UFC Fight Night: Blaydes vs. Ngannou 2

Sport: MMA
Promotion: UFC
Date: Nov. 25, 2018
Venue: Cadillac Arena
City: Beijing, China
Broadcast: Pay-per-view
Straight Bet

Curtis Blaydes (-190)

Curtis Blaydes vs. Francis Ngannou

Breakdown

Curtis Blaydes vs. Francis Ngannou

Curtis Blaydes has dramatically improved since their first fight. His sense of distance and timing is better. He’s reintegrated his wrestling with an improved striking game, but he also gets hit hard closing opponents down and has still been stiff when committing to big strikes in open space. There will be counters available for Ngannou if he can hit them. Whether or not he will is another story.

Blaydes will land plenty of takedowns, tire Ngannou out, avoid the big power punches, and get the W. Ngannou has been exposed somewhat in that neither his wrestling nor striking game are particularly deep past the first layers and he looked shellshocked against Lewis.

Safe to say the sportsbooks blew the opening line for the main event rematch between Ngannou and Blaydes. Despite opening as the favorite, the line has completely flipped since then and now Blaydes is a solid 2-to-1 favorite for this bout. Yes, Ngannou did beat Blaydes the first time these two fought a couple years ago, but since then Blaydes has really improved while it looks like Ngannou is on a slight decline. It's a heavyweight fight so anything can happen, but based on his wrestling game and Ngannou's poor takedown defense, you had to lean with Blaydes to get the job done here. Too bad he's not at plus money anymore.

Stake: 5%

Prediction

Curtis Blaydes vs. Francis Ngannou
-190 Odds +164
65.5% Market % 37.9%
70.00% Bet on Combat % 30.00%
+4.5% Inefficiency % -7.9%
Curtis Blaydes - Straight Bet
Odds:-190
Risk:$15000.00
To Win:$7894.74
Outcome:Loss

Outcome:

Francis Ngannou defeats Curtis Blaydes via TKO (punches) at 0:45 of round 1.

Blaydes is a raw fighter and needs a lot of work in the striking department both offensively and defensively. We underestimated his striking defense and thought he could get the takedown with ease but Ngannou was well measured and patient with his striking and defending the takedown.

 

Loss

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