Considering that this fight is between two of the most iconic strikers in the UFC at the moment, I am pleasantly surprised to see the odds sitting nicely at 1.60.

Previously, their fights have been the epitome of violence and skill, there has not been a moment in their last bout together at UFC 236 in which either fighter was close to being finished. Max got hurt early on but powered through, as Max does, and Poirier ate strikes and fired back with similar grace and tenacity. 

All of this just to say that I think we’re going to see a fight of a similar nature, a hard fought battle between two fighters who bring out the best of each other, and whilst I do think that there may be a whole lot more chaos in this fight given that this is Poirier's final bout in his long and legendary career, I expect to see both crisp boxing from Poirier but also a little bit of unorthodoxness too because why not? What has he got to lose? This is his swan song, and he is fighting in front of his hometown crowd, so we are bound to see something special and perhaps a little bit different.

Holloway, on the other hand is making his move to 155 permanently, and I suspect that we’ll see a classic performance from Holloway, nothing but boxing in high volume with the inevitable pointing to the ground to indicate a “let's stand and bang” moment. I expect Holloway to be a little bit more defensively sound this weekend, given that he is coming off his first KO loss against Topuria at 145, so if that hasn’t taught him to raise his guard and stay off the centre line, especially against Poirier, who has an excellent one-one-two, I don’t know what will! 

Over 4.5 Rounds is the right bet to make for this one, both fighters are durable, both of them know each other very well in the cage and know what to be aware of, and thus I believe that we are in for a very, very long and entertaining fight!

You would think that if you pair Paulo Costa up with anyone, there is always that chance of a knockout happening, right?

Well, Kopylov is certainly someone who is not as easy to track down and someone whose mobility and speed will make that a tough task for Costa to accomplish. See, Costa is one of the heaviest hitting Middleweights in the UFC, and the moment he lets his tree trunk sized arms go and he starts to hone in on that target that is the chin of his opponent, we are likely to see some sort of knockdown or knockout, but I am a firm believer that Costa is on a slight downhill trend in his career, I don’t quite know where he is at with how serious he wants to take his UFC career, but he is rather unpredictable with his performances and that makes him a really hard fighter to get a read on. I do believe he will be the one to march down Kopylov, and he will want to land some strikes on him, but I just don’t think that’s going to be enough to find that knockout.

Kopylov on the other hand is about as clean and as technical as they come, he doesn’t throw anything haphazardly, his movement is great and allows him to set up attacks as he angles away from strikes, and I believe that he has a far more educated guard than a lot of Costa’s previous opponents, so a lot of the KO threat is mitigated by that defense of his. The tools in the arsenal of Kopylov that I believe will be most effective in this fight will be that body kick, he is so snappy and quick with launching that body kick, it has no reads or tell, there’s no load up, it’s just your typical round house kick to the torso and that’s going to be enough to sap the cardio of Costa and slow down that forward movement from The Eraser. 

This fight goes the distance in my opinion, there’s going to be a lot of retreating movement from Kopylov, but that should ensure that he remains safe and away from any position that Costa would want to put Kopylov in.

Oliveira has looked absolutely incredible recently, with some career-defining wins over talented veterans like Said Nurmagomedov and Ricky Simon.

It’s hard to fault this prospect. Oliveira’s primary way to win this fight is through striking, and whilst his striking is very unorthodox with his hands low and his stance being so care free and still so menacing, he’s able to snipe at a safe distance as well as use his feints to overwhelm the sensors of his opponent, making them jump or react at every little twitch that Oliveira makes. I do not think that Oliveira is going to get a KO win over Kyler Phillips because he’s quite survivable and has decent wrestling instincts, but I do think that the longer this fight remains standing, the more dangerous this fight will be for Phillips. 

Now, where does the Over 2.5 Bet recommendation come from? Well, Phillips typically starts off very strong with fast takedowns and solid ground control. I don’t believe we’ll see any submission be locked in effectively enough to end the fight, but I do think that the first round will be a bit of a bleeder if Phillips does end up in top control. With that said though, Oliveira is quite good at escaping some precarious positions so the grappling part of this fight is interesting to say the least. When it comes to the offensive output of Oliveira, though, I think we’re in for intermittent action as Phillips does retreat quite often, so it’s just a matter of Oliveira walking him down close enough to land his own strikes, and that lateral movement from Phillips alone should also soak up the time. 

Is over 2.5 rounds risky? Absolutely, but given that Phillips has the tools in his arsenal to make this a competitive one, especially if he uses his grappling and wrestling to neutralise the striking threat of Oliveira, we could be in for a long fight!

This is going to be a fantastic fight, first and foremost, and I think any fight fan would agree with that sentiment.

Prado is perhaps one of the more dangerous fighters in this division who is a little bit underrated, and the main reason why I think he wins is that his ability to blitz forward, crashing with all of his power and speed is going to catch Veretennikov off guard, especially since Veretennikov is quite a square stance fighter which typically means his ability to retreat or move laterally to avoid being lined up for that blitzing attack from Prado is not great.

The only concern I have for Prado is that whilst his offensive capabilities are superb, he is often caught in the middle of a firefight and ends up getting hurt himself. The other thing about Prado is that his explosive style is not exactly efficient, and we typically see a fairly big slowdown in output from the Argentinian, but we don’t really see that until the third round, and even then, he’s as game as ever and still throws with really, really nasty intent! 

Thus, I believe Prado should walk away the victor here, plus Veretennikov himself isn’t that great, I mean, his last loss was against Austin Vanderford, and he isn’t exactly UFC calibre himself.