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After one of the best and most dramatic shows the UFC has ever put on in UFC 117, the Zuffa boys are back this Saturday with a veritable variety hour of MMA. There's a championship rematch (Edgar-Penn), "Boxing vs. UFC" (Couture-Toney), and several Beantown natives fighting in front of their home crowd on the big stage for the first time (Kenny Florian, Marcus Davis, Joe Lauzon). There's something for everybody! But in the end, its all about the title fight... just like it is here at the Torch.
At UFC 117, double #1 contender Cambo "Rambo" Nelson unseated both champions to capture the prediction and betting titles. Saturday, he'll look to defend the prediction title against John Hickman, while on the betting side, he'll attempt to best the man whose prediction title he took at UFC 117, "Richie" Rich Hansen. Good luck to both Mr. Nelson and his worthy challengers, but good luck more so to all the unfortunate souls left to battle me in the pools. I miss my prediction title, and I won't sleep until I'm spooning with my belt once again. Let's get to it...
PREDICTION CONTEST
I'm pretty sure everyone knows how this works by now, but just in case... Basically you pick the winners of each fight, including method (e.g. KO, submission, decision) and round. The winner is the one who picks the most fights correctly. Ties will be broken by who had the most number of rounds and methods correctly predicted. In case anyone is wondering, only rounds and methods in fights where you predicted the correct winner count.
Frankie Edgar (+250) vs. B.J. Penn (-325)
Randy Couture (-575) vs. James Toney (+350)
Demian Maia (-250) vs. Mario Miranda (+190)
Kenny Florian (-155) vs. Gray Maynard (+125)
Nate Diaz (-200) vs. Marcus Davis (+160)
Joe Lauzon (-450) vs. Gabe Reudiger (+300)
Andre Winner (-125) vs. Nik Lentz (-105)
John Salter (+235) vs. Dan Miller (-295)
Nick Osipczak (-160) vs. Greg Soto (+130)
Mike Pierce (-250) vs. Amilcar Alves (+190)
BETTING CONTEST
As you can see, there's a number attached to each fighter. That number represents how much money you can make off each fighter. The way it works is, if a fighter has a positive number he's an underdog. The positive number means if you were to bet $100 dollars on him, you would make the amount of the positive number. For example, if you were to bet $100 on Edgar and he won, you would make back the hundred you bet, plus $250 for a total payout of $350.
If the fighter has a negative number, that number represents how much you would have to bet to make $100 on the fighter. For example, if you bet $325 on Penn and he won, you'd make back the $325, plus a $100 profit, for a total payout of $425.
Each contestant has $1000 in theoretical money. You can bet it on as many fighters as you'd like, but you have to bet on at least three. The most you can bet on a single fighter is $500, and bets have to be in multiples of $100.
I'm setting a deadline of 6 p.m. (EST) Saturday to get all of your picks in. The betting lines are courtesy of bodog.com.
Note: In the event that one of the #1 contenders fails to show for their title shot, the champ will defend against the next best performer from the previous contest. You've been warned, so bring your A game everybody!
As always you can submit your picks one of three ways: by emailing me at matt6buckeye@hotmail.com, posting them on the message boards, or by leaving them in the comments section right down there. Good luck!
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"There's still a large contingent of people, that they just want to see these guys almost die, or the other guy almost die and come back, and sometimes fights are like that. Certainly they are. But sometimes you get technical masterpieces too, and to hate a beautiful, technical fight - you're not really a fight fan...
Diaz has a granite chin, possesses perhaps the best recovery in the sport, his pace and conditioning are second to none and he sets records with the volume of his punches almost every time he steps into the cage. Nick Diaz is simply designed to fight the way he fights, and not many other fighters are...
"There was a lot of poison going on around there and I'm really disappointed because we had a good thing going. It was a good thing and I think people's egos got in the way. Well, not people just Javier, his ego got in the way, and too many cameras in the gym and him trying to build himself up and his brand, his AKA brand...
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