The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) returns to Colorado on Valentine’s Day with UFC Fight Night 60: Henderson vs Thatch. The event will feature an entirety of 11 fights, including a six-fight main card that will be live on FOX Sports 1 at 10pm. Preliminary action precedes it at 8pm on the same channel, with a lightweight bout coming before that on UFC Fight Pass at 7:30pm ET. If interested in wagering on this UFC fight card, all of the lines will be made available to you at Several Bookmakerss. Kicking things off for the UFC Fight Night 60 preliminary card on FOX Sports 1 will be a 125-pound battle between RFA veteran Tim Elliott and former Bellator 135-pound champion Zach “Fun Size” Makovsky. This is expected to be a very entertaining scrap between two fighters eager to earn their way back into the winners circle, and could be a serious contender for the evening’s ‘Fight of the Night’ bonus. “Fun Size” opened as a -140 favorite at the sportsbooks, with the return on Elliott being an even +100. Action initially poured in on Makovsky, taking him all the way up to -190, but people saw value in Elliott at underdog odds and came in heavy on him, bringing current betting lines to a coin-flip at -110/-110. The next match-up comes in the featherweight division and features two rising prospects in Team Takedown’s Chas Skelly and former Cage Warriors 145-pound champion Jim Alers. A victory would be major here for either party, and they will both be looking to leave it all inside the Octagon come Valentine’s Day. Regardless of the outcome to this match-up, I think both Skelly and Alers have a future in the UFC’s 145-pound division. As long as they continue to make improvements from fight to fight, I would not be surprised to see them both crack the top 10 within a year or two. Skelly opened as the betting favorite at the sports book at -165, with Alers being the underdog at +125. The public agreed, as current odds are -185/+160. Efrain Escudero likely has his back against the wall heading into his lightweight contest against Brazil’s Rodrigo Lima, but it is a position he is all too familiar with. After winning Season 8 of The Ultimate Fighter, he had his ups and downs and was released from the promotion. Posting a 5-1 record on the regional circuit brought him back, but another pair of consecutive losses sent him packing again. The TUF 8 winner got another opportunity to compete inside the Octagon following a third round TKO of Finnish prospect Juha-Pekka Vainikainen. Unfortunately, he came up short yet again, dropping a unanimous decision to another TUF winner in TUF 2 winner Leonardo Santos. On February 14th, Escudero will have what is likely his final chance at earning his first UFC win since a May 2010 unanimous decision victory over Dan Lauzon. If he doesn’t get his hand raised, it is safe to say he’ll be spending Valentine’s Day mending a broken heart. Headlining the UFC Fight Night 60 preliminary card on FOX Sports 1 is a featherweight contest that sees New York’s Levan Makashvili make his promotional debut on short notice as a replacement for the injured Thiago Tavares. He will be taking on Nik “The Carney” Lentz in what will undoubtedly be the biggest test of the 26-year olds professional mixed martial arts career. A win over Lentz would instantly put Makashvili in the division’s top 10 and would make the entire featherweight division and MMA fan-base aware of him overnight. However, a win over Makashvili would not mean much for the stock of Lentz, as many expect him to win handily. Lentz vs Tavares was a fight that everybody looked forward to, but now “The Carney” finds himself in a fight many view as just something to keep him busy and put money in his bank account. The UFC really did not want to pull him from this card, because his last bout against Rafael Oliveira was cancelled when the Brazilian was forced to withdraw from the contest due to illness. “The Carney” opened as a -305 favorite over Makashvili in this match-up, with the return on Makashvili being +225. Action has since come in on Lentz, making current betting lines -400/+325.
