UFC 308 picks and predictions

Check out who we think will win at the Etihad Arena this Saturday.

It’s Max Holloway time. Art by Chris Rini.

Hot dang we’ve got a great card this weekend. After delivering another truckload of oil money to the Endeavor offices the Emiratis have secured an epic event for the Etihad Arena this Saturday. UFC 308 starts at 10 A.M. ET, further sign that the Middle East is the UFC’s number one destination moving forwards. The headliner is UFC featherweight champion Ilia Topuria defending his belt for the first time. His challenger is former champ, and recent BMF belt winner, Max Holloway.

The co-main is Robert Whittaker vs. Khamzat Chimaev. And it looks like Chimaev might actually show up for this one. The main card also has Lerone Murphy vs. Dan Ige, Shara Magomedov vs. Armen Petrosyan and Magomed Anakalaev vs. Alexsandar Rakic.

The prelims are pretty decent, too. There you’ll find Geoff Neal vs. Rafael dos Anjos, Myktybek Orolbai vs. Mateusz Rebecki and Farid Basharat vs. Victor Hugo.

We’ve looked over the match-ups and done our darndest to predict how each of these will go down. Scroll below for our picks for the entire card.

If you’re using our advice for betting purposes — best of luck! But please wager responsibily.

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Ilia Topuria (-245) vs. Max Holloway (+200)

Miguel Class: I’ve already written a full preview for this that you can check out here, so I’ll briefly explain why I’m picking Topuria.

While Holloway has far greater diversity and depth technically, I think the pressure-boxing game of Topuria will allow him to largely get the kind of fight he wants. Holloway is vulnerable moving back and while Gaethje was able to sporadically punish him for it, he wasn’t disciplined enough with his pressure to keep Holloway away from the center of the cage.

Topuria has shown in his last two fights to be a very patient and methodical pressure fighter. If he can maintain that level of discipline even as he runs into stiff resistance from Holloway, he should be able to capitalize on his power advantage in the pocket.