Conor McGregor By TKO (+140)
The odds reflect the toughness of correctly predicting this fight as both Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier are looking for the tiebreaker in the trilogy fight. Both men hold a knockout victory over each other 7 years apart.
Conor implemented a karate-based style to lead to a knockout victory in the first round against Poirier back in 2014 and he made it look relatively easy too. Poirier evened the score this past January by attacking the lead leg of a boxing heavy approach from the Irishman that crumbled his calves en route to a knockout finish in the second round.
While I think Poirier had the perfect gameplan in the rematch, McGregor should be able to learn from his mistakes and that the simple boxing approach to a fighter as versatile with his striking as Poirier is just is not a smart game plan to win a fight. I do expect Conor and his team to have an answer for the calf kicks and use his pressure, speed, and fight changing power to put away Dustin Poirier within the first couple of rounds.
Stephen Thompson by Decision (+160)
I think Wonderboy can be on the verge of another welterweight title shot with a win this weekend. A win that should be pretty straight forward and relatively simple for him to get. As long as he avoids any grappling attempts from Burns and keeps plenty of distance from him, Thompson should be able to do what he always does and that is to outpoint and outstrike his opponents from range. His excellent karate background and point-fighting style makes it a tough matchup for just about anyone in the welterweight division. I don’t think Burns is on the level of Thompson nor the opponents that have been able to beat him. A couple of controversial, razor close decision losses and a knockout loss that happens less than 10% of the time to Pettis defines the blemishes on Thompon’s pro MMA record. I pondered how likely a TKO win for Thompson is here but I think he just simply puts on a striking clinic here to win an easy unanimous decision victory.
Thanks for reading and best of luck!
