Prop: Israel Adesanya Wins By Unanimous Decision (+215)
It has been a little over three years since their first meeting and Marvin Vettori and now champion Israel Adesanya have improved their games tremendously. Vettori now riding a five-fight win streak while the defending champion Adesanya is coming off his first loss as a professional mixed martial artist in a light heavyweight bout where it showed why weight classes do exist. However, at middleweight Adesanya remains a puzzle to be figured out. I think he continues that mystery on Saturday night with a successful title defense.
The first fight showed that Adesanya already had pretty decent takedown defense and it has improved dramatically since that time. He troubled Vettori and gave him fits in the standup department when it looked that Vettori was just in a trance and could do nothing but stand there and get pieced up. Vettori definitely does not want to turn this potential five round fight into a kickboxing bout because he will go home looking like a mess. Adesanya’s feints, speed, and countering helped him get a split-decision victory over the Italian. With Adesanya’s improved takedown defense I think he will cruise to a defense with easy pop-shots and avoid the power and most of the takedowns from Vettori. Vettori may land a couple but I don’t expect Adesanya to stay on his back for long. It should be a relatively easy 50-45/49-46 unanimous decision win for “The Last Stylebender.”
Prop: Deiveson Figueiredo Points Handicap -5.5 (-130)
After watching the first fight again for the first time since happening live I realized how bad the commentary was from Rogan and DC. You would have thought Moreno was landing huge, flush shots to the head of Figueiredo causing him to be hurt and that was simply not the case at all. Sure, Moreno had his small moments here and there but for the vast majority of this fight he was backpedaling, getting beat to the punch and seeing his torso take disgusting power shots. Figueiredo is a tank of a flyweight and a massive one at that. He pretty much ate everything Moreno had to offer and just kept marching forward. If it wasn’t for the deduction from the groin shot Figueiredo would have easily picked up the decision victory. Instead we got a majority draw and we get to see them rematch in the co-main event.
I’m not entirely sure what method Figueiredo uses to win this fight as it entirely depends on if Moreno can take the punishment for all twenty-five minutes. He showed very good durability in the first fight but I think it is possible he could actually get dropped or rocked here which will allow Figueiredo to then go for the finish. I like the points handicap because I think Figueiredo will just up the intensity and will look to dominate the rounds even more. He made a few errors in the first fight which allowed Moreno to steal a round with top control and then the point deduction from the groin shot. Figueiredo can win a clear cut decision here by aggressively taking every round using his power, brutal combinations, body kicks, and calf kicks or could find himself jumping on an opportunity to finish Moreno – probably by a (T)KO. Like I said before, Moreno showed good durability but a man can only take so much punishment before going out and Figueiredo might make that happen.
Thanks for reading and best of luck!
