The third in the trilogy has just been confirmed and the world of UFC is waiting in anticipation – Dustin Poirier will face Conor McGregor for the third time, making it the best of three. But who should we be putting our money on?
The big event is set to take place in the T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas, on Saturday 10th July 2021. Both fighters have had a taste of success and defeat when facing each other in the octagon – but what will happen this time?
Last time, at UFC 275 in Abu Dhabi, Dustin Poirier defied the odds to beat the Irishman very convincingly in the second round, which shocked fans, bettors and bookmakers alike. So, can we really predict what will happen this time in UFC 264?
Too Close to Call
So, what do the bookmakers predict? Well, if you take a look at the odds that most are offering, they are pretty much sitting on the fence, not really going one way or the other – learning their lesson from last time. McGregor is the slight favourite – with odds of 4/ 5 at many bookies, with Poirier being given odds of 1/1. Even the bookies with all their knowledge aren’t prepared to take a risk on it. Poirier has proved he has what it takes, but McGregor will certainly not want another humiliating defeat.
Betting On McGregor
In their last match, it was proven that in the world of MMA fighting, anything is possible. Despite all the confidence and bluster from McGregor, he was stopped in round two – quickly shutting up McGregor and those who had bet on him. Will those same people take that risk again?
There is no denying he will fly into the octagon and pull out all the stops as he knows that a second defeat may well spell the end of his UFC career. He will make sure he doesn’t make the same mistakes as last time, but will this be enough? In the last fight, McGregor was stuffed full of confidence but in the end, confidence doesn’t matter and the fighting does the talking.
Betting on Poirier
Those UFC bettors that may have employed the underdog strategy last time (or known something the rest of us didn’t) would have been laughing all the way to the bank – even if the bookies weren’t. However, with the odds not being quite as tasty on the American as they were last time, will people really want to take the risk? Currently, the odds given on Poirier are evens – so you win what you bet. This isn’t the biggest incentive so it may be good to wait til closer to the fight to see if there is any movement on either side.
Place Your Bets
So, if faced with the option of picking either fighter, there’s very little to choose between them when it comes to the winner, which is the biggest market. However, some bookmakers might offer other markets, such as the method of victory and fight to go the distance.
If you get the option of these markets, you may be in a better position to make a winning bet. If you look at the history of these two fighters’ head to head bouts, they both have several things in common – both fights were stopped before the end of the bout and both stoppages were pretty early on (first and second round). So, we can assume from this, that the third fight might also follow this pattern – that the fight will not go the distance and that it will be decided by KO/TKO – betting on these markets alone will mean that as long as the fight is stopped, it doesn’t matter which one wins. It may not be the wager with the biggest odds, but it’s a little easier to predict than which one of these men will win.
