UFC 321: Aspinall vs. Gane picks and predictions
See who we think will win in Abu Dhabi this weekend.
The UFC is back in the Middle East this weekend putting on a show for the guys who pay the big bucks. Proof of their fealty to their Emirati patrons is displayed with UFC 321 going off during local prime-time. That means it starts at 10 a.m. for those of us in the eastern time zone.
The card itself is pretty darn good. The main event is meaningful heavyweight MMA with Tom Aspinall getting to defend his title for the very first time. His first assignment is former champ Ciryl Gane.
The co-main event is Mackenzie Dern vs. Virna Jandiroba for the vacant strawweight title. Rounding out the main card is Umar Nurmagomedov vs. Mario Bautista, Alexander Volkov vs. Jailton Almeida and Aleksandar Rakic vs. Azamat Murzakanov.
The pick of the prelim fights include Nasrat Haqparast vs. Quillan Salkilld, Ludovit Klein vs. Mateusz Rebecki and Valter Walker vs. Louie Sutherland.
Scroll down to see what we think of it all. We’ve got moneyline picks for the whole card and some over/under picks for the main card.
I remain atop our leaderboard and I was actually able to put some daylight between myself and Kristen at our last event. I was alone in picking upsets from Yana Santos, Ramiz Brahimaj and Jakub Wiklacz at UFC 320. Kudos to Blaine for being the only one to pick Alex Pereira, though (he’s not letting us live that one down over in the group chat).
Leader board
Tom Aspinall (-400) vs. Cyril Gane (+300)
Miguel: It’s great that the heavyweight division can finally move on from the shambolic Jon Jones title reign, but there’s a lot riding on this match to tell us what the future of the division looks like. Heavyweight has been dreadful for quite a while now (pretty much since Francis Ngannou’s exile) and people have been looking to Tom Aspinall to usher us into a more promising era. However, we still have yet to see Aspinall in a matchup competitive enough to really get a sense for how good he is. When all but three of his professional bouts have ended in the first round, we’re very far removed from understanding what a five round fight would look like for Aspinall.