Betting Guide for UFC Vegas 33
We've got 11 fights ready to go for UFC on ESPN: Hall vs. Strickland (also known as UFC on ESPN 28, also known as UFC Vegas 33), and a lot of the fights should be close.
Only two fighters have win odds greater than -200 (Rafa Garcia at -330 and Bryan Barberena at -255), so that leaves a lot of strong odds to target for this weekend's card.
That also means we don't have to get too cute with finishing props or anything and can look just at outright winners. Of course, I'll be looking at some method of victory props, but those are just icing on the cake.
Rani Yahya (+102) vs. Kyung Ho Kang (-120)
It's not often that I'll be honing in on a fighter with poor striking stats, but that's where I am with Rani Yahya (27-10-1) against Kyung Ho Kang (17-8-0).
Yahya's 1.57 significant strikes per minute mark is lowest on the entire card, so it's the 2.89 takedowns and 2.00 submissions per 15 minutes that put him on the radar.
Kang's takedown defense of 71% is a bit better than the card average but not aggressively so. Also, over his past five fights, Kang has faced just five takedown attempts total. Yahya has attempted 18 over his past three fights combined.
My model gives Yahya a 55.5% chance to win as a slight underdog, good for positive expected value.
Based on public picks at Tapology, we should expect Yahya to win by submission 49.2% of the time. That outperforms the +250 odds at FanDuel Sportsbook (which imply 28.6% odds).
Cheyanne Buys (-176) vs. Gloria de Paula (+148)
Cheyanne Buys (5-2-0) and Gloria de Paula (5-3-0) enter with similar professional records and paths, but it's clear which profile the bookmakers are liking more: Buys'.
Buys enters with a 1-1-0 record in UFC fights, including a win in the contender series and then a unanimous decision loss back in March to Montserrat Ruiz.
de Paula has a similar UFC record: a win in the contender series and then a unanimous decision loss in March to Jinh Yu Frey.
Based on the underlying data, my model gives Buys a 69.1% chance to pick up the win, outperforming her moneyline odds of -176 (implying 63.8% win odds).
Added value can be had by going with Buys by points (+105 on FanDuel Sportsbook). The public picks at Tapology suggest the odds should be -285 on that line.
Similarly, 92.6% of results at Tapology expect the fight to end by points either way. FanDuel Sportsbook lists those odds at just -360.
Orion Cosce (-154) vs. Phil Rowe (+130)
Phil Rowe (7-3-0) will have a size advantage against the favored and undefeated Orion Cosce (7-0-0), and that's especially true after Rowe weighed in at 173.5. That's paired with a 4-inch height advantage and a 9.5-inch reach advantage.
Despite that, the data points to Cosce, who scored a ground-and-pound win in round three of his contender series bout in August.
Rowe lost by unanimous decision to Gabe Green at UFC 258 back in February.
My model is super high on Cosce, giving him a 73.1% chance to get the win, outperforming his moneyline odds by 12.5 percentage points. Notably, the public picks from Tapology are even higher: 91%.
Those picks also anticipate a KO/TKO win for the undefeated Cosce, and 63.1% of fight picks expect the fight to end that way. Cosce to win by KO/TKO is a value-laden +170 at FanDuel Sportsbook.
