UFC Fight Night 92 odds, strategy guide

It’s fight night and so we are back again with another gambling preview of the fights, the odds, and my own personal breakdown of where the value lies. This week I’ve only gone in depth on the main card fights instead of doing the whole card since a lot of the undercard fights are between inexperienced fighters and it’s much tougher to analyze or feel confident about those bouts. I’ve also added in the Fight Pass and FS1 main events because those fights are between guys with established resumes and you can more readily predict what will happen.

As always, all stats come from FightMetric and all the odds are from Best Fight Odds. Net Value means how much money you would have made if you bet $100 on that fighter in every one of his/her fights that odds could be found for and is calculated using the closing odds for each fight.

Doubly as always, I’m trying to provide the most thorough guide I can for those who want to legally bet or who just enjoy following along. If you are a person who chooses to gamble, only do so legally, responsibly, and at your own risk.

Breakdown

Yair Rodriguez is a hot-shot featherweight prospect. Alex Caceres is a guy that never got his due and has ultimately carved out a niche for himself as a funky, entertaining veteran, but one who had most of his best success at bantamweight.

Rodriguez has a very peculiar game for someone as highly touted as he is. On the feet he is creative – sometimes to his own detriment – but limited. He has an array of acrobatic and exciting kicks, but throws very few punches and has little else to connect his striking together. His defense is almost entirely predicated on his ability to maintain a lengthy distance via his kicking game, but when people get inside that range he is hittable. However, more often than not, Rodriguez’s good movement and stance switches enable him to keep his preferred range. When fighters work inside on him, he can initiate a clinch where he can use a sneaky selection of tosses and trips to get his opponent off balance.

Grappling is probably the strongest part of Rodriguez’s game. He is a sound defensive wrestler and a sneakily good offensive one, timing power doubles well and finishing cleanly. As a top position grappler, he works sharp ground and pound and is good at passing and holding position. From the bottom, he is even more aggressive, constantly moving his hips to find attacks but like many Jackson-Wink fighters, he works quickly and then looks to stand should his guard game find no traction.

Caceres is a more fundamentally sound striker than Rodriguez, blending kicks and punches well with a solid understanding of range and timing. On the ground, he’s a dynamic grappler in the same vein as Rodriguez with an active guard and strong ground striking. Caceres’ big weakness is his wrestling which has been improving recently but is still below average.

Rodriguez is a talented young fighter with a funky game that doesn’t necessarily blend well together, and when matched against a fundamentally sound fighter who can get inside and ground him, he will have tons of trouble. The problem for Caceres is that he doesn’t have the technical acumen to do that. On the feet, Rodriguez will be dictating the range and if Caceres starts to have success there, Rodriguez has the ability to take it to the floor and work “Bruce Leeroy” over on top. The pace and style of fighting Rodriguez employs make me concerned about his ability to go for five rounds, but I don’t think Caceres will even get the opportunity to drag this to the later rounds. I expect Rodriguez to win impressively.

There doesn’t look to be a ton of value in Rodriguez though I expect a lot of people will include him in parlays. I don’t personally love that, but I can understand the thinking.

Breakdown

Dennis Bermudez has a thoroughly fundamental game all-around. On the feet, he works at a high pace behind technically solid, body head combinations. He has a sharp jab and stinging low kicks which are the bread and butter of his combinations. In the clinch, he is exceptionally powerful, doing a great job of blending strikes into his fierce cage control. He is also an outstanding wrestler both defensively and offensively. Defensively, he is almost impossible to take down and offensively he can finish singles or doubles with authority. Bermudez’s big liability is his striking defense. While not bad, he does find a way to get his and hit hard in most of his fights. He has excellent recovery, but elite finishers can put him away.

Rony Jason is almost the exact opposite of Bermudez. He is a big ball of dynamic finishing and none of the connective tissue to bridge the gaps. On the feet, he throws wild, powerful strikes and jumping attacks but there is little set up to these and they are mostly thrown individually. On the ground, is where he thrives with one of the more active guards in the division. The problem here is that Bezerra isn’t a great wrestler and against Bermudez the ground exchanges won’t be on his …

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