It’s Fight Day for UFC 323 and we’ve finally arrived at the final UFC PPV event of the ESPN+ era. Really solid lineup from top to bottom with a pair of title fights leading the way, it should be a fun night of violence!

Two fighters missed weight for the event, with Brunno Ferreira coming in 3 pounds over the middleweight limit and Mairon Santos missing featherweight by 1.5 pounds. Both fighters were fined and their fights are still set to proceed.

My favorite UFC 323 picks are Mansur Abdul-Malik, Maycee Barber, Alexandre Pantoja and Merab Dvalishvili. My favorite potential betting upsets are Terrance McKinney, Manuel Torres and Bogdan Guskov (line is flipping).

Abdul-Malik would be 4-0 in the UFC, but saw his last win overturned to a Draw vs Cody Brundage. He should be able to land big and early on Antonio Trocoli, who hasn’t looked particularly great in his 0-2 UFC run. Abdul-Malik will likely come out aggressive and should get this one done relatively early.

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Barber has gone through a lot of issues over the past year and a half, including a last-second cancellation of her main event matchup with Erin Blanchfield earlier this year. However, Barber looked to be in phenomenal shape this time around in comparison, and with the cut out of the way, I love this matchup for her. She should be the better striker and dictate where this one takes place to pick up a decision win.

Pantoja looks to continue his dominant reign as UFC Flyweight champ with another defense against the surging Joshua Van. I’m really high on Van long-term and think he’ll have a lot of success in the UFC, but this is probably going to be a bit too much, too soon in my opinion. I think Pantoja will be able to stay relatively safe during a competitive start before taking over and finding a finish in the latter rounds.

Dvalishvili is making history defending his UFC Bantamweight title for the 4th time in a calendar year and to solidify himself as the best bantamweight of all-time. Petr Yan should be able to find a bit more success this time around than he did in their first matchup, but unless he can put Merab out, it’s hard to see him getting the win.

I think Yan will be able to take a round or two landing the bigger shots and creating more damage, but Merab’s cardio should get him the decision taking the latter rounds.

For the UFC 323 bets, I have two tracked parlays and a handful of prop bets open heading into the card. The parlays are Santos ML + Barber ML + Pantoja ML (+228 for .5 units) and Marvin Vettori ML + Barber by Decision + Yan +13.5 Point Spread (+415 for .5 units).

The UFC 323 prop bets I’m running for tonight are Abdul-Malik by Submission (+600 for .5 units), Baraniewski by Submission (+550 for .25 units), McKinney by KO/TKO (+365 for .5 units), Torres to Win in R1/2 (+245 for .5 units) and Guskov by Decision (+650 for .25 units). That’s a total of seven tracked plays for 3 units.

I also have a handful of untracked parlays open including the following lines: Santos ML, Barber ML, Pantoja ML, McKinney ML, Vettori ML, Yan +9.5 Point Spread and McKinney to Win/Under 1.5 Rounds.

Overall, this wasn’t the easiest card for targeting picks and bets, as there’s a lot of coin flip matchups and very live underdogs, so we’ll see how things go. We had a really solid month on the bets in November, hopefully we can finish these last two events of the year on a high note as well.

We’re really excited to announce that we have another UFC fighter merch collaboration on the way with Julius Walker for his upcoming fight at UFC Vegas 113 on February 7th! Walker will be selling shirts and posters featuring the graphic we put together for his fight, so stay tuned for more info on how to order in the coming weeks.

We’ve also got another really exciting shirt collab in the works that we can hopefully finish up and announce soon, so keep an eye out for more on that also!

Speaking of merch collabs, with the holiday season coming up, now is a great time to grab some gear from our drops with Cody Durden and Miranda Maverick for the MMA fans in your life. We also have plenty of options available on MILLIONS for anyone interested in some of our general designs.

While we obviously enjoy the picks and bets aspect of what we do here at OddSmokerMMA, we really love being able to work with fighters on all levels when it comes to graphics and merch, so much love to everyone who has continued to help us grow in that department during the past year and a half!

Tonight should be a really fun night of fights to end the UFC PPV era with the final numbered event of 2025. Next weekend will be UFC Vegas 112: Kape vs Royval before a six-week break over the holidays.

The UFC dropped the full Q1 schedule for 2026 during their seasonal press conference last night, and it looks like the Paramount+ era should have a great start with back-to-back numbered events kicking things off. There are only two events scheduled for the UFC Apex during the first quarter of the year.

Let us know who you’re picking tonight and what bets you’re liking down in the comments. As always, best of luck on the bets and hope everyone enjoys the fights!

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