Edgar will never become a multiple division champ with his, score points and get out of there style. He gets hit way too much in every fight he has and does so little damage on his opponents. Edgar is going to get brutalized by Aldo and then where he goes will be a mystery. Edgar can only hold on to the torch for so long with his style, he has to pass it up to bigger and better fighters now.

On another note, just watched this weeks tuf and have to say I'm disappointed, the fighters really suck. How is it that they couldn't find better guys?!?

Yeah the TUF The Smashes series seems more entertaining. The first legit good guy of the season in the 2nd WW fight, forget his name but the 2nd Aussie who won has some serious power

Mike Ricci looks like the best prospect this season on regular TUF from what ive seen

Yeah, he seems alright. This season reminds me more of a jersey format, where they have loud mouthed pigs who can't back it up fight legally. It seems more they go for obnoxious fighters to try and make TV rather than talent, then ldo they put in some decent fighters so it's not so transparent.

Ricci trains with GSP, and appears to be a professional, he looked good in his fight to get in. He'd be my pick to win the season if I had to make one.

Colton Smith seems to be a douchebag but he seemed to have good wrestling athleticism etc. he'd be my second pick

Yeah, at this point id just go with the most athletic guys. Never figured out why Sam Alvey was first pick considering how he looks, tall slim redneck pretty much with no other weapon other than his mediocre, slightly bad, boxing, I have no idea how Carwin and his coaches were complementing his kicks and overall game.

Put 5u on Big Nog at -241 and 0.5u on Prado at +310 to go with my 5u Maia at -125

Big Nog's opening line on Pinn was best available of best fight odds, feels like he should close closer to -300

Very happy with my Maia and Nog bets and Prado is an okay odds play imo

he looked really good in his fight to get into the house is why, same way lawrence and sicilia looked like monsters last season early

Wasn't Ricci in Bellator? Got KO'd by Curran IIRC?

Erick Silva inside distance +170 looks nice. Nog looks good at -280, will probably parlay him with Anderson ITD whenever that comes up.

I think Ricci was a good size fav if memory serves

So pumped for 153, despite not having the most significant fights on paper, this card is going to be awesome. When Luiz Cane vs Chris Camozzi is the worst fight on the card, you know it's going to be epic. 9 Main Card quality fights imo (the main + tibau/trinaldo, rony/sam and brandao/gambino, granted the latter 2 are only maincard worthy probably due to having TUF winners in them, but should be epic)

I'm thinking i'll be taking a lot of unders for this card, I could 9 out of 12 fights at a min that the fight is more likely to end in a finish than a decision

He got a fast KO in his opening rounds, I mean I'd rather see a guy get tested in his opening match to form an opinion rather than get a KO and instantly think this guy is the world. It says nothing about his well roundness, athlesisim etc.

For anyone interested, Marcello looked utterly worthless in tuf, the guy has 0 standup offense, he's old and has bad takedowns, which he will need to win the fight.

Agreed fwiw, he's good on the ground but has no way to get it there. He won the opening fight to get into the house on the ground but he's a one dimensional BJJ guy. Should probably revise my writeup to Madadi to -220 or so instead of -150

Any of the other reg posters want to handicap all of the lines before they're out with some analysis like my post a couple pages back?

Also would love some feedback on my Maia -125 and Big Nog -241 bets. The Nog line could move either way, but Maia is pretty clearly getting worse. I feel like I go 2/2 around half the time which would pay +6u and most of the rest of the time i'll go 1-1 which will be either -1u or -3u depending which of them wins. The odds of two non-brazilian underdogs taking out two brazilians who are better or equal pretty much everywhere seems pretty slim.

I just set up a spreadsheet so I can track the results of the picks I'm posting here more easily, discovered I didn't have it quite right in the last post (though I had the ROI right). So for the record here are correct results:

Total: 25-12-0, 71.5u bet, +12.346u, 17.3% ROI
Best Bets: 5-1-0, 15u bet, +7.814u, 52.1% ROI
3-Star Plays: 3-1-0, 11u bet, +3.37u, 30.6% ROI
2-Star Plays: 12-3-0, 35u bet, +10.53u, 30.1% ROI
1-Star Plays: 10-8-0, 25.5u bet, -1.554u, -6.1% ROI

Maia should take this, he's faced tougher wrestlers and pretty much loves getting in the clinch to possibly set up takedowns/trips, and Story doesnt have the best TDD's. What worries me is first minutes when Story comes out swinging and rushes Maia. He should be able to weather that and then hopefully take it to the ground. Also the cardio worries me a bit, if Story manages to tire out Maia, we have a unam decision for Story. I mean, he's no slouch, he has wins over Alves, Hendricks etc so one should be careful to unload on Maia. In his advantage though, he will have a size advantage(I think), better ground game and very slick submissions.

Loving the 2-3 star play results so far. Will be very interesting to see how the ROI holds up once you hit a three figure sample of bets in each category.

What does your spreadsheet say about Maia and Nog against Story and Herman respectively? Would love to get your picks asap for the 2-3 star plays as i'll likely tail a few of them and i'm decent at predicting line movement usually so we can all discuss in thread whether to bet immediately or wait etc.

Maia has a 2 inch height and 1 inch reach advantage over Story fwiw so you're right in saying he has a slight size advantage.

Yeah I have definitely run good at the 2 and 3 star and a bit bad at 1-star though not sure how high ROI will be on the 1-star. Not even certain my betting is +EV at this point though I'd be kind of surprised if it isn't. If the market ever adjusts and starts pricing fights more intelligently I am screwed as I won't really be able to tell.

I'm trying to release plays as early as possible, but because I'm trying to get thousands of dollars down on some of the bets it can be tricky to get that much on at good odds even without putting downward pressure on the price.

Lean Herman and Story for those fights but won't be betting. Pretty lean card for me. The only 2 star play I will have is Silva. Prado would be a 2-star play except underdogs of +300 or longer are such bad bets historically. I normally exclude them completely but I like the look of Prado too much for that, so I'm just demoting him to a 1-star play instead. Not sure whether to take +310 now or wait. Other 1-star play is Tibau, I'll include that in the official results but may or may not actually take the bet myself depending on odds.

I think money will come in on Davis, just a hunch though. He's the more known fighter and I think a lot of people will throw money at him closer to the fight. Would be nice to see how that correlates, the more known fighter, if they usually are betted closer to the fight or not. Ldo depends on other factors as well, but there is prolly some truth to it.

Yeah normally I would leave it, but Prado being undefeated is an issue. I bet Kingsbury in Kingsbury v Manuwa when the line started shortening and then it lengthened like crazy close to fight time even though Manuwa is relatively unknown. I'm not sure if that was because Manuwa was a home country hero or because he was undefeated. Prado did lengthen near fight time last time, so I guess I'll see if that happens again.

Hey guys,

Brand new to posting here, but I've been lurking the forums for a while, the Sports Betting Forum in particular. I've been betting sports for a little while, but recently decided to focus more and take it a bit more seriously. MMA is one of the sports that I do best at, as well as being one of my favorite sports to watch. I also occasionally write breakdowns for fights for a website which I actually find helps. Although the analysis for the site isn't always that detailed, it at least forces me to watch some footage and get thinking about the fights.

Thought I'd post a couple of early thoughts on 153 before I do any hard research starting tomorrow.

Silva/Bonnar: Like most of you guys, I think it's probably a no bet. Bonnar has looked somewhat impressive lately, but it's still the same guy that got beat standing by Forrest Griffin twice, and that was six years ago. Bonnar is big and has under-rated Jitsu, but I think the UFC and co. are over-hyping the size advantage in an attempt to sell the fight. -1200 is probably a bit long on odds though.

Teixeira/Maldonaldo: This I think might be one of the most intriguing bets on the card. Maldonaldo gets a lot of credit as a great boxer, but technically he's not all that fantastic. He's entirely stiff and way too hittable. The fact that he has a strong chin and throws a lot of body punches is great, but it doesn't give him great boxing. Add to that fact the striking game won't matter much, because Glover is taking this bout to the mat ASAP. Maldonaldo hasn't shown that he can keep himself upright against either Pokrajac or Kingsbury, so I doubt that he'll do it against Teixeira. From there Tex wins by whatever he wants more than likely.

Nog/Herman: Herman is entirely too hittable and honestly I don't think he takes fighting at the highest level seriously enough (just from interviews when he talks about training, etc...) I also think Herman should probably consider trying to get himself to Light Heavyweight as he's not a large Heavyweight. Nog is getting older but he has better striking technically and looked good against Mir until he decided to go for a submission instead of pounding him out on the ground. On the ground Herman doesn't have the wrestling to control Nog from the top and if he's on the bottom he's in trouble. Leaning Nog, but his chin is kinda shot and Herman can still throw big power so -300 might be a bit much.

- Silva/Fitch: I hate Fitch, but I think a lot of people are writing him off because of the Hendricks loss and it didn't really show a whole lot to be honest. A more pressing concern is lack of cagetime in the past year. Two fights in 2011, none yet in 2012 and it's October. And his last bout lasted on twelve seconds. Brenneman managed to get Silva down, which means Fitch probably can too. Silva is obviously a young, dynamic striker, but Fitch has smothered just about everyone he's ever faced not named GSP. If he crawls to anything around +120 or so, I think that's value.

More to come starting tomorrow. Although for what it's worth I'm with Swoop's side in the Maia/Story fight.

Good writeup, thanks for that. FWIW the loss to Hendricks has no bearing on my Silva bet which is based mostly on Fitch's advancing age and time out of the cage.

Time out of the cage is understandable, and I agree, but in his last non-hendricks fight he didnt really show signs of age. Granted that was 1.5 years ago, but 34 isn't all that old for a fighter who doesn't rely on speed very much. Obviously it needs to be taken into account, but I think its hard to read much into it without having seen him fight in a while.

153 is the first card I've had time to take a good look at in a while, not sure how much im going to get down on it, but my initial thoughts (beyond the fitch fight which I've already gone over, and will make a few nice parlays I have going):

I like nog against herman, but I'm not sure how much. The closer it gets to -200 the more likely I'll be to put down a couple units. It bothers me a bit that nog couldnt get schaub down, Herman's striking isn't formidable, but the older nog gets and the more he slows down the more strikers worry me against him. Doubt I end up pulling the trigger.

Liking the prado line, going to wait on it and hope money goes in on Phil for his being a big name and having main evented 1 (?) free card.

Looking to get money on glover sooner rather than later, as I'm guessing thats where everyones money is going. Maldonado is a pretty good offensive striker, but his defense leaves a lot to be desired, and glover's offensive stand up is good enough that, if the fight is there I wouldnt be too concerned. Combine that with glover's grappling (fight is money in the bank if it goes to the ground imo)

Haven't seen a line on cane vs carmozzi yet, but I'm hoping cane's recent troubles give me some good value on him. Cane's losses have come against solid strikers in lil nog, diabate and nedkov, and Carmozi hasn't outstruck anybody that impresses me. I'm absolute garbage at predicting lines, so I have no idea if I'll end up with money on this, but barring some serious juice I think this will be one of my bigger plays

Need to research the rest of the undercard more before I make any decisions, a lot of guys i only recall having seen fight once or twice...