Waterson should have been -3500

Ok so Waterson is awesome and given she has a win over Penne who made 115 i'd love to see her fight for the UFC womens 115 belt somewhere down the line

Exciting style, hot, seems to have personality, could be a superstar the way she throws her kicks is fantastic

Anywhere from 30-27 to 30-24 so far, Waterson absolutely looking like a -1100 fav here

Missed the finish due to stream problems but caught the replay in the credits

Pretty sure she could KO Overeem at this point

Definitely a fan of Waterson now, I hope when she's ready she moves to 115 and comes for the UFC Womens 115 belt

haha I was wondering who the hell the dude under the gimp mask was and then the reveal was terrible. Bonnars promo was really good, they should has just had a face off where Bonnar ripped on Tito and then Tito went for him, would have been way more believable. Looking forward to the fight will be interesting leaning Tito but think Bonnar could outwork him.

As both a Bonnar and Tito fan... that promo was pretty terrible, they had the right idea but a) gimp mask, lol and b) Tito lunging for Bonnar didn't look at all authentic or natural and while i'm all for pro-wrestling style promos to hype fights within reason, the execution wasn't quite there

I'm also not sure what sort of face/heel dynamic they're going for here as both guys had a point (Bonnar's point that Tito is such an ******* his ex training partners/friends all hate him and Tito's point that Bonnar is going personal for no reason and got caught juicing)

I feel like Bonnar's wrestling is probably good enough that he can take Tito at this stage of their careers his superior chin could make the difference, but Tito could easily decision him as well if he can get the takedowns. I definitely would have liked to see this fight in the UFC 3 years ago when both guys were slightly past their prime but not to the degree they are today. They're both actually pretty underrated and pretty much only lost to former champs/top contenders with the exception of Bonnar's Soszynski loss via cut which he avenged

I actually don't even think it's beyond the realm of possibility that either guy could give Newton, Mo, Vegh or Rampage a fight, although both would be dogs at this stage i'd imagine. Winner should get Rampage imo then if they win that they can have a title shot since Rampage doesn't seem to want one

SwoopAE I always enjoy reading about your MMA talk and honestly would love to hear that through MMA betting you turned 100 into 100k inside of 3 years but darn if every time you bet on MMA you lose, like the Joe Lauzon vs Michael Chiesa, you were going to put your kidneys on Chiesa, I was even going to put £100 on him after reading your lock talk.


I remember I said to my dad once, dad if your so good at horse racing, and I believe you are, why don't you have any money....

Ill always remember that honest to god moment of genus revelation when in that moment his own son out of pure honesty and interest asked him why the fruits of his labour equalled **** and he himself wanted to know the answer.

You need to stop betting MMA imho, your locks lose, talk mma all you like but keep your money in your pocket or you bank account. You may a whole load of stuff about mma, but it don't convert. your talk does not equal profit.

Any one got any strong thoughts about Eddie Alvarez v Donald Cerrone ?

Sports betting is all about smashing small edges. We are looking for mistakes made by people that study this for a living, and hoping to realize the mistake and capitalize on it before everyone else. When playing with such small edges , mistakes are going to be made, and variance is going to take its toll.

Judging one bad bet as a whole is sort if ridiculous. Phil Ivey has busted day ones before. Idk how swoop does, but I feel the majority of us are winners, either big or small. I can say personally , while I don't agree with swoop as much as some, he brings up some very valid points at times that has saved/made me money. As I'm sure he has with many others.

Also on the Chiesa bet, while maybe some if us went a bit over board , based on the information in front of us at the time, I do believe it was a very solid bet. Also considering it closed -220 and most in this thread got around -140, I would say we did very well on that bet.

I'm about breakeven lifetime which means if it were vig free i'd be up a bunch lifetime (i'm talking hundreds of units if all lines were vigfree +100/+100). It's not like i'm getting crushed, i'm down maybe 40 units this year almost all of which is over the last 4-5 cards (I think i'm 1-4 for winning cards in the last 5) and about half of that is on 2-3 fights where I crushed the closing line and lost, i'm probably as close to a breakeven bettor as you can be over a very large sample now of several years/thousands of bets. I'm definitely going to drop my bet sizes for a while, but I have not lost an amount of money that is significant to me, i'm a moderate winner lifetime overall lifetime across all sports (almost almost all of the profit is esports, but i'm up over 100u lifetime). If you look at the old best bet threads I was up 30something units over nearly 1000 bets with about half of my posted bets being on MMA.

For what it's worth i'd bet Chiesa -130 again if they were to fight tomorrow, and I beat the closing line by 80 points on my two largest bets last card both of which lost. If we count the closing Pinnacle line as sharp in general, i'm doing totally fine.

I'm not a particularly amazing mma bettor but i'm far from the worst on this forum and i'm also experiencing the downside of variance at the moment. That said, I won't be firing any multi-unit bets for the next couple cards most likely as a lot of unpredictable stuff has been happening and my analysis has been off in spots, I plan to stick to esports betting for large amounts for the next month or two and if I can string a few winning MMA cards together betting smaller amounts i'll fire again

I know yoyobo is a winning bettor and he agreed with me more strongly on anyone that Chiesa and results aside I still think we made the right call. I was wrong about how shot Overeem's chin was but fortunately didn't fire that, the only other recent fight I got totally wrong was Nog/Nelson, several of my other losses were simply a case of it being one of the 4 in 10 times or whatever that the other guy wins

With that said, yoyobo also thinks Rumble will beat Gus so he may be on a bender right now.

Only reason i see for giving up mma-betting is if you don't enjoy it. The money is not there for it to spoil a great sport for you.
I'm almost sure that anyone >100IQ who actually watch mma could beat it. The lines are still soft and sometimes differ by over 100 between best and end line.

But even if i were to stop betting completely i would still probably partake in this thread. It is probably my favorite place to read about peoples opinions on fights. Some really smart people in here.

I haven't watched enough tape on Alvarez to comment, but my gut instinct is that Cerrone has run above expectation in his UFC run so far and would lose to at least one of Barboza, Miller or Guillard a pretty high percentage of the time if he had to run through them all again. If I was absolutely forced to pick a side right now i'd take Alvarez. We know so much more about Cerrone though, we know Alvarez is about on par with Chandler and Brooks from their fights against each other being close but we haven't seen any of the three of them fighting UFC-caliber top 10 guys aside from each other, so it's tough to tell how good they are, whereas we generally know that Cerrone is top 10 but not top 3 currently

That's true, and I don't think Rumble matches up well with Gus at all, but yoyobo thinking it does make me more reluctant to fire on Gus than I otherwise would be because he's right more often than not

Like Gus over Rumble a lot!

We've seen Gus go through a full brutal 25min fight and showed so much heart. Even a Jones on his B-game is super tough to beat, never mind almost beating a prime J Jones.
Gus showed that he can hang with the best of em.

Rumble on the other hand, has ran pretty well imo. He's looked amazing coming back to UFC, Phil Davis displayed little heart and wasn't game. Lil Nog was an awesome partner to help make yourself look good, Rumble is top 5 for sure but not top 3 caliber.

His wins have been so dominant that portrays a stronger Rumble than what he actually is.

Reminds me of Woodley, dude with dynamite power and once connected, it's an instant KO.

Rumble (right after Arlovski) vs Gus would've been a terrible price.

Rumble (present) vs Gus will hopefully be an attractive betting spot.

Don't think Gus vs Rumble needs to be rehashed any more, all that's left is for those of us with a memory longer than a year to console yoyobo when he punts off his units

Rather unfortunate that the Nelson line seems to be coming down to reasonable territory.

Am I crazy for thinking Arlovski might have value? He was kind of at his nadir against Bigfoot the first time they fought and it still went the distance. If Bigfoot can't knock him out, this will likely be pretty close IMO.

To expand my thoughts on the Nelson/Hunt fight, I'd like to propose that I think some of you who are arguing for Hunt to be a well-deserved strong favorite may be analyzing the fight too simplistically in your minds. What I mean by that, is instead of analyzing each fighter as a discrete set of skills let's think instead about the WAY Mark Hunt fights.

The main argument everyone on the Hunt side of things seems to espouse is that he's a far superior kickboxer and this is a fight likely to play out on the feet. I don't think anyone here thinks that Nelson is a better kickboxer than Hunt. Hunt has the pedigree having competed in high level K1 for years, and he also had much more success standing and trading with a common opponent (JDS).

But the traditional model, if you will, of a fighter with superior kickboxing winning a fight is to utilize movement and strike from a distance whilst avoiding the unschooled counterstrikes and advances of the less-skilled opponent. Think about the way fighters like Kampmann, Pearson, and Penn have exploited the weak fundamentals of Diego Sanchez, though of course the former two were robbed by inept judging.

Is that really what we're going to see here?

I think we're going to see Mark Hunt do what Mark Hunt does: stand in front of his opponent, plant his feet, and trade as much as possible until someone goes down in a heap. And in that type of fight, less skilled though he may be, Nelson has two things going for him: power and an absolute rock for a chin. And that might be all he needs. In any fight that comes down to whose chin cracks first, there's nobody on earth I'm taking ahead of Big Country.

No one should be a too big favorite in this fight, feel like both guys are capable of KO'ing the other one, with Nelson being the less likely one to get KO'd bc he seems to have a slightly better chin and is younger than Hunt. I'm also interested if Nelson will be able to takedown Hunt, I'd say yes before Hunt all of a sudden developed TDD. I think someone who's knowledge about the 2 guys striking will have a much more clear picture of who has an advantage. Both of their stand-up styles a bit different, we got Nelson with his over right hand (he likes to throw that jab jab over right hand if im not mistaken) which he usually clipps taller fighters with. It might not be as succesful vs a shorter fighter like Hunt. On the other hand we got Hunt who has really good uppercuts and hooks. I feel like someone who's experienced will be able to predict what we will see in the standup and who holds the advantage when these 2 styles collide.

it was like Rothwell said, and he was asking for the Overeem fight because he knew that Overeem has a weak chin and that he would eventually touch him because he pushes forward a lot (though in a sense Rothwell got a bit lucky, feel like if it would have gone past r1 Overeems kicks and knee's would have had their toll on Rothwells body, his arm was already damagesd by Reems kicks). I feel like maybe the same thing is the deal here, perhaps Hunts boxing style is far superior vs Roy Nelsons boxing style.

Although Hunt did do this in later rounds with Bigfoot, this a gross mischaracterization the pretty awesome counter fighting Hunt's picked up in his veteran years. If this is honestly how you think Hunt fights now, I don't think you've been paying very close attention.

I quite like Mo's analysis overall. Nelson's mostly been beaten by fast technical strikers, Stipe and JDS aren't exactly stand and trade guys they're 'pick my opponent apart with speed and technique' guys

Hunt does have more power and better technique, but in a HW battle chin matters too and Nelson's is better than Hunt's although they're both great

Nelson at +131 is marginal value imo, i'd cap it closer to evens, i'd take Hunt at +131 as well. Not going to go big either way though.

Anyone else think Umalatov probably isn't a dog to Pendred? He hulked up in r2 but was getting owned in r1 by Mike King. Wild card is with it being in Europe he'll have the crowd behind him though

The Rick Story price is tempting too against Gunnar, he's dead if Gunnar takes him down but i'm not sure that he can and Story will have a small advantage on the feet

I kind of like Story vs Nelson as well.

Mo is short selling Hunt's striking bigtime. Hunt's timing and ability to gage the distance of his opponents when they strike is second to none. His ability to slip punches against fighters with large reach advantages shows how refined his boxing and understanding of striking distance is. Watch his fights against Kongo and Struve to see how well he moves in and out of striking distance.

Nelson just comes forward with straight punches and has that huge overhand right. If Hunt is in shape he should be able able to tee of on Nelson and circle out avoiding damage. In the clinch his dirty boxing way more varied and accurate then Nelson's.
In term of technical striking there is a huge disparity between the two, Nelsons chin and power though give him a punchers chance against anyone.

I'm not saying Hunt should be a huge favourite but he has a large advantage over Nelson in the standup and if Nelson doesn't utilize his grappling then Hunt will most likely stop him or tee off on him until he gasses and then Nelson's chances improve. I think his current line is value.

Just rewatched 3 Hunt fights and came away with an idea...think I will let the first play out and then try to get Nelson live, hoping nobody lands a knockout blow. The "good movement" phase of Hunt lasts one round, after that there is a marked difference in his motions.

I'm not saying your cap is wrong, but if you're leaning heavily on the striking analysis above, I think you might re-evaluate it. Mo leads off by saying a better striker strikes from distance on the feet and then brings up sanchez as a nelson foil. All of that is kinda wtf b/c Hunt isn't an out fighter, and nelson isn't a volume striker. I have no idea how any of that applies at all.

Then he goes on to say that Hunt is going to stand in front of Roy and trade until someone goes down and roy has a better chin. I wouldn't be shocked if roy lands a bomb, but I still think that's a gross mischaracterization of how Hunt fights.

Hunt's a very technically gifted counterstriker and showed it against dos santos, struve, and bigfoot (though bigfoot gave him fits by kicking instead of engaging and making Hunt lead a bunch). Roy has a counter uppercut and a huge overhand right and that's about it. Roy and Hunt both push their opponents to the fence and then herd them on to huge bombs. Roy doesn't really throw many combos, so i can't see an exchange like the one mo's talking about happen. I can definitely see roy land a bomb and end the night, but it'd be a single shot. I don't think it'll be in some wild exchange.

I'm sure I could be wrong, but nothing in mo's analysis makes any sense to me.

Neither here nor there but Hunt has a 1 inch reach advantage which he hasn't had in i don't even know how long

Yeah it's interesting that frame wise Nelson and Hunt are two of the most similar build-wise only with Nelson having a lot more fat but it's not like Hunt is ripped either

A lot will come down to whether Nelson comes to 'stand and bang and put on a show' in which case he's an underdog, or whether he comes to get the win at any costs. It's very possible that Nelson could get Hunt down at some stage and if he does then while Hunt's ground game is better than it was Nelson has a big advantage there.

Basically, with a good gameplan, I quite like Nelson's chances, but if he doesn't fight smart then there's a good chance he gets picked apart standing unless he lands the big overhand right clean on Hunt at some point

This really isn't a fight where I love either guy's chances, so naturally i'm leaning towards the underdog

Not touching Bigfoot/Arlovski at current price - Bigfoot should win but can be KO'd and Arlovski has a puncher's chance if he has a good day instead of a Schaub day

Not touching the Tibau fight with a 10 foot pole, he's so inconsistent and I suck at picking his fights I think i'm 1-3 in the last 4 times I bet on/against him

Santos should beat Escudero especially in Brazil unless Escudero's gotten a lot better since we last saw him (I didn't see any of his fights outside the UFC)

Wendell Oliveira Marques looks interesting simply because Ponzinibbio looked so awful in his last fight and neither guy has any particularly good wins. The steam seems to like him.

I don't think Doane can take Alcantara, I was pretty low on Alcantara but he's raised his stock a bit in my eyes with his last fight

Dashon Johnson (who amusingly enough my sisters bf was friends with in school) kinda sucks and all of his wins are against cans, I think Pepey is good enough to beat him because Pepey knows BJJ isn't the worst striker and Johnson got clowned by an Aussie TUF reject even if he is a young prospect

No real thoughts on any of the other fights, Trinaldo is consistently inconsistent, Bedford/Yahya will depend on whether Yahya can take him down (I think I like the under 2.5 in that fight at evens or better as I expect it ends via Bedford KO or Yahya sub a lot since while Yahya goes the distance a lot Bedford's sub D isn't great)

Paulo Thiago will probably find a way to lose despite Spencer being a lower-mid level guy

No idea how good Pacheco is so can't predict her fight with Andrade at all

I think I like Araujo over Sullivan but haven't seen enough tape on Sullivan to say that with any kind of certainty

If I had to bet at current lines for the upcoming card I might go small on Santos, Marques, Alcantara, Pepey and Araujo and maybe the Bedford/Yahya under 2.5. I don't think I like anything enough for a full unit though, will probably just make some 0.2u sweat bets or whatever and just enjoy the card without getting tilted by split decisions or if a fighter I bet on does something stupid

Without knowing prices, some lines I might like on the Japan card are

Caceres, Tate, Akiyama, Kuunimoto, Sicilia, Jury and Lim is a super lock although will probably be -500 or whatever

Anyone else think Romero is great value at -125, Kennedys strength is wrestling and he'll be completely outclassed I was expecting -250ish