This week the UFC takes us to good Ol’ Rocky Top Nashville, Tennessee where a scheduled twelve bout fight card, a large cage, and a room full of tuned up Tennesseans will gather to take in what I believe will be one of the most violent cards of the year.
I say this based on a couple of factors.
First, seven of the twelve scheduled bouts are going to be waged at 170lbs and above where power is abundant and finish rates reflect it.
Second, twelve of the twenty-four athletes on this slate are at least thirty-three years old as well this card features nine fights where there exists a greater than 5-year age gap between competitors.
Fighters competing against one another under a four year or better youth advantage win 59.5% of the time according to the information Reed Kuhn has published in his book Fightnomics.
In these nine bouts Saturday the age difference is not just a year or two…. In the main event there is a 15-year spread, co-main you ask? Fourteen years variance. Those are the most obtuse of the nine matchups but suffice it to say many athletes on this slate enter the cage with numeric advantage.
To date favorites in the UFC stand 65.2% which is on the high end of yearly UFC averages… Let us hope UFC 317’s 9-1-1- result is not reproduced in Nashville for my bankroll cannot take that.
Last week we won with Beniel Dariush as he was simply the better mixed martial artist.
Tallison Teixeira -280 vs. Derrick Lewis +240 Heavyweight main event
Lewis is the all-time knockout king in UFC history.
Now forty years old, Lewis is a rotund athlete with little technical fighting ability. He does possess profuse power in his hands, and he compliments that fight ending power with focused ill intent.
He has competed against the elite of the division for better than a decade and separated the majority of his foes from consciousness because for Lewis, it takes but one Sunday shot to end a fight.
Lewis’s UFC experience, cage IQ and raw street fighting tactics are equaled only by his complete lack of appropriate conditioning for the man is fractionally as effective after six minutes of exertion than before.
Lewis lands the same rate of significant strikes per minute as he accepts, 2.48, and of late his ability to take damage after all these fierce competitions is waning rapidly. Yes, Lewis is chinny.
However, at his best and that is how I believe we see Lewis Saturday, he is an effective finisher. The key for Lewis in this fight will be space for should he be able to work from inside the pocket on the longer taller Brazilian then he stands a great chance of imploding Teixeira with any one of several detonations.
For Tallison Teixeira this will be his sophomore fight in the UFC so disadvantages in experience, foes faced, and adversity overcome cannot compete with what Lewis has experienced.
This Brazilian bomber holds many advantages as he is fifteen years the younger man, he is four inches taller and owns a four-inch reach advantage over Lewis in this bout.
Teixeira brings raw finishing ability applied by a youthful, hulking, aggressive, sometime wild strike hurling twenty-five-year-old, but the kid ends fights.
In his second UFC bout he gets a main event placement, steps well up in class of opponent and fights for the opportunity to earn life-changing money, all of which add complexity to this fight.
Lewis is taking note of it all.
So, in one corner we have a mature, experienced, proud old warrior combatant with natural born power. He is going to take the middle of the cage and in initiate a throw down against a willing, aggressive, young, taller, longer, Brazilian Bomber who will do all he can to unglue Lewis.
There is no give in this fight.
The total in this fight of 1.5 -270 Under is appropriate!
Morgan Charriere 250 vs. Nate ‘the Train’ Landwehr +200 Featherweight
WAR
Nate ‘the Train’ is appropriately named. Landwehr is forcefully aggressive in every engagement during his fights. He forges forward with unrelenting will to engage opponents with one single point of focus: to annihilate.
Landwehr now thirty-seven and sporting a lightly negative significant strike differential can struggle with consistency because of the extremely aggressive approach he takes into each battle.
Take one to give one? Landwehr’s surely game.
Landwehr can grapple yes but his aim is to walk opponents down then shut off their lights simply put.
4-2 in his last six bouts, Landwehr enters this fight off a loss but for this war, he competes in front of his hometown which makes Landwehr, a problem for any athlete in any arena, even more dangerous in this spot.
Landwehr’s opponent is perfectly placed to provide the fans a dangerous opponent for their hometown boy.
Charriere is athletic, fleet afoot, able to effectively evade strikes and throws his kicks/strikes/knees and elbows in volume and from every angle imaginable.
Charriere enters this fight in enemy territory off a loss to Nathaniel Wood that was very close and could have easily gone his way. Sporting a negative strike differential, Charriere would do well to maintain spacing against this down bound train because while Charriere’s damage is done with volume striking, distance maintenance and precision placement, the Train’s damage comes in blunt force collision form.
Simply put Charriere will need time to effectively wear Landwehr down with a volume, precision attack while Landwehr’s approach will be to force Charriere into a flat-footed throwdown where Landwehr’s shortcomings of footwork, quickness and cage cutting become muted and his strengths of power striking from the pocket are magnified.
Every fight on this card is designed to deliver violent effects but of the twelve fights slated for Nashville, this one offers the greatest intrigue because of the style each man carries to the cage.
In the end, Charriere will be too fleet afoot, too quick, and athletic for the forceful Train even though Landwehr fights in front of his people.
Charriere -250
We will use Charriere in a parlay
Steve Garcia -120 vs. Calvin Katter -105 Featherweight (145lbs.)
This will be another complete blood bath as both men are lethal strikers and they execute their striking similarly, with force, power, grit, and determination.
This fight is foundational for Kattar, a blue belt in BBJ as he has dropped his last four bouts in a row but to world class competent UFC competition.
Katter is tough, aggressive and a forward pressing boxer/striker with power in his hands, a granite jaw but porous defense as evidenced by his negative 2.02 significant strike difference per five minutes of fight time.
Garcia, a southpaw enters with tremendous momentum. A striker as well Garcia has not seen the third round in his last four fights finishing competition that is sound but nowhere near as elite as the athletes Kattar has had to contend with.
So, Kattar enters fight one desperate hombre and Garcia, the lefty arrives on the shirttails of tremendous momentum. Garcia’s height, reach, and length advantages will set him up well in this striking affair. Garcia’s southpaw attack will serve him well against the traditional orthodox boxer Kattar.
Garcia -120
Garcia -120 to Charriere -250 parlay returns 1.57u
This fight is lined 1.5 -175 Over
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Thank you for reading and enjoy the fights!