After a one-week hiatus, the UFC will return this Saturday with UFC Vegas 68, which will be headlined by Serghei Spivac and Derrick Lewis in a battle of ranked heavyweights. That matchup caps an interesting lineup that currently features twelve fights, including four matchups from the Road to UFC tournaments.
In the main event, Lewis will be looking to bounce back from a bit of a rough stretch which has seen him drop three of his past four fights, while Spivac will be trying to continue his rise up the heavyweight rankings. Spivac has won five of his last six fights overall coming into this one and would almost certainly move into the top ten in the division with a win. Between the two fighters, they have a combined 35 stoppages on their records with 28 of those coming via KO/TKO.
In the co-main event of the card, Da Un Jung will face Devin Clark in a fight between veteran UFC light heavyweights. There’s also another matchup between ranked heavyweights on the main card, with Marcin Tybura taking on Blagoy Ivanov.
One fighter on the main card who I am excited to see fight this weekend is Yusaku Kinoshita, who is 6–1 with a 100% stoppage rate. His only loss came via disqualification when he refused a referee’s order to let go of the fence while he was stomping the head of an opponent. To be clear, he was DQed for the fence grab, not the head stomps, which were legal in the promotion with which he was fighting at the time.
The UFC had originally planned to host this weekend’s card in Seoul, South Korea, but after plans for that were scrapped due to an injury to “The Korean Zombie” Chan Sung Jung, the promotion decided to keep the card intact but will host it in Las Vegas instead. As a result, they will be starting the event a bit later than usual to better accommodate the Asian viewing market, with the main card starting at 1am ET and the prelims beginning at 10pm ET.
Since the card was originally scheduled to happen in South Korea, the company also had scheduled the finals for their Road to UFC tournaments for the event. The tournaments began last June in Singapore before continuing in October in Abu Dhabi. The tournaments are taking place across four different weight classes (flyweight, bantamweight, featherweight, and lightweight) and they began with eight fighters in each bracket. The matchups on this card will determine the winners for each division.
While there are a handful of fighters on this card who are highly-touted prospects, perhaps none have a higher ceiling than flyweight Tatsuro Taira. The undefeated Taira will be making his third appearance with the promotion this weekend when he faces Jesus Aguilar. Taira is currently the biggest betting favorite of the card with a Moneyline currently sitting at -1200 on BetMGM Sportsbook. He will be featured in this week’s WagerWire Fighter Spotlight, which will be posted here in the coming days and will include some ideas for how to get better value on that fight.
With this event having such a strange starting time locally here in the US, combined with the fact there aren’t many fighters on this card who I would personally consider trustworthy when it comes to betting my money, I’ll probably be taking it relatively lightly this week from a betting perspective. I’ll still sprinkle on a couple of spots that I’m comfortable with, but I would prefer to really dive in the following week, when UFC 284 will be taking place from Perth, Australia.
One fighter that I will certainly be placing a bet on this weekend is Taira, who despite having a Moneyline well above the range I normally like to bet, should have some nice and juicy props to target with much better value. Da Un Jung and Marcin Tybura are two other fighters who I am considering placing bets on this weekend. I’m also interested to see how Derrick Lewis looks during fight week, as he was recently photographed jogging in the Houston area and seems to be in phenomenal shape heading into this matchup with Spivac.