SuparTipstar’s UFC Fight Night 119 Best Bet

*SuparTipstar’s Best Bet record to date is 2-1 for +8.5u and an ROI of 283.33%.

The focus of my best bet tonight is the fight between Antônio Carlos Júnior and Jack Marshman.

Many people know ACJ from winning the ultimate fighter and hearing about his highly touted BJJ skills. Fewer people know Jack Marshman and those who do probably consider him your typical UK brawler. I disagree with them, and consider Marshman’s striking to be a lot more educated than people give him credit for. He has trained under some high level boxers and I think it shows in the octagon. He has power in his hands and if you don’t properly prepare for the right hands he will be throwing your way, and especially the follow up left hook when you move away from the right, you could find yourself in trouble.

Marshman is coming into the fight as a very hefty underdog and he is definitely the least likely winner here. He hasn’t shown great takedown defence and if ACJ can exploit that and bring the fight to the ground then he should be able to secure a submission victory in front of his home crowd. While I believe that, I have trouble seeing it happen 80% of the time as the odds suggest. There is actually a trend when you look at ACJ’s odds history of the public becoming more and more confident in ACJ’s ability to submit from fight to fight until he is foiled and the opinion is reset. That’s the point where I see us getting to currently and I am looking to take advantage.

My main critique of ACJ other than his striking defence which is suspect in it’s own right, is his willingness or lack thereof to fight through adversity and overcome his cardio when it is brought into question. He does have late submission victories which you could say overrules that thought, but to me they were in comfortable fights and it is tough to look passed his loss to Dan Kelly where he failed to secure an early submission despite control, wilted under pressure and basically gave up.

If there is a pressure fighter that will push the pace, hit you hard and test your integrity, your true will to fight, that is Jack Marshman. His game is built around as much. Wherever he is in the fight he does not make it easy for the opponent, always looking to punish takedown attempts and sneak in hard blows. If he can stop ACJ from taking him down, or, failing that, survive the first round on the ground, I think he will be asking ACJ some serious questions here. I do favour a first round submission victory for ACJ, but I don’t rate the chances of that as highly as the odds imply and if it doesn’t happen then Marshman could prove to be a very live underdog.

According to the odds a high weighting on Marshman’s win probability is in the knockout prop, so we will be leaving that alone. I can see him getting the knockout, but losing the first round and gaining momentum throughout the fight while it remains somewhat even is also very possible.

My best bet for UFC Fight Night 119 is Jack Marshman @ 5.0, +400 (Betfair, 5Dimes).

My honorary mention for this event goes to Demian Maia @ 2.2, +120 (Bet365, 5Dimes, Pinnacle etc). There are two elements that prevent this from being my best bet. The first is that if Covington doesn’t attempt to wrestle Maia (though I’m leaning towards him doing so) I’m not convinced Maia will be able to get the fight to the floor. The second is his close relationship with Jorge Masvidal, who himself survived Maia’s submissions and will have been of great value to Covington training for this fight.