UFC 90 Predictions: Silva vs Cote Betting
Jim Murphy - October 25th, 2008 .UFC handicapper Jim Murphy returns with his expert UFC 90 Predictions and Silva vs Cote Betting Odds analysis.
Main Event: Silva -550 vs Cote +486
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Jim is the head honcho and CEO over at the Savage Science our favorite MMA site. They are the new home of fight sport journalism, check them out for live play by play of UFC 90.
The Zuffa PR machine has done a good job convincing the wagering public that Anderson Silva is unbeatable. Bruce Lee could come back from the dead and Silva would be a -450 favorite against him.
Problem is that we’re not buying it–a number of us over at SAVSCI aren’t even convinced that Silva is “pound for pound” the best fighter in the promotion (at least four of us, myself included, think GSP is “pound for pound” the best MMA fighter in the world and not just because he’s a dead ringer for one of our writers). Silva may not even be the best middleweight in the world–though he certainly has the best PR machine of any middleweight in the world. For example–there’s a talented veteran Japanese fighter who’s been toiling mostly on UFC “non-televised” undercards name Ryo Chonan. He’s a consummate pro, trains with Team Quest in California, tons of experience all over the world and pretty much his only losses are against top tier opponents (Karo Parysian, WEC middleweight champ Paulo Fihlo, Ricardo Alemedia, Dan Henderson). He’s been buried by the UFC–in the opinion of myself and a number of other MMA experts I know–due to the “inconvenient truth” that he’s the last guy to beat Anderson Silva and did so convincingly, via a spectacular flying scissors heel hook that could be the most amazing submission in the past few years not done by Shinya Aoki. The head scratcher is why the UFC hasn’t tried to make a rematch out of this.
It would be about the easiest fight ever to promote–show footage of Chonan’s submission and say that “The Spider is out for revenge”. Problem is that will mess up the UFC’s talking point that Silva has run roughshod over every decent middleweight in the world (except for the 10 or so guys in DREAM, Affliction and elsewhere that the UFC won’t acknowledge like Matt Lindland, Vitor Belfort, Gegard Mousasi, Ronaldo Jacare, etc.).
Patrick Cote may be the toughest opponent that Silva has ever faced, but there’s so many UFC sycophant journalists that are convinced that he’s just another “victim”. The hack over at SI actually titled an article “Cote latest victim to be thrown into cage with Silva”. That’ll be a surprise to Cote, who’s as tough as they come. He’s a Canadian Army veteran with a well rounded background in boxing, kickboxing and wrestling. He’s been studying BJJ almost non-stop since he got out of the army and turned pro–he trains with the Brazilian Top Team in Canada along with a pretty fair fighter named Georges St. Pierre. Cote may also be the most physically powerful fighter that Silva has faced in his UFC tenure.
Personally, I find all of Silva’s retirement talk heading into this bout very disconcerting–Dana White has done everything he can to spin it that Silva’s been quoted out of context or mistranslated but it sure sounds like his interest in MMA is wavering. That’s not a mentality I like to see in a fighter preparing for a fight. That concludes my UFC 90 predictions.
Basically, the value almost demands a play on Cote–he’s way too good of a fighter to be +486 or thereabouts. Off the top of my head the theoretical breakeven at that price is somewhere around 18% and I’d put the “true probability” of Cote winning at 40% plus.
BET PATRICK COTE +550 OVER ANDERSON SILVA
