UFC Betting: Public, Sharps Enamored With Mendes at UFC 142 - Mixed Martial Arts News - MMA News - Articles on UFC and Mixed Martial Arts

UFC Betting: Public, Sharps Enamored With Mendes at UFC 142

Mixed Martial Arts Betting and Odds
by Bodog Sportsbook | Jan 10, 2012

UFC 142 is heading to Rio de Janeiro and the card is packed with Brazilians for the hometown faithful. UFC betting fans will see as many as 12 Brazilians step into the octagon, which will undoubtedly help local ticket sales.

The card will be headlined by UFC Featherweight Champion Jose Aldo, who is fighting back in his home country for the first time since 2007. He’ll take on American Chad Mendes, who would love nothing more than to ruin the Brazilian love fest on Saturday.


Bovada Sportsbook offers great value on both fighters in the Aldo-Mendes bout for UFC 142, so bet the action now before the betting lines shift.
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“Money” Mendes Attracting the Money

When we opened up the betting lines for the main event at UFC 142, we expected the early plays to come in on Jose “Scarface” Aldo. After all, he’s the champ and he’s going to have the home crowd behind him.

As predicted, that was the case as the public and sharps piled in on December 11th to move the line up to -265, which is where it’s currently at.

But in the last couple of days, we’ve seen plenty of action coming in on Mendes at +205 and if this continues throughout the week, we could see the first time that we’d be on the Aldo side in one of his fights. Usually, the public and sharps are all over him and his wins tends to cost the sportsbooks money.

Case and point: Aldo is 4-0 as a favorite dating back to his days in WEC. He’s 2-0 in the UFC (both as a favorite). If the odds closed at -265 in his favor, that would be the shortest odds on him since he fought Urijah Faber at WEC 48 when he was a -275 favorite.

Can Mendes Do The Unthinkable?

In betting terms, an upset win for Mendes wouldn’t be crazy. We see 2-to-1 underdogs win on a fairly regular basis in the sports world, so it’s not an unreasonable proposition. But from a theoretical standpoint, this feels like quite the challenge for Mendes.

For starters, he’ll be one of only four non-Brazilians on the main card. He’ll be in hostile territory in Brazil – fighting outside of the United States for the first time – with the crowd squarely against him. Furthermore, this is clearly the biggest fight of his young career and his first headline bout.

On top of that, he’s going up against Aldo, who Sherdog ranks as the fifth-best pound-for-pound fighter in the world. He’s on a 13-fight winning streak while Mendes doesn’t even have 13 fights on his resume.

Bettors love the fact that Mendes is the far superior wrestler in this bout and if he can just take Aldo to the ground, he should have the upper hand.
 
Mendes has been favored in all six of his lined fights (dating back to WEC) and he’s a perfect 6-0 in those contests.

Can Aldo Stay Standing?

We hear this quite a bit with Jose Aldo: if the fight gets to the ground, he could be in trouble. Sure, we saw Mark Hominick take him down to the mat at UFC 129 and give him a bit of a scare even after Aldo won the better part of three rounds, but for the most part, Aldo has been outstanding at preventing opponents from imposing their will.

We heard many of the same strategic plans expected to be employed by Urijah Faber at WEC 48 but Aldo put on a stand up clinic for five rounds and that was that.

Until we see it come to fruition, Aldo is still going to be considered one of the best and odds makers will set the lines accordingly.

UFC 142 takes place on Saturday night and Bovada Sportsbook has great value on all of the betting lines for the card, so take advantage of the action right now.