Finally, after over a year of negotiating and hype, Floyd Mayweather Jr. is set to face Conor McGregor on Saturday evening at Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena in Nevada and on Showtime pay-per-view.
Mayweather currently holds -375 (bet $375 to win $100) odds to win the fight, per Oddsshark.com, while McGregor is being given +285 odds in the fight. While it might be tempting to take McGregor‘s excellent odds, it’s not the smart play.
Consider this.
ESPN.com’s Dan Rafael and Brett Okamoto broke the fight into six categories: defense, endurance, durability, speed, power and experience. They both gave Mayweather the advantage in defense, endurance, speed and experience and were split on durability. McGregor‘s only clear advantage in this fight, then, would appear to be power.
Now, power is a good advantage to have. Power gives you the ability to end a fight in one punch. Power can wear down an opponent and make them sloppy in the later rounds.
But Mayweather hasn’t often had the power advantage in his fights, and it’s never mattered. His speed, defense and boxing IQ allow him to dart in and out of an opponent’s guard and escape the most dangerous of blows.
Betting on McGregor outright is too risky, then, but betting on Mayweather won’t exactly bring the greatest return. So prop bets might be the better play in this matchup.
For example, Mayweather is -135 to win by any of knockout, technical knockout or disqualification, while he’s +250 to win by either a decision or technical decision, per Oddsshark.com. Even more specifically, he’s +325 to win by unanimous decision, +450 to win by knockout, +240 to win by technical knockout, +800 to win by disqualification, +1600 to win by majority decision and +3300 to win by technical decision.
The more specific you are willing to get, obviously, the more favorable odds you can acquire. That’s probably a pretty smart route in this fight, where just about everyone believes Mayweather will win. If you have a strong inclination, say, that Mayweather will win by knockout, that is a smart place to put your money. If you believe that the fight will go the distance and McGregor might actually keep things close, there is big money in betting on a Mayweather majority decision.
Interestingly, the odds of McGregor winning by a knockout are just +325. Contrast that to his odds of winning a split decision (+2500), majority decision (+3300) or unanimous decision (+3300). It’s pretty clear Vegas believes McGregor has a slight chance of securing a knockout given his power, but the chances of him going the distance and winning on points is an extreme long shot.
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