It’s almost Fight Day for UFC Baku as the promotion makes its first trip to Azerbaijan for what should be a really exciting card. The lineup features 12 fights and will be headlined by a clash between light heavyweight contenders Jamahal Hill and Khalil Rountree Jr. Rafael Fiziev, who is from Azerbaijan, will be competing in the co-main event against Ignacio Bahamondes in a great matchup at lightweight. All 24 fighters successfully made weight during weigh-ins for the event.

My favorite picks this weekend are Nazim Sadykhov, Tagir Ulanbekov, Oban Elliott and Irina Alekseeva. My favorite potential betting upsets (or near pick ems at this point) are Rafael Fiziev and Jamahal Hill.

Sadykhov is one of the three locally born fighters featured on the card and absolutely love his matchup here against Nikolas Motta. While Motta has shown some improvements in his last two fights, I still feel like he’s a level below Sadykhov at the moment.

Sadykhov should be slightly to significantly better just about everywhere in this matchup and I think he’ll be very live for a stoppage here. Motta has been stopped in all five losses (should be six) and I expect Sadykhov to put him away sometime in the first two rounds.

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I also love the matchup for Ulanbekov tomorrow against Azat Maksum. While Maksum is a decent and well-rounded fighter with a 15-1 record, he has shown he still has a good bit of room to grow and improve at this level so far during his 1-1 UFC run. I expect Ulanbekov to have a dominant advantage in the wrestling and grappling here and to largely have his way in that department.

Charles Johnson was able to record 3 submission attempts in Maksum’s last fight, and he won’t survive that many here if he can’t avoid finding himself in trouble. I expect Tagir to find a submission at some point in this one or to win a clear 30-27 decision.

Oban Elliott was pulled during fight week from his recent booking against Ramij Brahimaj and switched to this bout, which is set to be the featured prelim. The promotion seems to be high on Elliott, and it feels like they gave him a much more winnable spot here against Seokhyeon Ko to potentially produce a highlight reel win in the process.

Ko is making his UFC debut and has been stopped via KO/TKO in both of his losses. I expect Elliott to win a dominant decision or to find a KO/TKO pretty early in this one.

Also, really liking Fiziev to bounce back here against Bahamondes and same thing for Hill in his matchup with Rountree Jr. Fiziev has dropped three straight fights, but one was via injury, one was on short notice, and one was arguably a win. It’s hard to weigh his losses too heavily given the circumstances, especially with two coming to Justin Gaethje.

I think he’ll be able to hold his own in the striking here and turn up the volume to get a decision or late stoppage win. Hill also should bounce back after tough back-to-back losses to former champs. While I really like Rountree Jr and he’ll be live early, I expect Hill to be more well-rounded and tested late if it gets there.

For the betting card this weekend, we have several straight prop bets and a couple of two leg parlays. The prop bets are Ulanbekov by Submission (+250 for .5 units), Elliott by KO/TKO (+275 for .5 units) and Fiziev to Win in R3/Decision (+215 for .5 units). The parlays are Irina Alekseeva to Win Inside the Distance + Sadykhov to Win Inside the Distance (+297 for .5 units) and Fiziev ML + Hill ML (+341 for .5 units). That’s a total of 5 bets for 2.5 units.

I tried to bet on violence this weekend and expect there to be a lot of finishes tomorrow since it feels like a lot of matchups were feeling setup for them. With this being the UFC’s first trip to Azerbaijan and I don’t anything at all about their local judges/referees, I also didn’t want to go too heavy on lengthy parlays or fights I expect to be close.

I feel obligated to mention this after the dumpster fire stretch that we’ve been on the last couple of cards with the bets, and should mention more often anyway in general, but be sure to dial back spots like methods/props that you aren’t comfortable with and/or swap out spots that you don’t like in parlays.

Most of you who watched UFC Atlanta last weekend know Miranda Maverick unfortunately suffered a torn ACL during her co-main event matchup with Rose Namajunas and will be out of action for the foreseeable future.

While she’s out, if you want to show some love and support as she recovers, all merch and memorabilia on her website are 50% off on orders over $50 with the code “HALF” during checkout through July 1st. Miranda is set to undergo surgery next week, so grab a shirt from our collab, other merch and/or some signed memorabilia and let her know we can’t wait for the comeback!

We’re also thrilled to officially announce that we’re running it back and will be sponsoring Chris “The Problem” Duncan once again as he prepares to face Mateusz Rebecki at UFC Vegas 108 on August 2nd!

If you follow our site, you know we worked with Chris earlier this year for his matchup with Jordan Vucenic, so we’re extremely excited to be working with him again as he gets ready for this huge opportunity in August! Stay tuned for more regarding Chris in the coming weeks.

Remember that tomorrow’s card will have an early start time, with the prelims kicking off at 12PM ET here in the US, so get your bets in tonight or early in the morning. There’s also a PFL Semifinals card on tonight with some coverage from Media Day available over on our YouTube channel.

We’ll be on the road next weekend for some regional work, but we will still have the usual coverage and everything for UFC 317, so no worries. Thanks for checking out this week’s picks and predictions, we hope everyone enjoys the fights and best of luck on the bets!

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