We get our first UFC pay-per-view of 2022 this weekend, UFC 270, beaming to us live from the Honda Center in Anaheim, California Saturday night. While the card is a little light on big names throughout it, it is headlined by two title fights, including a UFC Heavyweight Championship unification fight in the main event.
The reason it is a unification fight is the UFC set up an interim title fight, seemingly to spite real champion Francis Ngannou, who they are at constant loggerheads at over contract issues (Saturday is the last fight on his current contract). Fellow Frenchman and former training partner Ciryl Gane won that fight, setting up this grudge match to unify the crowns and determine who the baddest man on the planet is.
Not only is Ngannou disrespected by his bosses, but also by the bookmakers. He’s entering this fight currently as a 5/4 underdog on the Mansion board. I’m not a fan of this because I’m picking the challenger Gane to win and I’m only getting 20/33 coming back to me.
While Ngannou has the superior striking power in this fight (as he does in any fight), Gane has the cerebral, patient, more active striking style to get his hand raised. He’s very good at controlling the distance the fight takes place at and sneaking in his strikes. He just got done beating the only other man with similar power to Ngannou, Derrick Lewis, using this style so he should be well prepared for the fight. While avoiding Ngannou’s power for potentially 25 minutes is an arduous task, I think Gane is up for it.
UFC Flyweight Championship
The co-main event is a trilogy fight for the UFC Flyweight Championship. The first time Brandon Moreno and Deiveson Figueiredo hooked up for the title, at UFC 256 in December of 2020, the fight went to a draw. This caused an immediate rematch to take place at UFC 263 in June of last year, in which the challenger Moreno dominated all aspects of the fight, submitting Figueiredo in the third round. Now they are fighting again for the third time in a row.
I see no reason why the result this time will be any different than last summer. Moreno seemed to have figured Figueiredo out – and figured the sport out – and put it on him. Nothing could have changed since that time to make Saturday any different. Moreno to retain the title at 20/39, please and thanks.
Underdog Picks for Saturday Night
There are quite a few large favourites on Saturday’s card that I reluctantly must side with, and not too many underdogs. But I can offer up a couple of hopefully live dogs for you. The first one, Trevin Giles, has dropped to even money at this point (1/1) but is still technically an underdog to newcomer Michael Morales (10/13) in their welterweight matchup. Morales is well heralded, coming off a strong showing on the last season of Dana White’s Contender Series, but I’m counting on Giles size (he used to fight two weight classes up) and experience to be the deciding factors on Saturday and hopefully earn us a nice return on our investment.
The other underdog I’m feeling much better about plus we’re getting a better number on him. That would be yet another newcomer, Genaro Valdez, in a lightweight fight against Matt Frevola. Valdez is another fighter coming off the last season of the Contender Series (there are five of them debuting this weekend), and he definitely has the goods to beat Frevola, who is only 2-3-1 in his UFC career. Valdez at 31/20 is the pick.