The UFC flees to the northernmost major city in the United States this Saturday for a card in Seattle.
The card has lost a few fights due to injury, as Dominick Cruz pulled out of his fight with Rob Font and also retired after suffering a shoulder injury in training camp.
A tough break.
But there are still 12 fights for us to bet on for Saturday’s card.
Below, we go through my favorite selections, as Saturday’s card begins at 6 p.m. ET on ESPN+.
Two fighters on opposite spectrums of their career, Song Yadong is pretty well exposed to five round fights, defeating Ricky Simon and Chris Gutierrez in main event spots.
Where this fight gets dicey for him is agaist an MMA brainiac like Henry Cejudo who meticuously disects his opponents in ways that few can compete with.
Cejudo never makes mistakes and has an incredible wrestling pedigree to fall back on.
Yadong doesn’t defend takedowns very well, being dragged to the mat by Ricky Simon and Petr Yan, neither of whom have the wrestling chops that Cejudo does.
Yadong does do a good job getting back up once he’s been takendown and it’s fair to say that Yadong has gotten much better since he lost a majority decision to Cody Stamann when he was 22.
However, I’m jut unable to get over the fact that Cejudo has a lifetime of grappling under his belt and isn’t a slouch when it comes to striking either.
Bet this fight to go the distance (1.67 units to win one unit) and take a small stab at Cejudo by decision.
PICK: Fight goes the distance (-160, Bet365) | Cejudo by decision (+370, BetRivers)
These two have actually fought before in Jan. 2018 when Anthony Hernandez beat Brendan Allen via a five-round decision.
A betting trend in fights that I consistently target is fights to go the distance between opponents who have fought or trained together before.
Allen was actually favored in that fight at -190, if you’re intnerested in watching the fight take a look below.
Hernandez is now a big favorite seven years later after having defeated Allen in the first fight.
We’ve seen these two grapple, Hernandez has excellent scrambles against takedowns and arguably is the better submission threat at this point.
He’s improved dramatically and while I think these two have plenty of finishing skills, I also think familiarity will help cancel that out.
Bet on this fight to go the distance and take a small stab at Allen to win a decision as I view him as the better striker.
He should look to avoid the grappling, Hernandez is slicker there.
PICK(s): Fight goes the distnace (-150, BetMGM) | Allen by decision (+550, ESPN BET)
Henry Cejudo vs. Song Yadong (-250): Fight goes the distance (-160, Bet365) | Cejudo by decision (+370, BetRivers)
Brendan Allen (+270) vs. Anthony Hernandez: Fight goes the distnace (-150, BetMGM) | Allen by decision (+550, ESPN BET)
Rob Font (+130) vs. Jean Matsumoto: Matsumoto by decision (+125, BetMGM)
Jean Silva (-500) vs. Melsik Baghdasaryan: Small stab at Baghdasaryan by decision (+850, BetRivers)
Alonzo Menifield (-240) vs. Julius Walker: Menifield moneyline for parlays
Ion Cutelaba (+154) vs. Ibo Aslan: Cutelaba moneyline (+154) | by KO/TKO (+420, FanDuel)
Andre Fili (+100) vs. Melquizael Costa: Fight goes the distance -160 (DraftKings)
Mansur Abdul-Malik (-1200) vs. Nick Klein: Pass
Ricky Simon (+200) vs. Javid Basharat: Simon ML (+200, Caesars)
Nikolay Veretennikov (-110) vs. Austin Vanderford: Vanderford ML -110 (ESPN BET)
Nursulton Ruziboev vs. Eric McConico (+215): Pass
Modestas Bukauskas vs. Rafael Cerqueira (+230): Cerqueira ML (+230, Fanatics Sportsbook)
Erich Richter is a brazilian jiu-jitsu blue belt but he has a black belt in MMA betting. During the football season he’s showcased massive profits at The Post in the player prop market the last two seasons. While constantly betting long shots, his return on investment is 30.15 percent since 2022.