T.J. Brown vs Danny Chavez Odds and Prediction, UFC 252 Prelims

In this fight, there will be two fighters who will be looking for the first UFC victory in their respective careers. The only question left is which fighter will be able to do enough in order to accomplish that feat this Saturday night.

T.J. Brown has had a decent MMA career up to this point. At the age of 30, he boasts a career 14-7 record, which is respectable. After fighting for several years at various organizations, Brown (-135) was finally granted an invitation to fight on season three of Dana White's Contender Series with a UFC contract at stake. In order to receive that contract, he had to defeat Dylan Lockard. In the third round of that fight, Brown got a submission attempt in and forced his opponent to tap and he became a member of the UFC as a result. However, he had significantly less success in his UFC debut as he got submitted in the second round by Jordan Griffin. Now, Brown has another chance to pick up his first career victory with the organization and oddsmakers seem to like his chances of doing so.

Brown specializes in the ground game and he has been known to find some success when it comes to forcing his opponents to tap out as roughly 62% of his victories have come via submissions. It is also worth mentioning that 13 of his 14 career victories have come by stoppage so he typically does not like to leave his fights in the hands of the judges which is probably wise considering some of the controversial decisions made by referees in the organization this year.

Brown’s opponent for this fight will be Danny Chavez who had been fighting professionally for over ten years. Chavez (+155) enters this fight with a 10-3 record in MMA with none of those fights taking place in the UFC. However, that does not change the fact that he enters this fight in great form as he is in the middle of a three-fight winning streak that dates back to 2018. That winning streak is even more impressive when one realizes that all three victories have come via first-round knockouts. Interestingly, Chavez actually fought about a month ago in GLFC when he defeated Dylan Cala in a little bit over two minutes and that performance was good enough to get him a UFC contract. However, one has to wonder if one month is enough time for him to enter another training camp and to fully recover from his previous fight before facing someone who has appeared in the UFC before.

Although each of Chavez’s last three fights ended within five minutes, his career has been full of decisions which almost makes him the polar opposite of his opponent in this fight. Seven of

Chavez’s ten victories have come via decision and roughly 69% of his fights have gone to the judges’ scorecards so one has to wonder if he will be able to dictate the pace against an opponent who likes to finish his fights extremely early.

As for my prediction, I am going to side with the favorite in this fight. Although Chavez has looked good lately, I still cannot get over that one month turnaround and I expect him to struggle as a result. Brown has the power to end this fight extremely quickly and Chavez has been in some slugfests over his last few fights which could be an issue if he continues to trade punches on Saturday. This fight is pretty even but I think that Brown’s UFC experience will pay off as he gets the job done as a favorite.

Winner: T.J. Brown

Odds courtesy of BestFightOdds.com