Fight Day for The Last Dance has finally arrived as UFC 318 goes down tonight in New Orleans and we witness Dustin Poirier make the final walk of his legendary career when he challenges Max Holloway for the BMF title in a trilogy bout. The lineup features 14 matchups, and all 28 fighters successfully made weight for the event.

My favorite picks for this card are Kevin Holland, Daniel Zellhuber, Islam Dulatov and Carli Judice. My favorite potential betting upset on the card is Paulo Costa.

Kevin Holland continues to be the most active fighter on the UFC roster and will make his fourth walk of the year tonight when he faces Daniel Rodriguez. Holland is putting together a string of solid performances in his last couple of outings, and I expect him to keep that going here against Rodriguez.

Holland should be better just about everywhere in this matchup and will be able to get this one on the ground if he wants. Tough to nail down a method on this one but leaning towards a submission win for Holland.

Zellhuber and Michael Johnson have had some of the more heated interactions during Fight Week among the fighters on this lineup and I’m expecting their fight to be a fun one. Johnson is one of the most experienced fighters on the entire roster and has seen just about everyone in the lightweight division, but he’s getting up there in age and will have to deal with a much younger, taller and longer Zellhuber in this one.

I think it might be competitive early, but Zellhuber should pull away down the stretch in this one as long as he can control the range and dictate where the fight is at for a clear win on the cards or late stoppage.

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Dulatov will be making his debut after getting signed from the Contender Series last year and is getting an excellent matchup against Adam Fugitt. Dulatov has a 100% stoppage rate and has shown to be dangerous everywhere while beating some very experienced competition on the way to this level.

Fugitt is a decent fighter who’s 2-2 in the UFC, but he’s been stopped in both losses and will likely find himself on the wrong end of another here. I expect Dulatov to get this one done sometime in the first two rounds.

I also really like Carli Judice to continue building on her big KO win back in March with another solid outing in her home state of Louisiana against Nicolle Caliari.

Judice is an excellent striker with high volume when she gets going on the feet and she’s getting an opponent in Caliari who is pretty hittable and will be needing takedowns to find success. I think Judice can keep this one mostly on the feet and should get a clear decision or maybe even a late KO/TKO.

For the bets tonight, I took a handful of props with a ML and a couple of small parlays. The straight bets are Holland by Sub (+275 for .5 units), Costa ML (+190 for .5 units) Costa by KO/TKO (+650 for .25 units), Holloway by Decision (+150 for .5 units) and Holloway by Split/Majority Decision (+700 for .25 units).

The parlays are Holland to Win by Sub or Decision Double Chance + Main Event Goes Distance Yes (+203 for .5 units) and Judice in Win in R3/Dec + Holland -3.5 Spread + Main Event Goes Distance Yes (+314 for .5 units). That’s a total of seven bets for 3 units.

I ran the second parlay on DraftKings with their 50% boost promo, so you can actually bump that to +471 over there if you have that book or another with a similar promo for tonight, but I recorded it at the actual price.

It’s now or never for Paulo Costa to return to form in the middleweight division and I actually have like his chances in this one. Kopylov is a dangerous striker who definitely has the potential to get this one done, however I think Costa will be able to build off his last outing when he went to a split decision with Sean Strickland and put a lot of volume on the division’s best defensive fighter. As long as Costa stays active here, I think he can land a big counter or multiple big shots to either find a KO/TKO or to win rounds for a decision.

And for the main event, I’ll be cheering for Dustin Poirier to get his storybook ending at home, but I just think it’s a lot to ask for in this one. I expect this one to be an absolute classic that should go the distance and think Max will squeeze out a narrow win on the cards to avoid falling to 0-3 in their trilogy.

Before we get out of here this week, make sure to check out our OddSmokerMMA YouTube page for some of the great coverage by Kala Patterson last weekend at UFC Nashville. We have interviews up with Brendan Allen, Youssef Zalal and Kru Bob Perez as well as some coverage from the post-fight press conferences. Kala did an awesome job covering her first UFC event and even got some big news out of Dana White regarding the UFC Shanghai card selling out in one minute.

Overall tonight should be a really exciting night of fights with a rollercoaster of emotions throughout the night as I’m sure we’ll see plenty of special video packages and promos for Dustin and the main event. I expect there to be a decent number of finishes tonight and would recommend watching out on parlaying the heavy favorites as it looks like Vegas needs at least one to slip up tonight.

Be sure to check back here next weekend for UFC Abu Dhabi, which is shaping up to be another really fun card. Best of luck on the bets tonight and hope everyone enjoys the fights!

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