Here are my post-fight thoughts on one of the craziest cards in UFC history, UFC Fight Night 61. I don’t even know where to start, to be honest. 10 underdogs won last night, a new UFC and MMA record, and the crazy thing is I’m not all the shocked. I had a feeling this was going to be a crazy card. I had a feeling it could wind up similar to last year’s UFC Fight Night 38 event, where a then-record nine underdogs came through, but I didn’t take the plunge and pick more than one dog. The one underdog I did pick correctly, Sam Alvey, came through with flying colors, collecting a brutal first-round knockout of Cezar Ferreira. I was very happy I called him there, especially since there were a lot of people doubting my pick and my read of the fight. Turns out they were very wrong, and I was very right. Very right about that fight and the opening bout between Ivan Jorge and Josh Shockley and nothing else, that is, as those were the one two correct picks I made on the entire card. That’s right, just two correct picks. A 2-9 night, by far the worst ever since I started picking fights on a consistent basis four years ago, and definitely a learning experience to use moving forward. I usually pick at least two or three underdogs a card, but last night I only picked one and it came back to bite me. I knew a lot of these fights were coin flips, but instead of siding with the dog in coin-flip type fights like Antonio Silva/Frank Mir, Jessica Andrade/Marion Reneau and Tiago Trator/Mike de la Torre, I chose to go with the favorites instead and as you saw with my 2-9 record, that strategy didn’t work out very well. Going forward I’m going to start siding with more dogs in coin-flip type situations, because as you saw last night, you simply never know in MMA. In a sport where literally one punch or kick can change the whole outlook of a fight, sometimes you have to take risks, and even a guy like me, and I consider myself way more of a risk taker than most, I’ll be going after more underdogs moving forward if I think they have a very good chance to win. That’s the main thing I learned last night. From a viewer’s perspective, though, it was a great night of fights, one of the best in recent memory. There were so many knockouts it was ridiculous, with many of them coming from unlikely sources. That’s not to say more knockouts equals a great card, but in the case of last night, where the majority of the knockouts came from the hands, feet, knees and elbows of underdogs, I think it’s fair to say it did. From the very first knockout of the night in the de la Torre fight to the last knockout of the night in the Mir fight, it was just an amazing night of MMA action, and I really hope we get more cards like this coming up. Overall it was a rough night from a betting perspective even with a big dog like Alvey coming through for me, but going forward I’ll take what I learned from last night’s event and make the correct adjustments going forward to have even more success in the world of MMA gambling, and hopefully make my Fight Breakdowns even tighter so you can profit from my knowledge, research and of course mistakes, as well. Hope you enjoyed the show.
