UFC 281 Saturday from Madison Square Garden is a 14-fight card featuring two five-round championship bouts, a main card stacked with elite-level combatants and athletes from every corner of the globe. (Early prelims at 6 p.m. ET, main card at 10 p.m. ET).
VSiN experts Lou Finocchiaro and Reed Kuhn offer their best bets for Saturday’s action. Check VSiN's UFC Betting Spilts page for latest odds and public betting and money percentages.
Last week, favorites in the UFC went 9-2. In 2022, favorites are 261-126-7 (66%), a couple points higher than the average.
Last week, Finocchiaro dropped a unit each on Nate Maness and Marina Rodriguez. He is 24-17 +8.07 units (+115) this year.
Israel Adesanya (-200) vs. Alex Pereira (+175)
Middleweight (185 pounds) / Championship
Finocchiaro: There is tremendous anticipation in this fight as these elite-level strikers have had two previous tussles when both were professional kickboxers.
Pereira was the victor over Adesanya twice, once via a razor-close decision in 2016 and then via KO in 2017. In the rematch, Adesanya was experiencing tremendous success before Pereira landed a powerful left hook to Adesanya’s jaw that ended the fight.
Fast forward five years, these two meet again, but the circumstances are much different. Pereira, now 7-1 as a professional mixed martial artist and 3-0 in the UFC, is the supposed “boogie man” who has been hyped by the entertainment organization that is the UFC so it can create buzz and electricity for a fight with a champion who has dominated a division.
It’s fortunate timing for the UFC with Adesanya’s destruction of the division leading up to this bout simply a matter of record. There WERE few challenges remaining for him to overcome until Pereira was jettisoned into this blown-up overhyped position.
Adesanya, 23-1 professionally and 12-1 in the UFC, lost when he jumped up to the light heavyweight division and was bested by then-champion Jan Blachowicz.