Brandon Royval vs. Lone’er Kavanagh Prediction, Picks, Odds for UFC 329 (Saturday, July 11)

Brandon Royval vs. Lone'er Kavanagh Odds

Check out the Brandon Royval vs. Lone'er Kavanagh prediction for UFC 329 on Saturday, July 11, along with my betting preview and breakdown.

Lone'er Kavanagh has been one of my favorite prospects since he appeared on the Contender Series in 2024. He's seemed destined for a shot at UFC gold since picking up a knockout that night, going 3-1 in the UFC with the now-traditional knockout loss to Charles Johnson that seems to propel flyweights into the championship picture.

He's also halfway through the other mandatory flyweight ritual, with a win over one of "The Brandons," who now serve as flyweight gatekeepers. He defeated Brandon Moreno on short notice in the UFC Mexico City main event, and now draws Brandon Royval in his first UFC numbered event. The flyweight title picture is crowded, but Kavanagh has the star power to jump the line if he can pick up an impressive win over "Raw Dog," who comes in with consecutive losses to the top two flyweights in the world.

Here's my Royval vs. Kavanagh pick and prediction.

Tale of the Tape

For a more in-depth dive into the style of Lone'er Kavanagh, I highly recommend the breakdown I did on him prior to his DWCS appearance that's linked in the intro. Kavanagh came into the promotion as a fairly complete prospect despite his youth — 25 at the time of his Contender Series appearance.

The one big question I had about him coming into that fight was his cardio. Kavanagh's twitchy style demands a ton of energy output, and he was able to largely overwhelm regional competition, rendering the cardio factor null and void. What we've learned since then has been a bit of a mixed bag, but it seems to be trending in the right direction.

The loss to Charles Johnson highlighted the downside of Kavanagh's approach and conditioning. After a relatively dominant first round, Johnson gained some momentum in a back-and-forth second frame. Then, with just 30 seconds to go in the round, Kavanagh lazily exited an exchange with his hands down and was caught with a huge right hand by the advancing Johnson.

That was probably a combination of fatigue, an erroneous assumption that Johnson was also going to reset following the previous exchange, and a mistiming of the range by the fairly short Kavanagh. Either way, it was his first career loss, which exposed some flaws in his game.

The good news is that those flaws were seemingly fixed in his follow-up fight against Brandon Moreno. Kavanagh stepped into the UFC Mexico main event on short notice (he was originally booked for a fight two weeks later) in what seemed like a nightmare scenario: His first five-round fight coming against a former champion at high elevation. Kavanagh stepped up to the challenge in a performance that was more dominant than the scorecards suggest, outstriking Moreno on the feet while denying all eight takedown attempts, and winning both "championship rounds" on two of three judges' scorecards.

I'm not sure how much of the improvement in Kavanagh's stamina was due to a larger gas tank or a smarter approach. He seemed to shift, for the first time in his career, to a slightly more patient game plan, picking his power shots carefully (notably in Round 2) rather than trying to finish Moreno with every strike.

Of course, he's got a full camp this time, and a three-round fight much closer to sea level, so we could see the aggression turned back up against Royval.

Royval suffered his first actual knockout loss in the UFC in his last appearance, getting stopped by Manel Kape in the first round (he had a fluky shoulder injury against Moreno in 2020 that also goes down as a TKO). Prior to that, he was knocked down by now-champion Josh Van, though, so there's been an accumulation of damage for the 34-year-old. Both Van and Kape have better one-punch power than Kavanagh, but the British upstart has the more diverse striking attack.

Royval is a high-volume striker who is neither accurate nor defensively sound. He has enough finishing ability, both striking and grappling, to finish lower-level opposition, but against top opponents, he largely relies on volume to hopefully sway the judges in his favor.

He's 2-3 across his last five, all of which came against champions or title challengers (assuming Manel Kape gets his shot next). All three of those losses were decisive (two unanimous decisions and a knockout), while his wins both came via split decisions.

That's mostly a product of judges having to weigh Royval's output against his opponent's bigger moments, which is unlikely to be a productive approach against a sharp, defensively sound striker like Kavanagh.

Royval vs. Kavanagh Pick, Prediction

As my breakdown would indicate, I'm fairly bullish on the favorite's chances here. I'm also torn between a trio of bets, and rather than try to narrow them down, I'll be splitting my exposure between them.

The first is Kavanagh's moneyline, where DraftKings has the best line at -218. I'm risking a unit there to win 0.45 units.

The other two bets correlate fairly well with a solid chance for them both to hit. That would be Kavanagh under 62.5 significant strikes at -115 via DraftKings, where I'm risking half of a unit, plus his finish prop at +210 at Hard Rock Bet for a quarter unit. Kavanagh has never cleared that number in a three-round fight in the UFC, and his five-round pace would've worked out to 58 significant strikes in a three-round fight.

I also expect him to look for potential big finished here, and I don't trust Royval to be able to absorb more than that number without being finished. If that last statement is correct, we should be able to cash at least one of these props, with a good chance for both.

Billy's Picks: Kavanagh -218 (1u) | Under 62.5 SS -115 (.5u) | ITD +210 (.25u) 

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