UFC Kansas City Predictions:
After 11 straight fight slates, the UFC took a break over the holiday weekend, only to line another set of 10 fight cards together for our future investment consideration. This week, it’s Fight Night Kansas City, featuring Garry vs. Prates, a card with 14 scheduled bouts that include athletes ranging from flyweight women to light heavyweight men.
An international set of gladiators will compete in a large 30-foot octagon, and in front of a full house of midwestern fight fanatics. Only 11 of the combatants on this schedule are from the United States, with athletes coming in from all corners of the globe. China, Georgia, South Africa, Mexico, Jamaica, and Uganda are represented.
It’s essential to understand the positioning of the local/regional fighters on this card, as they may have an impact on the crowd and potentially the judging.
UFC Kansas City prelims begin at 3 p.m. PT with the main slate airing at 6 p.m. PT.
Let’s fight!
Ian Machado Garry -130 vs. Carlos Prates +110
Welterweight (170 pounds) main event
Thirteenth-ranked Brazilian phenom Carlos Prates enters this fight with huge momentum and confidence brimming, which is why he didn’t hesitate to take this substantial step up in competition after his original opponent, Geoff Neal, had to drop out of the fight.
Prates, a member of the gang of destruction that is Brazil’s ‘fighting nerds’ team, is a world-class Muay Thai striker who also holds a black belt in BJJ.
He is fearless, forward pressing, and ultra-aggressive. Prates has decimated all four of his UFC opponents, and he has faced an improved, more refined adversary in each of those four bouts.
Prates attempts to walk down any opponent to plant feet and throw hammers. One thing he must improve, however, is his propensity to accept a strike as he accepts a slightly higher number of significant strikes per minute than he lands. Prates’ power is profuse; he has become reliant on tagging opponents, and when he does, he shuts them down.
Irishman Garry, who is now living in Brazil and training with the assassins at Chute Box, is as close to a perfect opposite of Prates as we can find stylistically.
A black belt in Judo with improving grappling, Garry is as highly athletic as he is brash and verbose. Garry’s strength in fights is to use his deft footwork, fluidity of movement and strike evasion to force opponents into lunging forward to engage, reach and force engagement. It leaves Garry’s opponents wide open to his flash precision counterstriking attack.
Garry’s been in with better competition. His experience, coupled with his athleticism, may simply be too refined and advanced for the forceful approach of this most dangerous pulverizer.
Prates carries momentum into the cage, yet despite Garry taking this fight on short notice, I handicap his skills to be just a bit more refined, advanced, and developed for Prates, especially understanding that this is a five-round battle.
UFC Kansas City Best Bet: Ian Machado Garry -125
Total in this fight 2.5 Rds. Over -180
UFC Kansas City Best Bet: Over -180
Michel Pereira -145 vs. Abus Magomedov +120
Middleweight (185 pounds)
The middleweight division of the UFC is a deep and competitive group where some 20 of its athletes may be legitimately regarded as top-15 combatants.
Brazilian Michel Pereira is ranked fourteenth and is rising rapidly. Periera has blossomed as a fighter once he accepted the fact that he was compromising himself too much trying to compete in the lower welterweight division.
Handicapping Pereira, the middleweight mandates that one must wonder how the massive middleweight makes this 185-pound division, let alone how he ever made the 170-pound limit.
A black belt in BJJ as well as Karate, Pereira prefers to attack opponents immediately and unleash his power through a barrage of fists, elbows, knees, jumps, kicks and tricks.
Flamboyant is an understatement for how Pereira fights, and in fact, his wildman approach can sometimes put him in compromising positions. A subtly refined and focused Pereira is expected for this battle as he arrives off a loss to Fluffy Hernandez, one in which he was exposed in his ability to effectively compete for a full five rounds.
Pereira is sure to be looking to rebound from that humiliating last loss.
In Abus Magomedov, we have a Russian fighter who will be slightly older than Pereira but two inches taller with a five-inch reach advantage. That height/reach advantage plays into his favor when this fight is standing.
Magomedov’s striking, to be honest, is more workmanlike and less explosive in nature than is Pereira’s, but he delivers shots straight down the pipe and in classic boxing fashion as opposed to the wildly awkward angles that his maniacal adversary Pereira will hurl at him.
Once this fight enters the second round, we will witness one or both men begin to wane as neither is known for deep cardio ability, so conditioning and pace stand to be an important aspect of this fight.
With a victory, Pereira regains some momentum he lost to Anthony Hernandez in his last bout, but a Magomedov win catapults the Russian up into the middleweight rankings, allowing him to threaten the top 15.
This is a very important fight in the division.
Total in this fight 1.5 Rds Over -165
Friday midday PT, the ‘Bout Business Podcast drops just after weigh-ins are completed. Access it at GambLou.com. Thank you for reading, and enjoy the fights!
