It’s Fight Day for UFC Vegas 96 from the UFC Apex in Vegas! The card features 12 fights and will be headlined by Jared Cannonier and Caio Borralho in a middleweight clash. It also features the finals matchups from this season of The Ultimate Fighter. In a bit of a rarity these days, especially for Fight Night cards, there were no weight misses for this one.

My favorite picks for this card are Michael Morales, Caio Borralho, Edmen Shahbazyan, and Tabatha Ricci. Morales is a sizeable betting favorite in his matchup over Neil Magny, but I think he’ll end up justifying the line with superior striking, the ability to mix in takedowns and solid cardio. Magny pulled a huge upset in his last one when Mike Malott gassed out late, but I don’t see Morales having the same issue. I think Morales gets this one done via clear decision or late stoppage. Borralho is getting a step up in competition here in his first UFC main event, but he has looked excellent thus far going 6-0 with the promotion against pretty decent competition and I think he looks well here also. I think Borralho will be able to work his takedowns and wear out Cannonier for a decision win on the cards or late submission.

Shahbazyan is getting an excellent matchup in my opinion against GM3, who isn’t much of a threat on the feet. I think Shahbazyan will be able to keep this one standing and like his chances of catching Meerschaert for a KO/TKO win sometime in the first two rounds. I’m going with Ricci for my fourth confident pick, and in all honesty, that speaks more to my low trust level on the rest of the card than this fight. There’s a good chance this ends up being a messy split decision, but I think Ricci will be able to get some early takedowns, ground and pound and submission attempts to score rounds and pull this one via a tight decision or possibly even find the submission win.

For the betting card I’m keeping this one extremely light since there aren’t a lot of spots that I love and have also been out of town all week which limited my availability of books and prop/parlay options. I only played two prop bets and a money line for this week. The prop bets are Borralho by Decision (+190 for .5 units) and Ricci by Submission (+750 for .25 units). The money line play is a flyer on Jose Medina ML (+450 for .5 units) to pull the upset over Zachary Reese. It looks like Medina has put a lot of work into his MMA career and physique since earning his contract and I think there’s a good chance he can pull off the massive betting upset in this one, as I’m not very high on Reese at the UFC level. That’s a total of three bets out for 1.25 units on this card.

It should be an interesting card tonight and particularly interested to see if Borralho and Morales can take another step up the ladder in their respective divisions. Huge shoutout to NextMMA.com for letting us sponsor their fight card for this weekend, I highly encourage everyone to check out their website and look for them on social media! Best of luck on the betting tonight and hope everyone enjoys the fights!

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