UFC 260 - Card Overview and Best Bets

Main Event
Heavyweight - Stipe Miocic (+109) vs Francis Ngannou (-133)

Covid stripped this event down to a condensed 10 fight card. Notably, we lost a sweet featherweight title fight between Alexander Volkanovski and Brian Ortega. Luckily for us, the main event is what’s going to drive interest for this PPV. Carrying the load is a monster rematch between Stipe Miocic and Francis Ngannou. What’s interesting about this is Ngannou opened as the favorite even though he was soundly defeated in the first outing. He opened at -225 and then that line quickly shrunk as betters expected history to repeat itself.

I go into more detail on this bout here . Overall, we really don’t have enough data to prove Ngannou fixed the holes in his game since the first fight. This is largely due to the fact that “The Predator” destroyed 4 opponents in less than 3 minutes total on his way back to title contention (which we can’t really fault him for).

I’m picking Ngannou to win but it’s a fairly easy pass on the betting side for me as this really could go either way. It’s possible that the wars/KO loss Miocic suffered to Daniel Cormier put considerable wear on his durability, but we’ve seen the Ohio heavyweight demonstrate incredible fight IQ which can’t be overlooked.

Main Card

Welterweight - Tyron Woodley (+197) vs Vicente Luque (-245)

Bantamweight - Sean O’Malley (-326) vs Thomas Almeida (+253)

Women’s Flyweight - Gillian Robertson (+136) vs Miranda Maverick (-164)

Lightweight - Khama Worthy (-131) vs Jamie Mullarkey (+107)

As for the rest of the main card, O’Malley and Luque would be your parlay padders of choice. Although O’Malley is probably the safer of the two since Woodley appears to be in incredible shape and does have one-shot stopping power. You can read some more about those two bouts here and here . Jamie Mullarkey is a good underdog pick, although the value has taken a dip as of late. His relentless grappling pressure seems like a great match-up against Worthy as long as he can avoid his opponent’s guillotine. For a deeper breakdown on this one, click .

Miranda Maverick also seems like a good investment. Gillian Robertson’s top game is no joke but we’ve seen what happens when she fails to get that going. Maverick’s size and wrestling prowess seems like it's going to be a real problem for Robertson.

Preliminary Card

Light Heavyweight - Alonzo Menifield (-292) vs Fabio Cherant (+232)

Welterweight - Abubakar Nurmagomedov (-240) vs Jared Gooden (+193)

Light Heavyweight - Modestas Bukauskas (+139) vs Michał Oleksiejczuk (-169)

Featherweight - Shane Young (+160) vs Omar Morales (-192)

Early Preliminary Card

Middleweight - Marc-André Barriault (-125) vs Abu Azaitar (+102)

In the undercards, we have a couple of intriguing matches. Feature prelim has Fabio Cherant stepping in on super short notice to take on Alonzo Menifield. Menifield had his moments in his last fight against OSP but ultimately came up short. This one really is Menifield’s fight to lose though. Cherant is a southpaw like OSP and will be looking to recreate that counter shot but it just doesn’t seem overly likely. The competition each fighter has faced is nowhere near on the same level, and Cherant just missed weight as well. Taking Menifield to get back in the win column for this one.

I like Nurmagomedov, Oleksiejcuk, Morales, and Barriault to get it done as well. Just don’t like them enough to bet them.

Single - Jamie Mullarkey

Single - Miranda Maverick

Parlay - O’Malley & Menifield