UFC Best Bets
This week, UFC 298 takes place from Los Angeles with an internationally populated fight slate featuring athletes from China to Ecuador, Australia to Wales, Brazil to Jamaica, and all points in between. Four fights offer us a look at debuting athletes, while eight bouts highlight veteran competitors facing off in high-stakes bouts, with each combatant looking to enhance their career trajectories, offering interesting options for a UFC best bet.
Last week, Rodolfo Viera submitted Armen Petrosyan in the first round of their fight. Petrosyan needed to survive the first round against a fresh, strong Brazilian counterpart to have the fight begin to turn his way, yet that was not to be.
I stand 1-3 -.15 heading into this week.
Let’s dig right into UFC 298, which kicks off Saturday at 3 p.m. PT with early prelims followed by the main card, which starts at 7 p.m. PT and features a handful of highly competitive and potentially explosive bouts.
Check out our UFC Betting Splits and the latest UFC Betting Odds.
Alexander Volkanovski -125 vs. Ilia Topuria +105
Featherweight (145 pounds) Championship
Total in this fight: 3.5 -125 Over
Undefeated and third-ranked Topuria is of Georgian descent but fights out of Spain, where he was raised. He possesses a strong Greco-Roman wrestling base to go with his black belt in BJJ. Topuria’s striking is serviceable enough to allow him to compete standing until he can clasp onto opponents to press them against the cage and then force them onto the mat. From there, his single point of focus is to choke them unconscious or force them to tap from an array of submission attempts, which come as second nature to him.
Topuria, 14-0 professionally and 6-0 in the UFC, will be two inches taller than the champion and eight years younger in this title fight. He sports a +1.39 strike-per-minute ratio and lands 2.2 takedowns per fifteen minutes of fight time. He realizes 1.5 submission attempts per fifteen minutes of fight time.
These numbers, while sound, must be deciphered by comprehending the level of competition Topuria has faced.
Topuria is young, overly cocky, and has talked his way into this championship fight after defeating only two pedigreed, legitimate UFC featherweights. Many deem Topuria ready for this challenge, and he must be respected in this bout as he is aggressive with his unrelenting forward pressure and arrives at this fight with momentum.
That stated, he has been yammering into any microphone available, announcing to anyone listening that it’s his ‘destiny’ to defeat current champion Alexander Volkanovski. Topuria’s bravado and approach to this substantial step up in class seems quite a risky one, to say the least, and Volkanovski, a silent assassin, has taken note.
In Volkanovski, we have arguably the greatest featherweight to ever step into the cage, which is a strong statement considering that list includes Jose Aldo and Max Holloway.
Volkanovski’s 26-3 professional record and his 13-2 result in the UFC do not come close to telling the complete story, as both of his UFC losses have come at the hands of current UFC Lightweight champion Islam Makhachev. Makhachev has dominated a division ten pounds heavier than featherweight. Volkanovski’s only other defeat came years ago in his fourth professional bout in the welterweight division.
Most, if not all, combat sports pundits regard Makhachev as the top current pound-for-pound athlete in the organization, so those recent losses come with absolutely no shame but rather total respect.
At the featherweight level, Volkanovski has dominated all challengers. He owns decision victories over the aforementioned Aldo as well as Holloway (three times) in closely contested five-round battles resulting in decisions.
Volkanovski’s +2.77 strikes landed per minute is impressive, but even more so when one considers who he has competed against in the cage.
Volkanovski will be giving away two inches of height and eight years of age to Topuria, but his recent domination of Yair Rodriguez clearly displays his ability to dominate any and all forms of challenge from athletes competing at featherweight.
The intrigue in this fight comes by understanding that four months ago, Volkanovski took his second bout against the aforementioned lightweight champion Makhachev on 10 days’ notice! He was defeated by knockout via head kick in the first round.
After that fight and leading up to this bout, Volkanovski, gave a highly emotional interview where he stated how much he needs to be in training. His demeanor and body language during this interview were disturbing to me. It also came out some time later that he was enjoying the spoils of the layman’s life as he had no fight scheduled leading up to his ten-day notice to fight Makhachev.
Volkanovski opened -175 for this fight, and he has been bet down to the current price of just above pick-em.
Usually, I’d be dashing for the betting counter looking to invest in Volkanovski -120. However, his highly emotional interview in early January after the Makhachev bout, coupled with the fact that he’s taking on another very dangerous challenger four months removed from being knocked unconscious, forces me to hesitate.
This will be Volkanovski’s fourth highly competitive fight in the last calendar year, and remember, two of those were against an elite champion at a weight class 10 pounds higher than his.
Has he allowed his body/brain to fully recoup for this battle at thirty-five years of age? Could he be taking this bout too soon after that KO?
These questions force me to pass on this fight despite the perception that there seems to be an abundance of value on the current champion.
Months ago, I released Topuria +135 on the ‘Bout Business Podcast, but that was before he began all the needless yapping. If it were today, I would consider Volkanovski at current pricing or pass all together on a side in this fight.
Robert Whittaker -240 vs. Paulo Costa +210
Middleweight (185 pounds)
New Zealand’s Whittaker is a former champion who has faced the elite of the middleweight division. Since 2014, the division’s third-ranked athlete has only lost to current champion Dricus Du Plessis and former champion Israel Adesanya.
Whittaker is strong, moves deftly, and has power in all appendages. He’s highly decorated with Black belts in hapkido, Gōjū-ryū karate, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu, making him one truly dangerous fighting machine.
He’s looking to bounce after what he, myself, and many in the MMA arena regard as a most dismal uncharacteristic performance in that loss to du Plessis.
At 33, Whittaker believes he has much more to prove, and he can go a long way in displaying that against his sixth-ranked Brazilian counterpart, Paulo Costa, on Saturday night.
Costa (14-2 professionally) has a chiseled physique and movie star looks. He’s decorated with a black belt in BJJ and does possess power in his kicks and strikes. Costa, 6-2 in the UFC has been inactive since August of 2022 when he scored an uneventful decision over Luke Rockhold a washed athlete with a balsa wood beak who had come out of retirement to take the fight.
At his best, Costa has profuse striking power, but he is a front-runner whose confidence and swagger grow when competing against lesser pedigreed athletes but whose momentum wanes when placed against world-class fighters with elite MMA acumen who can withstand his early barrage and then turn the tables and back him up.
The prescription for defeating Costa is simple, just bully the bully.
How well Costa has used his time away from the cage will be apparent early in this fight. It’s my judgment that, while desperate for a win, the inactivity and relatively low fight IQ he’s displayed throughout his career will be difficult traits for him to overcome, understanding the elite athlete he’s going to be in the cage with Saturday.
UFC Best Bet: Robert Whittaker -250
Whittaker’s been in LA for a couple of weeks now, and he’s focused and determined to end this fight violently and make another run for the division’s championship, which is certainly within his ability to accomplish.
Total in this fight: Opened 1.5 Rds. -240 to the over but is now lined 2.5Rds -150 Over.
The GambLou ‘Bout Business Podcast contains my official UFC best bet releases for this fight card. It will be available Friday just after noon PT and is only available at GambLou.com
Enjoy the fights, and thank you for reading.
