We are still a couple weeks away from the next big pay-per-view event with UFC 251 at Yas Island in Abu Dhabi. The “Fight Island” event has a fully-loaded card, including three title fights.
In the meantime, two pretty good ESPN cards are on the horizon, beginning with UFC on ESPN on Saturday June 20 with a main event of Curtis Blaydes vs. Alexander Volkov and 11 other fights for your viewing and betting pleasure.
We’ll use the odds from BetMGM Sportsbook as our guide for this weekend’s UFC card and also encourage you to check out the sportsbook review to see if that is the right type of place for you to bet.
Curtis Blaydes is a -400 favorite in the main event against Alexander Volkov, which makes Blaydes the biggest favorite on the card. The +305 return price on Volkov seems attractive given that one strike can end a heavyweight fight and because Volkov is the taller fighter in what looks like a slugfest.
Blaydes, though, only has two losses to his name and both have come via Francis Ngannou. There are better betting options on the board than laying -400 with Blaydes, but it does seem unlike that we will see a major upset in the main event.
Josh Emmett is +115 against Shane Burgos in what looks like an excellent featherweight fight. Burgos is -139 to improve to 14-1 in his career, but he’s going to have to earn it. The 35-year-old Emmett seems to have a different mantra than what he had earlier in his career. It seems to no longer be about longevity and more about leaving it all out there in one way or another.
Each of Emmett’s last four fights have ended in knockouts and he is 3-1 in those, including the Performance of the Night Bonus from his first-round win against Mirsad Bektic. Burgos is a little more controlled of a fighter, but has obviously had a lot of success based on that record.
Burgos has a dramatic size edge in this fight. He has five inches of height and reach on the challenger. Emmett will have to find a way to get inside, while still managing to protect himself. The fight is -125 to end by KO/TKO/DQ at BetMGM and you can get under 2.5 rounds at -143. Burgos should win, but the odds of a stoppage seem better than picking one of the two combatants.
In other men’s action on the card, Belal Muhammad is -125 against Lyman Good. Good is +105 on the underdog side after a bout with COVID-19 back in April. Muhammad is the slight favorite with a more well-rounded set of skills and the total juiced on 2.5 suggests that Muhammad will be able to dictate the pace and tempo of the fight. That would make things tough for Good, who is more of a finisher than a decision winner.
The UFC on ESPN 11 card also might be something of a coming-out party for two fighters – Roosevelt Roberts and Max Rohskopf. Roberts draws Jim Miller and is a comfortable -223 favorite in the fight, but Miller is a grizzled UFC veteran and a nice name to have on your list of victories. UFC likes to put those types of matches together to “put over” a fighter, much like what we see from the WWE all of the time.
Rohskopf isn’t in that same situation with the first fight on the card against Austin Hubbard, but Hubbard has been a disappointment to this point in the UFC with a win and two losses. The win came with a hospital stay for Hubbard, which gives you an idea of how that fight went for him. Rohskopf is stepping up in class to take on a UFC fighter, but has five wins, all by submission, in his young career.
Four women’s fights are also on the card. Brianna Van Buren is the biggest of the favorites at -200 as she tries to extend the losing streak of Tecia Torres to five in a row. Torres is an attractive underdog at +165, given that three of those four losses are to a current champion (Weili Zhang) or former champions, Jessica Andrade and Joanna Jedrzejczyk. Van Burn is a promising prospect, but this is an upgrade over past opponents.
Roxanne Modafferi is -118 against Lauren Murphy at -106. Modafferi is coming off of a big win over Maycee Barber, in which Barber lost by unanimous decision and also suffered a torn ACL. It is surprising to see Modafferi such a small favorite off of such a resounding victory. That may be telling.
Cortney Casey is +100 to Gillian Robertson at -121 and Raquel Pennington is -152 to Marion Reneau at +125 in the other women’s fight.
All of the action will be on ESPN on Saturday, so be sure to check it out and also be sure to bet as the action unfolds at BetMGM.