Murphy Vs. Ige Betting Odds, Prediction | UFC Betting Sites

UFC Fight Night: Barboza v Murphy — Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images

Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Featherweight sluggers Lerone Murphy vs. Dan Ige will go to war this weekend (Sat., Oct. 26, 2024) at UFC 308 from Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Murphy has been on UFC’s roster for six years now and has yet to taste defeat despite a couple of close calls. Really, it’s only in the last couple years that he’s come into his own and earned a spot in the rankings. At 33 years of age, the English striker is looking to really promote himself from dark horse contender to genuine title threat.

Fortunately, Ige is a great metric to judge Featherweights. The Hawaiian has thrown down with the best and brightest at 145 pounds, and only the best have been able to get by him. He may not love playing the gatekeeper to the elite, but “50k” has made good money and plenty of fans in the process.

Let’s take a closer look at the betting odds and strategic keys for each athlete:

Murphy vs. Ige Betting Odds

Lerone Murphy victory: -270
Lerone Murphy via TKO/KO/DQ: TBD
Lerone Murphy via submission: TBD
Lerone Murphy via decision: TBD
Dan Ige victory: +220
Dan Ige via TKO/KO/DQ: TBD
Dan Ige via submission: TBD
Dan Ige via decision: TBD
Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook

How Murphy Wins

Lerone Murphy has improved dramatically in every facet of MMA since his 2019 UFC debut. He’s something of a generalist, a powerful kickboxer who can also wrestle well. In his last bout versus Edson Barboza, he really showed off his ability to adapt to his opposition, relentlessly pursuing the veteran with more pressure and takedowns than usual.

A mix of tactics is usually necessary to defeat Ige, a similarly well-rounded Featherweight. The bright side about Ige’s wealth of experience against high-level opponents is that the path to defeating him feels fairly well written. More than anything else, he tends to struggle with getting grounded by stronger wrestlers.

That feels like a viable path for Murphy even if he’s not a collegiate wrestler on paper. In fact, Murphy’s ability to put forth threatening combinations and strong takedown attempts should be a successful recipe in gaining top position. He definitely has the skills to — at a bare minimum — compete with Ige standing, meaning a few takedowns could easily be the deciding factor.

How Ige Wins

I know the last section talked a lot about Ige’s struggles with being held down, but the guy is not a bad wrestler! In fact, several of his early wins came from hunting for takedowns and pounding out opponents. Nowadays, Ige is more about lining up his heavy right hand, using footwork, feints, and shifting combinations to score big connections at distance.

I don’t think this is a bad match up for the jiu-jitsu black belt. Murphy is not an overwhelming wrestling generally, nor will he hold an outlandish size advantage. Ige is not outmatched anywhere, and he may hold the advantages in pure power and durability.

The key is avoiding bad position. Ige cannot let himself by worked towards the fence and wrestled. Sometimes, his movement-heavy style ends up trapping himself on the cage. In this bout, it may make sense for Ige to stay a little more stationary and pressure more heavily. Generally, it’s harder to land takedowns while being pushed back, and Ige could also look to shut down Murphy’s kicking game with forward pressure.

Murphy vs. Ige Prediction

I’m expecting a competitive, scrappy fight. Murphy’s position as dark horse kind of makes sense. Despite the lengthy unbeaten streak, he hasn’t looked invulnerable or overly dominant in many of his wins. Add in the simple fact that he historically hasn’t fought that often, and it’s not a recipe for building massive hype.

That said, “The Miracle” is a very good fighter. On the whole, he seems faster than Ige standing and more likely to score takedowns. Given that the technical levels seem fairly even otherwise, it feels like Ige will need a knockout — or at least a huge knockdown/momentum shifting blow — to win this fight.

Murphy has found himself in trouble before but kept the streak alive, and I think he continues that pattern on Saturday.

Prediction: Murphy via decision

Remember that MMAmania.com will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC 308 fight card right here, starting with the early ESPN+ “Prelims” matches online, which are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET (simulcast on ESPNews at 8 p.m. ET), before the pay-per-view (PPV) main card start time at 2 p.m. ET (also on ESPN+).

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