I have lost way too much money over the years fading Ortega to ever bet against him again, lol. This is going to be a fascinating fight though. Holloway is a striking genius and on paper should have a significant advantage. If you watch his fight against a prime Cub Swanson (who was really frickin' good) it was one of the best displays of MMA striking I've ever seen. Cub was just completely outclassed, and Cub is extremely good on his feet.

But Ortega is just so smart, game plans really well and is very coachable, obviously has world class submission skills and his striking is very underrated IMO. It looks a little herky jerky but it gets results - he knocked Frankie mother****in' Edgar out in the first round, which was completely unprecedented. That uppercut he has is nasty.

So we'll see what happens. If Holloway can get past Ortega I think he's going to be the apex predator of that division for the next 5+ years and have a GSP like reign, nobody else really stands a chance apart from maybe Frankie Edgar, but he's probably too old now.

yeah im done fading ortega. too good of a chin, too opportunistic with the finishes. it sucks to sweat too cause it's like hell yeah this is going perfectly according to plan... and he's subbed.

i think there are absolutely some problems for max at 145 coming up. ortega isn't a layup by any stretch. also bektic didn't look super good against lamas but he definitely won and i see him giving max some problems. his gas tank worries me though. max hasn't faced a really dominate grappler yet and that will be his big test. i think zabit will be a serious test as well.

Holloway will only lose to a grappler in his prime imo (or another elite striker like Conor if he could make 145 still or a similar fighter emerges). It has to be a guy with elite NCAA level wrestling though which IMO Ortega doesn't have. If Ortega wins it'll be by standing guillotine imo and i'd be surprised if Ortega wins more than 1 in 4 fights vs Holloway. I think i'll finally eat my words and admit I was wrong about Ortega if he beats Max. I think the fight will go something like 10-9 Holloway to start then get more and more one sided until we're seeing a 10-8 round by about the third as Ortega lands zero offense until he gets finished around the 3rd-4th round via accumulation of damage or eats 100+ extra significant strikes if it goes the distance and loses a 50-44 or whatever.

To the Ortega backers prior to Holloway fight my offer still stands; my side at evens is that Ortega will lose at least 2 of his next 5 fights at evens.

As amazing as Ortega's killer instinct is, his striking is fundamentally atrocious imo for the #1 contender and he lacks offensive grappling. He's going to lose a decision to every top 10 fighter he doesn't finish and at some points he's going to not finish someone and lose. I think he's going to get knocked out standing at some point despite having a good chin too in his next 5 fights.

I have finally concede that Ortega is indeed a top 5 fighter in the division but i'd still snap Moicano, Stephens, Swanson, Edgar and Holloway against him at reasonable odds. I'd actually love to see the Jeremy Stephens fight, Ortega can probably submit him but Stephens can definitely KTFO Ortega too and would have a slight edge on the feet imo with the most power of any of the contenders at FW. Not sure about Zabit and Bektic but they're both guys to watch too.

Exactly my thoughts lol.

To the guy who said 5+ year reign for Max.. LOL.

I'll tell you right now, Zabit will be a champion in 145. 6'2, Mark Henry said best FIGHTER hes EVER seen... THATS MARK ****ING HENRY.

Zabit will fight for the championship in 2-3 fights.

I got very lucky that Gadelha and Whittaker won split decisions in their fights. Those were nail biters for my huge bets. The main event could have ended in a draw as far as I am concerned. I also bet on too many old guys- Overeem and Arlovski had a chance, but Rashad was throwing money away. Only lost about 7 units on the UFC 225 card. Luckily I made 8 units on the Terence Crawford boxing match so the weekend ended slightly positively.

There are some wide lines on the returning Dana White Tuesday Night Contender Series tonight, I'll post some action later.

I put some money on Hardy -125 and Santiago at +700 lol.

i had discuillo by a strange sub...not much really
chris curtis is a solid striker and his opponent is all about haymaker

Put half unit on him winning as well.

DWTNCS 9 Risk $970.10

Chris Curtis (-405) vs Sean Lally $303.75 for $75.00

Greg Hardy (+105) vs Austen Lane $100.00 for $105.00

Rico DiSciullo (+365) vs Montel Jackson $100.00 for $365.00
Rico DiSciullo (+350) vs Montel Jackson $100.00 for $350.00
Montel Jackson (+100) vs Rico DiSciullo ~$111.35 for ~$111.35

Will Santiago (+305) vs Kevin Holland $100.00 for $305.00

Parlay:
Chris Curtis (-470) vs Sean Lally + Alonzo Menifield (-430) vs Dashawn Boatwright $155.00 for $76.69

jeez , i almost get away with it !! 2 points deducted loll
didnt even know montel was an olympian wrestlers, a good wrestler yes...discuillo gettin out wrestled like a kid vs grow man !
i knew the kid was tricky ,but not tricky enough apparently !
i must get better source pss

hardy was the sure bet , we got to see why lol

Ended up with a tiny 0.68 unit profit on DWTNCS this week. Got some decent regional MMA this weekend and then looking forward to the second DWTNCS and second PFL card on Tuesday & Thursday next week.

Bovada opened Woodley at -140/Cov +110

Don't see it anywhere else....Think -170 is probably where it goes to.

Cov is a pretty simple fighter to handicap, he is gonna pressure and try to wrestle/grapple his way to victory. Can he maybe test Woodley's cardio or will pressuring Woodley like that result in getting caught sooner than later?

which sportsbook has the most mma events covered?
yeah im going bitcoin , theres no way around it l

I have to give Covington his props for his performance against RDA. In rd1 he took a lot of hard body shots which ended up having no affect in later rounds. The overall pace of the fight was brutal on both guys and neither broke but RDA was more tired. (I think this is due to the size difference) So Covington's gas tank is on point there's no doubt about that.

Him facing Woodley is similar except Woodley is bigger that RDA so it won't be so easy to push him around in general. Woodley has better wrestling so the TD's probably won't work as well. Woodley has the 1 punch power that RDA is lacking. And Covington showed some TDD weakness vs. RDA which Woodley would be able to exploit more. Woodley loves his back to the fence so it won't be a problem of feeling pushed back like it did to RDA. Overall I think this should be a -250 Woodley fight and looking forward to it.

Looking forward to the card on the 23rd:

Some lines I like early..
Song Kenan moves from -159 open to -300..
Pretty crazy.. fighting a 4-0 fighter who hasn't really done much so I understand but I think the smart bet is throwing a small amount on Hector Aldana (his opp) at +220 and if it goes to +300 I'll probably put a decent amount on this.

Jake Matthews keeps moving as well.. lowest I see now is -420.

I also like Petr Yan but again his line is continuing to grow.. I see -430, -440 everywhere but BOL has it at -385 so I may throw a decent chunk on my boy Petr.. problem is, he's fighting a guy with decent amount of experience. 10-5-2 with a decent record in the UFC.. don't know a ton about the guy he's fighting either.


Not touching Pedro fight or Cerrone fight tbh.

Is Song Yadong really a fav over Arantes with no good wins? Arantes is lower mid level but he's clearly UFC level. Not so sure about Yadong. I've literally never heard of anyone he's beaten and he's lost to 3 cans and Chinese fighters are generally awful, with Li being the least awful.

Also Pereira is legit from memory is she really losing to some chinese woman? I know the card's in China so we might see some iffy decisions, but really? -185 pretty tempting. I wonder if the judges are chinese or not for this.

Would be surprised if Li lost in China or if Matthews lost but both pretty unbettable favs

Will look into it more tomorrow but thinking Arantes and Pereira may be value

you can hate covington as much as you want...he has sick cadio and his outputt very high ,very hard to handle ! he did save his chin untill now so thats sick a combo ! i wont bet much on him an against him !

for sure i will putt some money on ortega by sub loll he only has to grab a limb 2 second to change the course of the fight

Holloway in to -161 novig this Ortega hype is out of control. I can't believe the market thinks Holloway is only 61% to win this one. Feels insane to think that if they fought 10 times the market thinks Ortega wins 4/10. Holloway's only ever lost 2 fights; to Conor, who went on to be the champ a weight class up and to Poirier when he was green and he'd be a huge fav in a rematch - anyone competently scoring had him winning the Bermudez fight 29-28, and he's fought so many good fighters. Ortega has finished each of his last 6 fights but he was clearly losing the fight or in a very close fight in all six until the finish so we're basically taking Ortega to finish 40% of the time for anyone backing his ML.

Not Ortega by decision -650 looks like free money to me. If he wins it's going to be by finish there is just no chance in hell he wins a 5 round decision vs Holloway with his non top 10 striking technique and lack of offensive takedowns. Theoretically he'd need to take top position for 3 rounds AND not manage to submit Max from top position (which as much as I dislike Ortega he'd be a huge fav to get a sub with 3 rounds of top control). He absolutely does submit Max 1 in 4-5 times imo, but beyond that he's drawing so thin for a decision it's absurd.

I think Ortega by decision is a 1 in 30-50 type outcome, not 1 in 7. Will probably play that prop as well closer to fight time assuming odds aren't much worse. If Ortega wins, it's going to be submission like 80% of the time and TKO/puncher's chance another 10-15% on top of that or thereabouts.

No fight date yet but Woodley opens -125 vs Covington at Betonline

Please open around that price everywhere

I've faded Woodley a lot in the past but all over him to win this one.

One of those heh? Ortega by KO / Submission or Holloway by decision (or KO / SUB)? Holloway has that thin neck though, so who knows, dont think hes getting KO'd, dude is durable.

CES MMA 50 Risk $445.00

Dinis Paiva (+140) vs Andre Ewell $100.00 for $140.00
Jon Manley (+115) vs Jeremiah Wells $100.00 for $115.00
Jose Lugo (-245) vs Michael Taylor $245.00 for $100.00

Does anyone know if Tuesday Night Contender Series are open to the public/where one could get tickets?

I am going to be in Vegas late June and would like to go to Tuesday night Contender Series on Tuesday, June 26th.

very unlikely m8 , the octogone is in the tuf house ....75 seats max i guess
family , friends, relative ect im takling out of my a$$ probably invitation only

Holloway could win via TKO or dec quite easily, Ortega by sub or very slim chance of TKO. Ortega decision is out of the question and I assume so is Holloway sub as there's next to no chance he'll be in a position to go for one as he'll want to keep it standing and avoid grappling exchanges

I'm probably going to end up taking Holloway straight up unless the TKO or dec prop has a much better price and not locking up the money this far out but if the not Ortega dec prop is in the -650 range will get some of that too

For next weekend's card I just made my first bet, got on Arantes at +115. Should have trusted my gut he's closing as the fav and taken him early but caught it mid line movement, he's a small fav on Pinny now

I really like Pereira too, but that line doesn't seem to be going anywhere will grab it if it starts to move.

Jake Matthews isn't going to lose either but I can't see myself playing any ml favs at that sort of price for non-MM/Jones level fighters. After giving up on the Matthews hype after thinking he was the next big thing out of Australia after Whittaker his last fight against Li and moving up to WW has given me some hope he could still be a top 15 fighter in the future again.