This weekend Houston, Texas will play host to one of the best events the UFC has put on all year. UFC 166 features top level talent all through the main card and preliminary fights, and is topped off by the trilogy fight between heavyweight champion Cain Velasquez and former champ Junior dos Santos. While the odds for the main card have been released for quite some time, the preliminary card odds were just released today. The Fox Sports 1 portion of the card is headlined by a middleweight bout between Tim Boetsch and C.B. Dollaway, but the biggest attraction on the free portion of the card for most onlookers is the welterweight debut of Hector Lombard, as he takes on former UFC middleweight title challenger and former Strikeforce welterweight kingpin Nate Marquardt. The free portion of the card also features the UFC debuts of Sarah Kaufmann, Jessica Eye, Kyoji Horiguchi and Andre Fili, who are all either highly ranked in their divisions already, or seen as top prospects. Even if you’re the type of fan who only likes to catch the main card, this could be the event you want to watch start-to-finish, as it should provide great action throughout. Today, MMA oddsmaker Nick Kalikas opened the betting lines for the UFC 166 prelims at Several Bookmakers. Check them out below: ——————– PRELIMINARY CARD (FOX Sports 1, 8 p.m. ET) Tim Boetsch -170 CB Dollaway +130 Hector Lombard -190 Nate Marquardt +150 Sarah Kaufman -215 Jessica Eye +165 K.J. Noons -245 George Sotiropoulos +175 ——————– PRELIMINARY CARD (Facebook, 6 p.m. ET) Adlan Amagov -140 T.J. Waldburger +100 Tony Ferguson -305 Mike Rio +225 Andre Fili -185 Jeremy Larsen +145 Kyoji Horiguchi -140 Dustin Pague +100 ——————– Brad’s Analysis: Close batch of lines here, as only three out of eight fights have a favorite over -200. These lines reflect the competitive nature of the fights and further show why this should be an entertaining night of fights. With such a close batch of fights, it’s hard to find a ton of value. While Tim Boetsch may seem a bit low at -180, CB Dollaway is a very close match-up for him and this fight is probably going to go down to a relatively competitive decision. The same thing goes for Amagov and Waldburger, as the fight could either end by KO or Submission quite easily based on the stylistic matchup. As far as the two debuting fighters, Andre Fili and Kyoji Horiguchi, both are the more talented fighters in their bouts, but questions about conditioning, jitters, and weight classes keep them from being larger favorites than they currently are. One fighter I do have quite a bit of confidence in is Hector Lombard, as I think he has quite a striking advantage against Nate Marquardt. Of course, with Lombard coming down to welterweight you have to see how he looks on the scales before laying any money down on him. Also, an underdog to look at is Jessica Eye as Sarah Kaufmann has looked a bit faded in her recent performances and Eye has been impressive of late coming through Bellator and fighting some larger opponents like Carina Damm.
