at odds of around 1.44 | -227 | 11/25. You can read the original breakdown for that bet by clicking here.

It is important to remember that we beat the odds movement in a big way when we initially bet Vettori. Now that his fight has been rescheduled onto the event this weekend, his odds have declined significantly. For this reason, I need to research the fight for a second time to gauge whether or not he’s worth betting at his new odds.

Cub Swanson vs Kron Gracie Betting Tip and Prediction

By now, most of you guys know exactly how I work.

I wake up on a Monday morning, and I scan through all the fights taking place that week. I then prioritize researching the fights where I feel there may be the best betting opportunities.

Cub Swanson as an underdog to Kron Gracie was the 1st thing that jumped out at me when I scanned through all the fights taking place this weekend.

I have just completed my research for this fight, and my initial thoughts have been confirmed. Cub Swanson is an excellent bet.

Obviously, this is a classic Striker vs. Grappler matchup, so on the most basic of levels, the only real question we need to answer is whether or not Gracie will be able to take Swanson down. Based on their past performances, I don’t think he can.

Swanson’s takedown defense is not entirely bulletproof, but he does have strong hips, great balance, and it’s not easy to get him to the ground. His major weakness is that he is extremely weak off his back. It’s difficult to take Swanson down, but when you do get him down, he’s pretty bad. It’s easy to control him, and he’s not very good at working his way back to his feet. This is the first and possibly only risk factor that we have to deal with when it comes to this bet.

We also have to take into consideration the fact that Cub Swanson has been submitted multiple times throughout his career, and Kron Gracie is a high level Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu practitioner.

Swanson’s takedown defense is pretty decent, though. Far better offensive wrestlers than Kron Gracie have struggled to take him down and hold him down.

To take a guy like Swanson down, you usually need to get in really deep on their hips and upset their balance with a traditional double leg, single-leg, or body lock takedown. Using one of those techniques is also unlikely going to be enough to get him down, you’ll need to be able to chain those different techniques together.

If you go back and watch Kron Gracie’s past fights, you’ll see that he does not have any clinch game, he has no offensive wrestling and all of his takedowns come high above the hips of his opponents. Based on Gracie’s past fights, it is EXTREMELY unlikely that he’ll be able to take Swanson down. Take a look and see for yourself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLKgOCX3QZw

As you can also see in those videos, Kron Gracie has no striking to set up his takedowns, and he has extremely poor striking defense. When I watch those fights, all I can visualize is Swanson lighting Gracie up and Gracie getting NOWHERE NEAR a takedown.

Obviously, those fights took place 3 years ago, and Gracie may have improved a lot since then, but he still showed flashes of the same weaknesses in his UFC debut against Alex Caceres earlier this year. Unfortunately, that fight only lasted 3 minutes, and Caceres gave up a really weak takedown, so it’s impossible to gauge how Gracie will look on Saturday night in his fight against Swanson.

Making money from betting on MMA is all about trying to make the best decision possible with incomplete sets of information. Right now, we don’t know how Gracie will look since he fought back in Rizin in 2016, but we can make some assumptions based on where he trains and what his lifestyle is like.

You should never base a betting decision purely on assumptions, but when there are big gaps in information, and the odds are very generous on the fighter you think maybe a good bet, assumptions can be a good way to help you evaluate the overall risk to reward ratio you are dealing with.

We can’t know how much Gracie has improved, but we do know that he trains MMA with the Diaz brothers and the Skrap Pack.

If we look at this fight objectively and try to gauge how much Gracie may have improved his striking, offensive wrestling and clinch game, it’s unlikely that he will have improved those areas that much based on who he has been training with. Afterall… The Diaz brothers haven’t evolved that much in the last 10 years. If you watch a Nate Diaz fight in 2019, he doesn’t look that different from the Nate Diaz that fought on the Ultimate Fighter 10 years ago. Leslie Smith never improved that much either, and Joe Schilling trained with the Diaz brothers for many, many years, and still can’t defend a takedown. Gilbert Melendez and Jake Shields also failed to evolve. They looked exactly the same in Strikeforce as they did in the UFC.

It’s also worth noting that none of those fighters are strong offensive wrestlers: not even Jake Shields, a guy who built a career wet blanketing his opponents.

These findings suggest to me that it is UNLIKELY that Gracie has improved all that much since fighters who train with the Diaz brothers and the Skrap Pack generally don’t ever tend to evolve or improve that much. Furthermore, the one area Gracie really needs to sharpen up, in order to cause Swanson problems is his offensive wrestling, and there aren’t any strong wrestlers in those camps.

Maybe Gracie will show up on Saturday night, look completely different, demonstrate strong wrestling and blow Swanson out the water, but based on all the information we have available to us right now, it’s a lot more likely that he will look pretty similar to how he looked in Rizin.

We also have to take into consideration the fact that Kron is busy holding Worldwide seminars, running a large chain of Jiu-Jitsu gyms, and also producing BJJ related instructional content. How much time has he had in the last 3 years to dedicate to improving as an MMA fighter?

It’s also worth noting that Gracie didn’t look particularly dangerous on the ground in his fights against Tatsuya Kawajiri and Erson Yamamoto. On multiple occasions, he gave both guys ample opportunity to escape bad positions and stand back up; they often never took it, and subsequently gifted Gracie wins.

It is fair to say that no matter how much Gracie has improved, if the fight stays standing, it will not be a contest. In 3 years, there’s no way that Gracie could have improved enough to be competitive with Swanson when it comes to striking. Gracie is going to get smoked if this fight stays standing.

We are always looking for opportunities to put our money in strong positions, and based on all the information we have available right now, it’s downright disrespectful to have Cub Swanson as an underdog here. Win or lose this is a great bet. The current odds on Swanson are completely mad. This is a no brainer bet.

Reasons for betting on Cub Swanson