UFC Fight Night 70: Machida vs Romero goes down this Saturday from Hollywood, Florida. This card was originally supposed to serve as the finals for TUF: Brazil 4, but that has since changed as issues with the US visa system caused many fighters to have issues securing visas for the event. The biggest fight postponed besides the TUF finals was the bout that was supposed to fill the co-main event slot between Rick Story and Erick Silva. Instead, the co-main event will be contested between Lorenz Larkin and Santiago Ponzinibbio. We’ll be looking to continue our red hot month of June that has seen us bring those who tail our bets over 20 units of profit and more than makes up for lacklustre months of April and May. It is both documented in our betting track record as well as third party tracked on Cappertek. If you’re interested in getting all our bets for UFC Fight Night 70: Machida vs Romero or any other UFC event, you can purchase them exclusively on Cappertek.
Lyoto Machida vs Yoel Romero serves as the middleweight main event of the card. Machida is 37 years old and 22-6 overall. He has been fighting in the UFC since 2007 and at one time his unorthodox karate style striking made him one of the most fearsome opponents the UFC light heavyweight division had to offer. Now, it seems he has both lost some of his insane speed, but opponents also seem better prepared to defend against his style and he has had less success going 3-2 over his last 5 albeit against a pretty high level of competition. Yoel Romero is much less experienced in the Octagon, having debuted in 2013. He is 9-1 overall and 5-0 in the UFC. He seems to have relatively bad cardio, but a great will to win as 3 of his UFC wins have been TKOs in the third round. In two of those, we had the fight scored for the other side prior to the TKO. Romero is 38 years old and a former Olympic silver medalist in freestyle wrestling. We find it somewhat surprising that the line on Machida currently has him as a 1.59 (-170) favourite. While we do lean towards Machida to win the decision, we expected a lot more money to be on Romero given the devastating loss Machida had in his last fight against Luke Rockhold. Unfortunately, with Machida as a favourite, we think the betting line is about right and will not be laying any money on the main event.
The first fight we will be laying money on is Alex Oliveira vs Joe Merritt. Oliveira is 11-2 overall and 1-1 inside the Octagon. In his most recent win over KJ Noons just a few weeks ago, Oliveira seemed to be losing the striking exchanges very early before he started dominating the grappling which led to a rear naked choke finish. Oliveira is 27 years old. His opponent, Joe Merritt is 31 years old and 6-0 overall with all 6 wins by TKO. He will be making his Octagon debut on Saturday. Don’t be fooled by Merritt’s record though, 5 of the 6 wins were against guys with losing records and 2 of the wins came against guys who have never won. He has basically fought nobodies and the fight against Oliveira will be an astronomical step up in competition. Oliveira will definitely have the edge on the ground and in the grappling in this fight so the only real risk in Merritt landing a lucky strike while standing and considering KJ Noons wasn’t able to do that we have little reason to believe Merritt will be able to. Oliveira is the first leg of our 2 team free bet parlay at 1.25 (-400).
The second leg of our 2 team parlay is a short notice fight where we have featherweights Hacran Dias and Levan Makashvili going at it. Dias is 22-3-1 overall at 31 years old. He is 2-2 in the Octagon, but has fought a relatively high level of competition with losses to Ricardo Lamas and Nik Lentz and wins over Darren Elkins and Iuri Alcantara. Levan Makashvili is 26 years old and 7-1 overall. He has only fought once in the UFC and it was a split decision win over Mark Eddiva about a month ago at UFC Fight Night 66: Edgar vs Faber. For Makashvili, it will be a short notice fight against a much higher level of competition than he is used to. For Dias, it will also be a short notice fight although he was in training camp to fight Chas Skelly prior to Skelly pulling out and being replaced by Makashvili at the start of June. With the line on these two relatively close, we think the value is clearly in betting Dias which is why we made him the second leg of our two team free bet parlay. The bet is 2 units on Oliveira and Dias at 1.89 (-112) at Bookmaker.
Remember, our full betting tips are only available via Cappertek and provide awesome value compared to the competition. Consider this, if you had followed us for all of 2015 so far and bought 6, 30 day packages for $24.95 a piece, you’d only need to have a unit size of $5.40 to break even!
Bet
Alex Oliveira over Joe Merritt and Hacran Dias over Levan Makashvili Parlay. 2 units at 1.89 (-112) at Bookmaker
