Read our UFC Vegas 120 best bets for this live event on Saturday from the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. We're back to a 5:00 p.m. ET start time for the 11-fight card, headlined by lightweights Quillan Salkilld and Mateusz Gamrot.
Our MMA experts went through this weekend's 12-fight lineup to identify their UFC best bets and favorite picks for the card.
You can find their analysis and picks, as well as Sean Zerillo's moneyline and prop projections, on those matches below.
UFC Vegas 120 Moneyline Projections
UFC Vegas 120 Prop Projections
Pick: Diyar Nurgozhay -148 (DraftKings) | Diyar Nurgozhay wins Inside the Distance +115 (DraftKings)
Amanda Lemos vs. Alexia Thainara
Billy Ward, Staff Writer
Fighter walkouts: Approx. 8:45 p.m. ET
As the latter part of the week approached, I was salivating at the thought of betting overs on Alexia Thainara takedown props. Between the UFC proper and the Contender Series, the Brazilian has landed 15 takedowns in four fights, and the only bout in which she landed less than three was due to a first-round submission.
Her opponent, former title challenger Amanda Lemos, has been taken down in six straight fights, including three each in consecutive bouts. As we touched on in this week's UFC Betting Preview podcast, Lemos tends to look for guillotines and submissions off of her back rather than defending takedowns in the first place.
To her credit, she's a reasonably solid submission grappler, going 3-2 in the UFC in bouts that end via sub, but refusing to defend takedowns is never an ideal approach.
Unfortunately, DraftKings was thinking along the same lines as me, setting Thainara's takedowns prop at 3.5, with a slight juice to the under.
However, that got me thinking — how many takedowns can we reasonably project Thainara for? This is a three-round fight, and in order for a fighter to land more than one takedown per round, the opponent has to find their way back to their feet. Lemos has historically been dreadful at that, and, in fact, has been taken down multiple times in a round just once in her UFC career.
That's not due to her elite takedown defense, but rather the semi-permanent nature of her opponent's top position. In both of her last two fights — against stylistically similar opponents — Lemos was taken down exactly once per round, while surrendering more than nine minutes of control time in each bout.
I'm expecting a similar outcome here, with Thainara needing just one takedown per round to control this fight, leading to a total of three takedowns being by far the most likely outcome. Plus, there are always more ways to cash an under than an over, in this case a finish from either woman in a fight that's +140 to see one being a likely culprit.
While my official pick is Thainara under 3.5 takedowns at -135, I'll also be looking for alternate methods to bet on exactly three takedown from the favorite, in case alternate totals become available and allow us to SGP that outcome at somewhat long odds.
Pick: Thainara Under 3.5 Takedowns -135 (DraftKings)
