UFC Nashville Predictions:
This week, the UFC takes us to good Ol’ Rocky Top, Nashville, Tennessee, where a scheduled 12-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 12 scheduled bouts are going to be waged at 170 pounds and above, where power is abundant and finish rates reflect it.
Second, 12 of the 24 athletes on this slate are at least 33 years old. This card features nine fights with a greater than five-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 on 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-year variance. Those are the widest differences of the nine matchups, but many athletes on this slate enter the cage with a 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 Beneil Dariush, as he was simply the better mixed martial artist.
Digital results go to 13-16 -3.90u, and we enter a seven-week stretch of fight cards that I have focused on for some weeks.
Tallison Teixeira -280 vs. Derrick Lewis +240
Heavyweight main event
Lewis is the all-time knockout king in UFC history. Now 40 years old, Lewis is a rotund athlete with little technical fighting ability. He does possess profuse power in his hands, and he complements that fight-ending power with focused ill intent.
He has competed against the elite of the division for more than a decade and separated the majority of his foes from consciousness, as it takes but one Sunday shot for Lewis 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 as 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. 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 15 years younger, 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, sometimes wild strike-hurling 25-year-old, but the kid ends fights.
In his second UFC bout, he gets a main event placement, steps 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 initiate a throwdown 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.
Now 37 and sporting a lightly negative significant strike differential, Ladwehr can struggle with consistency because of the extremely aggressive approach he takes into each battle.
Take one to give one? Landwehr is surely game.
Landwehr can grapple, but his aim is to walk opponents down, then shut off their lights.
Though 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 with a dangerous opponent for their hometown boy.
Charriere is athletic, fleet of foot, and able to effectively evade strikes and throws, while delivering his kicks, strikes, knees, and elbows in volume and from every imaginable angle.
Charriere enters this fight in enemy territory after 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 12 fights slated for Nashville, this one offers the greatest intrigue due to the style each man brings 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.
UFC Nashville Best Bet: Morgan Charriere -250
We will use Charriere in a parlay
Steve Garcia -120 vs. Calvin Kattar -105
Featherweight (145 pounds)
This will be another complete bloodbath, as both men are lethal strikers who execute their striking similarly, with force, power, grit, and determination.
This fight is foundational for Kattar, a blue belt in BJJ, as he has dropped his last four bouts in a row against world-class UFC competition.
Kattar 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, Garcia has not seen the third round in his last four fights, finishing competitors that are sound but nowhere near as elite as the athletes Kattar has had to contend with.
So, Kattar enters the fight as a 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.
UFC Nashville Best Bet: Steve Garcia -120
Garcia -120 to Charriere -250 parlay returns 1.57u
This fight is lined 1.5 -175 Over
The GambLou ‘Bout Business Podcast drops Friday morning PST. All my final releases may be accessed there. Thank you for reading, and enjoy the fights!
