UFC Baku: Hill vs. Rountree Jr. picks and predictions
See who we think will win in Azerbaijan this Saturday.
The UFC has been rented by Azerbaijan this weekend to lure tourists to Baku and present a very friendly image of the South Caucuses country. I highly recommend you read Karim Zidan’s breakdown on the blood and bullshit involved with that decision.
In Baku the UFC is trotting out light heavyweighs with former champion Jamahal Hill taking on former title challenger Khalil Rountree Jr. That should be a good ol’ slobberknocker. The co-main has Azerbaijan’s Rafael Fiziev meeting Chile’s Ignacio Bahamondes.
The rest of the card features a lot of characters from the region. The other Azeri’s on the card are Tofiq Musayez and Nazim Sadykhov. Musayev, a former RIZIN tournament winner and recent military veteran, has been drafted in specifically for this event. He meets Myktybek Orolbai. Sadykhov has a thick Brooklyn accent, but that won’t prevent the roof blowing off when he comes out. He’s drawn Nikolas Motta.
It’s not a bad card from a pure entertainment stand-point. A lot of the matches are bangers on paper with highly skilled strikers paired off with each other. There are some duds here, though, especially on the opening portion of the card.
As always, we’ve gone over these fights and picked our winners. We’ve also picked the round totals for the main card and made our lock picks. A lock pick is one where we are especially confident. We mark those with an asterisk. If we are right on those we earn ten bonus points for our leader board.
I’m still top of that leader board, by the way. I went 14-3 last week to lead our crew and hit on another lock pick (Jamey-Lyn Horth). I’m now 17-2 on picking locks. Scroll down to see who I’ve picked this week.
Kristen and Steph both had good weeks last week, too. Steph was able to leapfrog Blaine. Kid Nate continues to roll. He went 8-4 on just picking fights to keep his winning percentage over .700!
Check out who he is picking below, too.
If you’re using this info for betting, though, please do so responsibly.
Leader board
Jamahal Hill (-105) vs. Khalil Rountree Jr. (-115)
Miguel Class: This is a pretty fun fight for the division that will likely be short and violent. Rountree is the far more technical fighter and put up the most consistent and intelligent performance of his career against Pereira, even if he was ultimately not able to swim with the champ after he was taken into deep waters. …