Lyoto Machida clearly emerged as the biggest winner from this past Saturday's UFC on Fox 4 event. How will the former title holder adjust his gameplan now that he’s been awarded a second crack at light heavyweight champion Jon Jones?
Lyoto Machida solidifies title shot against JonesThe UFC’s 4th installment on Fox last Saturday proved, by and large, to be the promotion’s greatest success since transitioning to the network late last year.
Earlier in the week, UFC president Dana White raised the stakes by announcing that whoever put on the most impressive performance between Bader vs. Machida and Shogun vs. Vera would be given the next opportunity to face off with light heavyweight champion Jon Jones in 2013.
With the stakes at an all time high, Machida shined above the rest with a second round knockout of Ryan Bader, for which he will be rewarded with the next shot at the champion.
After the match, Machida gave an interview stating that he was able to lure Bader into his counter straight right by switching from his natural southpaw stance to orthodox.
Anytime Machida stood as an orthodox fighter, Bader appeared increasingly eager to land as his aggression mounted. We witnessed that most clearly in the second round, when Bader’s one and only, ill conceived haymaker was all it took for Machida’s immaculate counter striking to put the former ASU wrestler to sleep.
With that performance, Machida became the first UFC fighter to knock Bader out, and only the third to finish him inside the octagon. Now, Machida has the rest of the year to craft a renewed gameplan in hopes of replicating and extending the
first round success he had against Jon Jones this past December.
Our official UFC predictions, which can be tracked on twitter @BrianMMA11(https://twitter.com/BrianMMA11), ended up going 4-1 at the Fox event.
John Moraga at +150 cashed our largest play of the night with a 1st round knockout over Ulysses Gomez. Moraga was heavily steamed in the closing hours and closed around +110, a full 40 cents less than what we originally played.
The other two dogs we cashed with, Nam Phan and Rani Yahya, both closed significantly higher than what we paid. Despite a nearly 20 cent shift in their opponent’s favor, they both easily went on to cash via a first round sub and a wrongly scored split decision.
Updated betting odds for UFC 153 & 150Last week, we witnessed the release of several marquee betting lines possibly worth adding to our UFC predictions
First, we had Vitor Belfort open at -230 over Alan Belcher at UFC 153.
Belfort’s last few outings, which includes a poor showing against Anthony Johnson, has since moved the line in Belcher's favor. Belcher has fallen a full 10 cents down to +160 and will likely continue to fall until reaching +135 or so.
Aside from pure hand speed, Belcher can match Belfort in just about every other area of the game. In a close decision, his more varied kicking arsenal may very well be enough to sqeak out a decision over the former number one middleweight contender.
And just yesterday, Bookmaker released the final maincard odds for UFC 150 this Saturday.
Donald Cerrone(-275) and Yushin Okami (-325) both opened as clear favorites and took in immediate action on their openers. Cerrone has since peaked at over -300 while Okami has climbed well over -450.
Meanwhile,
the greatest mishap by MMA oddsmaker Joey Odessa was opening Justin Lawrence at +150 against Max Holloway.
UFC bettors quickly corrected the mispriced line by betting Lawrence all the way up -165 in only a few hours. Now that the line has had time readjust and settle, a play on Holloway at +125 appears to be the clear play at current odds.