With as many trips as the UFC is now making to Brazil (on a seemingly monthly basis), it would be easy for a few of these free televised fight cards to get lost in the shuffle.
Rightly so. Some of them, as the experts say, are just no good.
But this isn’t one of them. Sure, the preliminary card is filled with fighters most of us have never heard of. There are perhaps a couple of unknowns on the main card, as well.
But the importance of those fights doesn’t really matter, because the top two bouts on this card? They’re both intriguing, and they have the potential to shake up the top of the middleweight division. The division Anderson Silva ruled with an iron fist a year ago could find itself in an even greater state of flux after Saturday night.
Lyoto Machida. Gegard Mousasi. Ronaldo Souza. And, to a lesser extent, Francis Carmont. All of these fighters are important to the top of the 185-pound division, and all have a state to either draw a line in the sand (in the case of Machida, Mousasi and Souza) or vault into the upper stratosphere of the division (Carmont).
No matter what the rest of the card looks like, that’s well worth watching. But since we’re here, let’s go ahead and pass our gaze over the rest of the UFC’s latest offering from Brazil. We’ll look at the odds and try to determine if there are any valuable plays we might be able to make.
A word of warning, though: There are some absolutely crazy lines on this card. Those of you who have begged me for the last six months to include some underdog betting picks? You might want to pay attention here.
Let’s go.
Note: As per usual, all statistics used in this preview are courtesy of Reed Kuhn at Fightnomics. Give him a follow on Twitter.