The Octagon Yields to T-Mobile Center at Las Vegas for Saturday night’s 11-fight UFC 239 card.
The show features a set of name fights, with MMA’s best-ever fighters around the men’s and women’s side defending their respective belts.
Jon’Bones’ Jones is set to shoot on Thiago Santos in the main event. Jones was a -600 favorite at most novels as of Tuesday, but the Westgate SuperBook had Jones in -850 late Friday afternoon. Santos was a +575 underdog at the Westgate. A number of overseas stores had Jones at a less expensive price from the -650 neighborhood. The total has been 2.5 rounds (‘beneath’ -135,”over’ +105) at most areas.
Jones (24-1-1 MMA, 18-1-1 UFC) has had his hands raised 25 times in 26 career fights. His only”reduction” was a disqualification for prohibited 12-to-6 elbows in a blowout win over Matt Hamill on Dec. 5 of 2009. His third-round knockout win over Daniel Cormier in UFC 214 was overturned and changed to some no-decision when Jones tested positive for the PED turinabol.
Jones appears — for now at least — to be on the ideal path outside of the cage lately. This is his third battle in a period of six months and one week, marking his most activity since 2011-12. He has indicated he wishes to fight three or more times in 2019.
Jones is off a unanimous-decision win over Anthony Smith at UFC 235 at March. He dominated Alexander Gustafsson with a third-round KO victory at UFC 232 on Dec. 29 of 2018. Before those two successes, many suspensions and arrests enabled him to compete just four times in a span of over five years.
Jones has cleaned out the light-heavyweight branch during his career. At a five-fight stretch from March 19 of 2011 to Sept. 22 of 2012, he won the belt and successfully defended it four times. All five of these wins came over former champions — Shogun Rua, Rampage Jackson, Lyoto Machida, Rashad Evans and Vitor Belfort. Just Evans went the distance with Jones during this span.
Santos (21-6 MMA, 13-5 UFC) is 8-1 in his previous nine fights since February of 2017. He has bagged six fight-night bonuses during this stretch. The 35-year-old Santos competed at middleweight his whole career until moving around 205 pounds to face Eryk Anders from the UFC Fight Night 137 headliner in Sao Paulo past September.
Anders took the fight on six days of notice when Jimi Manuwa pulled out his bout with Santos due to an injury. The former University of Alabama football player had to fly to Brazil and make weight in quick order. Plus, he was heading up a weight class for the very first time in his profession.
The garbage was a slugfest that earned Fight of the Night honors. Unfortunately, Anders collapsed due to exhaustion when trying to walk back to his corner when the third round ended. The referee immediately known as the struggle to give Santos a TKO victory.
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