It’s Fight Day for UFC Vegas 106! We have a pretty decent lineup for our first trip back to the UFC Apex in a little over a month. The card features 12 matchups and will be headlined by a welterweight clash between Gilbert Burns and Michael Morales. We had a pretty rare, pleasant surprise yesterday with a weigh-in event with no misses or issues.

My favorite picks this weekend are Rodolfo Bellato, Yadier Del Valle, Nursulton Ruziboev and Michael Morales. My favorite potential betting upsets are Sodiq Yusuff and Thiago Moises.

Bellato is 12-2-1 in his career with 11 wins coming by stoppage and he’s getting a great spot with Paul Craig coming back up to 205 after three consecutive losses. Both of Bellato’s losses have come against Vitor Petrino by KO/TKO, but Craig won’t have the power to be much of a threat on the feet. Bellato will be the more dangerous fighter by a margin in the striking and as long as he stays smart and avoids finding himself in a bad position on the ground, Bellato should get this one done via stoppage in the first two rounds.

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Yadier Del Valle is 8-0 making his UFC debut off last season of DWCS and he’s getting a good matchup against Conner Matthews to test himself here. Del Valle is a well-rounded fighter with half of his wins coming by finish, while Matthews has struggled thus far at the UFC level going 0-2 with both losses coming via KO/TKO. I think Del Valle will be able to find success in his striking and be able to remain safe should the fight go to the ground. I like Del Valle to get this one done via KO/TKO or pretty clean decision.

Ruziboev is 3-1 in the UFC with his only loss coming to the surging Juaquin Buckley last May in St. Louis. He’ll be facing Dustin Stoltzfus, who despite showing some recent improvements and coming in off a win, is only 3-5 in the UFC. Ruziboev will be working with a 5″ height advantage and should be the more dangerous fighter here and I think he’ll be able to find success in the striking early. Ruziboev has stopped 33 of his 35 wins and I think he has a good chance to get another here early or pick up a competitive decision win if it gets extended.

Morales is 17-0 in his career and off to a 5-0 start in the UFC with his most recent win coming by violent stoppage over Neil Magny. He’ll be getting a huge test here against longtime division veteran Gilbert Burns. While Morales enters the fight as one of the hottest prospects in the division, Burns is coming off three consecutive defeats to some of the best competition at welterweight. I think Morales will be able to weather a tough start and be able to start finding success in the striking as Burns begins to tire out after the first round and find a KO/TKO in the middle rounds.

For the betting card this weekend, I have a mix of prop bets and small parlays. The prop bets for this one are Yusuff by Decision (+185 for .5 units) and Del Valle by KO/TKO (+285 for .5 units). The parlays are Ruziboev ML + Yusuff ML (+184 for .5 units), Del Valle ML + Moises ML + Ruziboev ML (+240 for .5 units) and Moises by Decision + Ruziboev to Win Inside the Distance + Bellato to Win Inside the Distance (+541 for .5 units). That’s a total of five tracked bets for 2.5 units.

Overall, I didn’t love a lot of the betting lines this week and ended up catching the wrong end of some line movement with a couple of these, so lines for most should be as good or better than when I got them in. We’re coming off a rough outing last weekend at UFC 315 where a terrible decision in Aldo/Zahabi mixed with some bad reads in the title fights gave us our worst night in a while, so hopefully we can get back on track with this one before a break next weekend.

We’ve been teasing it for a couple of weeks now, but it’s finally official: we have two new shirt design collaborations available with Miranda “Fear The” Maverick! We’re super excited about this one and it comes at a great time as she’s preparing to face “Thug” Rose Namajunas in the co-main event of UFC Atlanta next month.

If you’re interested in grabbing one, you can message her directly on any of her social media accounts. They are $32 each and let her know we sent you! We’ll be running a couple of giveaways involving Miranda in the coming weeks, so stay tuned to our social accounts and check back here for more details on those!

This should be a pretty solid lineup today with an early start time, hopefully we’ll have some good fights. Reminder there’s no UFC next weekend before returning on May 31st with UFC Vegas 107 to cap off the month. Be sure to check out our most recent Podcast episodes, as well as keeping an eye out for some exciting upcoming ones!

We have a couple of fun projects in the works right now involving some potential new things coming here at OddSmokerMMA, so with a little luck, hopefully we’ll have some more announcements coming soon. As always, we hope everyone enjoys the fights and best of luck on the bets tonight!

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