UFC 300 is just a few days away and man oh man am I excited. The card is so stacked that the preliminary fights could be a pay-per-view on their own. Most of the time I don't bother with the prelims because it's just too much to watch but I will be watching this right from the very start. Hell, the early prelims could easily be at least a Fight Night on their own.
Most of the time we see fighters get stacked up against another fighter that should be a close competition. This is true for anyone other than Conor McGregor when he makes a comeback against some pushover like Cowboy Cerrone. Most of the fights have normal odds with someone being favored at -200 or an underdog at +200... you know, the usual stuff, but there is one fight that has such crazy odds favoring one of the guys involved that I can honestly say that I have never seen anything like this before in MMA or any other sport for that matter.
Being a -2100 favorite is unheard of. On the rest of the entire UFC 300 card including all prelims the only other outlier is Deiveson Figueiredo, which is the first early prelim and he is favored at -310.
A -2100 bet means that in order to win $100 you would have to bet $2100 on Bo Nickal. If you are feeling gutsy, put a tiny amount of money on his opponent Cody Brundage because at +1100 that bet would pay out big time. The difference between the payout on these two guys is a bit unfair because they are not even close to the same as far as +/- is concerned but you know what they say about the house always winning in gambling.
So what makes the book-makers so apparently absolutely confident that Nickal is going to thrash Brundage?
Well the guy is relatively untested in UFC and has only seen 5 fights. However, all of these fights have never made it out of the first round and his last fight lasted a mere 38 seconds. This fight will be electrifying because there are, to my knowledge, no other fighters that have won all of their fights by KO or submission. Nickal is a world-class wrestler and was winning state championships in Texas while he was a sophomore (2nd year in high school), as a freshman he managed to place 2nd. While this might not seem like a huge accomplishment to some, you need to keep in mind that the difference in experience, not to mention strength, is extremely wide between the ages of 13-18, which is how old you would be at that point in your life for most people.
He was a collegiate powerhouse in wrestling as well, winning many awards and remaining in the top 10 in the nation from his freshman year to graduation. His trophy case is absolutely packed with wrestling awards both domestic and international. So what does this have to do with MMA?
Well, wrestling is a huge part of MMA. If you are facing an amazing striker, you can take them to the ground and eliminate most of their game.
Unless Bo faces a Jiu Jitsu expert, and possibly even if he does, Bo is going to dominate on the ground. He has 20 years of experience doing this despite only being 28 years old.
It is obvious that he is a favorite of UFC right now because he, being rather untested at a professional level, is getting propelled to the biggest UFC even that has happened in years.
I think that NIckal needs to keep his emotions in check, because I am not taking anything away from the guy, he is a beast, but this is by far the biggest stage he has ever been on as far as viewership is concerned. He has been in pay per views twice before and won both of them very convincingly. It is clear that Dana White and the other top brass at UFC would quite enjoy it if his onward domination would continue. At the moment he isn't ranked in the top 15 of the middleweight division so it is actually kind of odd that he would be on the main card of what is the most hyped UFC event in years and to me this says that Dana has big plans for the youngster.
The pressure is on Bo though, because it has become almost expected of him to finish in the first round. I have seen this sort of pressure get to many fighters in the past and hopefully Bo has a sound enough mind to keep his emotions in check and not make rash decisions in the fight in an effort to keep his "first round finish streak" going.
With a win here, Bo would almost certainly get propelled into the championship picture and honestly, I suppose that is the right thing to do. I do hope that they don't leapfrog him to the top because he doesn't deserve that yet. Should he be a -2100 favorite? I don't really know if that is deserved but I don't make the rules. He is too untested for me to really have an opinion on this but one thing I do know is that the people in Vegas don't choose these numbers willy-nilly. With that much confidence in a certain win for the guy, there must be something to it!