The UFC has one more event in Abu Dhabi before shifting back to the UFC APEX location in Las Vegas. The hope is that the promotion can go out with a bang and if you look at this fight card, that certainly appears to be the case.
We’re going to change it up a little bit this week and pull our fight odds from PointsBet Sportsbook. Why is that? Well, if you don’t know about PointsBet, you should. Their collection of props for the fight cards is impressive. For example, they have 24 different bet types for the UFC on ESPN 14 card and 32 different bet types for the main event between Robert Whittaker and Darren Till.
Furthermore, as betting action comes in on Whittaker for the main event, his price has been driven up to -130. That is not the odds that you have to bet if you take advantage of their Odds Booster line on Whittaker. Instead of laying -130, you can get Whittaker at +105 in his highly-anticipated return.
This is expected to be a #1 contender matchup between Till and Whittaker and you know that Whittaker would love a title shot after losing the belt to Israel Adesanya at UFC 243. Till, who is extremely popular because of his fight style, is +104 to pull off the mild upset.
That is far from the only fight that you can bet on over at PointsBet, but it is the one with the Odds Boost for the card, so you may want to sign up and take advantage of this promo and also up to $1,500 in free bets for taking advantage of our partnership with PointsBet in Indiana, Iowa, and New Jersey.
This will be the swan song for Antonio Rogerio Nogueira as he takes on Shogun for the third time. Mauricio Rua won both previous fights and is -195 to take this one down as well. It should happen, as the 44-year-old Nogueira calls it quits and also shakes off more than 14 months of rust for this fight. Shogun is still running pretty well, with his only recent loss to Anthony Smith, who is one of the top guys in the UFC at present.
There has been no indication that this will be the end for 42-year-old Fabricio Werdum, who is in a very interesting spot against Alexander Gustafsson. Gustafsson actually did retire after his last fight, but he couldn’t stay away and now returns and will do so as a heavyweight. Gustafsson is -350, so this is a big price to lay if you do want to fade Werdum. Is Gustafsson here for a paycheck or a career renaissance? He should be the quicker fighter as the lighter combatant, but how is that chin after more than a year on hiatus?
The +290 price on Werdum might be one of the better long shot gambles on there, but there are quite a few fights with big underdogs. Rhys McKee is probably not one that you want to bet at +650 against Khamzat Chimaev (-1250), but maybe John Castaneda at +350 against Nathaniel Wood is one of them. Newcomer Niklas Stolze is +310 against Ramazan Emeev.
There are a couple of really interesting fighters at some decent favorite prices. Movsar Evloev is -210 against Mike Grundy. The undefeated Evloev is only making his third UFC appearance. Grundy only has one loss in his career and it came more than five years ago to eventual UFC fighter Damian Stasiak.
Tom Aspinall is -230 against Jake Collier in what amounts to the UFC debut for the favorite. Aspinall is a finisher and a killer in this division and Collier, like Gustafsson, is stepping up to heavyweight to take this fight. Collier also hasn’t fought in more than two and a half years.
Evloev and Aspinall make for a really interesting parlay with the -210 and the -230 coming out to around +112. That looks like a really nice little ticket for this UFC card.
There are two women’s fights on the docket. Bethe Correia is an underdog at +124 to Pannie Kianzad. Kianzad is a -155 favorite. With the total heavily juiced on over 2.5, the judges are likely to come into play here and we have seen some peculiar scorecards on Fight Island. This is probably a fight to avoid for that reason.
The same could very well be said about the main card women’s fight between Carla Esparza and Marina Rodriguez. Rodriguez is a deserving -180 favorite, but the fight to go the distance is -417. Rodriguez fought to a majority draw last time out against Cynthia Calvillo, who is a better fighter than Esparza. Rodriguez should also dictate the tempo and pace of the fight with her size. This one is a little less scary as far as the judging goes.
There are some decent fights on this card, but all of the anticipation is on that Till and Whittaker fight. Till has only lost to Tyron Woodley and Jorge Masvidal, with both of those losses coming when he moved to welterweight. He is undefeated in his career as a middleweight.
Whittaker has the boosted odds at +105 from PointsBet and that may ultimately be the deciding factor with your pick, but Till is a very intriguing underdog in this one.
The UFC on ESPN 14 event will be broadcast in primetime for the East Coast crowd in New Jersey and those in the Eastern Time Zone in Indiana, but Central Time Zoners from western Indiana and Iowa will be able to lock in on this one on Saturday July 25 at a reasonable hour as well.