UFC 318: Holloway vs. Poirier 2 picks and predictions
See who we think will win at the Smoothie King this weekend.
The UFC is rolling out the red carpet for a rare celebration, where the subject of the attention is not the UFC itself, its president or the other president. No, this time, in New Orleans, the UFC will be celebrating Dustin Poirier with his retirement fight in the main event of UFC 318. In that fight he’ll face Max Holloway for the third time. This time, though, there’s the BMF belt on the line (because that’s a thing).
Sadly, the UFC hasn’t built much of a card to support the main event. The co-main is Paulo Costa versus Roman Koyplov for Pete’s sake. Beyond that the main event features Dan Ige versus a well past his prime Patricio Pitbull, Kevin Holland vs. Daniel Rodriguez and Michael Johnson vs. Daniel Zellhuber.
The prelims have some recognizeable faces, with Marvin Vettori meeting Brendan Allen. But even that fight feels like an APEX headliner. The rest of the Prelims really feel like APEX fodder.
We’ve held our noses and gone through the card looking to pick winners and then share those with you, our loyal readers.
Last week, at UFC Nashville, we strangely all went 7-5. One of those losses was the main event where we all sided with Tallison Teixeira and were then a little robbed by a weird/early stoppage.
I’m still managing to cling to the lead in our standings, with just a seven point cushion between me and Miguel Class. I’m in the lead thanks to my lock picks (the one pick we do each week that we are extra confident in — we mark those with an asterisk). Last week I went with Fatima Kline. The rest of the team all picked Mike Davis.
Scroll on to see who the locks are this week.
And please, if you’re using this information for gambling, please do so responsibly.
Leader board
Max Holloway (-130) vs. Dustin Poirier (+110)
Miguel Class: This is an incredibly hard fight to pick and there are endless fine details that would be immensely fun to explore if I had the privilege to write a full preview article, but I’ll have to keep it brief here. Both Holloway and Poirier have plenty left in the tank as their immensely deep skillsets have aged well, but Holloway has also changed a lot since the last time they fought and that could shift the matchup drastically. …