After Stipe Miocic (15-2) went to Brazil and took the heavyweight title belt away from Fabricio Werdum on his home turf, the Cleveland native and new champion will try to avoid the same fate when he takes on Alistair Overeem (41-14, one no-contest) at Quicken Loans Arena on Saturday night at UFC 203.
Miocic is listed as a -145 favorite (bet $145 to win $100) at sportsbooks monitored by Odds Shark for his first title defense.
Defending the belt has not been easy recently for the UFC heavyweight champ, as Werdum lost it in his first fight after unifying the titles with a third-round guillotine-choke submission of Cain Velasquez at UFC 188 on June 13, 2015.
Miocic knocked Werdum out two minutes and 47 seconds into the first round at UFC 198 on May 14 to run his winning streak to three since his last loss to Junior dos Santos via unanimous decision two years ago.
Overeem is a +115 underdog on the UFC 203 betting lines and has earned the title shot vs. Miocic by winning four bouts in a row, with three of them ending by way of knockout. He scored a second-round TKO of Dos Santos, another former heavyweight champ, last December 19, before the same result happened against Andrei Arlovski in the main event of UFC Fight Night 87 on May 8. Of his 41 wins, 37 have been finishes.
Before the main event, Werdum (20-6-1) will try to rebound from his loss to Miocic when he fights Travis Browne (18-4-1) as solid -225 chalk at the sportsbooks. The specialist in Brazilian jiu-jitsu saw his six-bout winning streak end with the loss, and four of his previous five victories were stoppages. He was originally scheduled to battle Ben Rothwell here, but a knee injury for his opponent forced him to withdraw on August 11.
Browne is a +175 dog and also hopes to bounce back from a brutal first-round KO suffered at the hands of Velasquez at UFC 200 on July 9. The 6'7" Hawaiian is just 2-3 in his past five fights after rising near the top of the heavyweight rankings at the end of 2013.
At that time, he had won three consecutive bouts via first-round KO over the likes of Overeem, Josh Barnett and Gabriel Gonzaga before losing by unanimous decision to Werdum in a title-eliminator matchup. Werdum went on to win the interim title vs. Mark Hunt.
Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com
No comments:
Post a Comment