The main event of UFC Vegas 83 this weekend features Song Yadong and Chris Gutierrez in a matchup of ranked bantamweight contenders. Let’s take a closer look at both fighters and how this fight could potentially play out:
Song Yadong is 20-7-1 in his career with 12 of those wins coming via stoppage. Song has gone 9-2-1 thus far in the UFC while facing some of the best fighters the division has to offer in the process, including Cory Sandhagen and Marlon Vera. This will be his third consecutive main event appearance after splitting his previous two headline fights with a doctor stoppage loss to Sandhagen, and most recently, a fifth round stoppage win over Ricky Simon. Both of those fights went into the championship rounds, and six of Song’s last eight fights overall have gone 15 minutes or longer.
Chris Gutierrez is 20-4-2 with 10 of his wins coming by stoppage and he will be making his first UFC main event appearance in this fight. Gutierrez is 8-2-1 in the UFC and he enters this matchup off a decision win over Alatengheili in his last trip to the octagon. He has won five of his last six fights overall, but has struggled against some of his higher-level opposition such as Pedro Munhoz and Cody Durden in the UFC. At bantamweight, Gutierrez has landed 57.7% of his significant strike attempts while defending 67.2% of his opponents attempts in return. Five of his last seven fights have gone the full 15 minutes.
Both of these fighters are extremely dangerous strikers who mix their weapons and targets as well as anyone in the division, and this should definitely be an exciting matchup. I expect the early rounds of this fight to be pretty competitive with both fighters finding some success on the feet. However, I like Song’s chances the longer this one progresses. While both fighters prefer to stand and strike, I think Song will be the better fighter at changing levels and attempting to mix in takedowns in this fight. We’ve also seen him compete past the 15-minute mark and know that he has 25-minute cardio, while Gutierrez is still an unknown in those deep waters. In 54 combined fights between them, these two have only been stopped a total of 3 times, so I expect this one to go into the latter rounds and like Song’s chances to get the decision win in this fight.
I’m not particularly fond of Song’s money line for this matchup, which is currently at -380 on the low end at DraftKings, so I’ll be playing a couple of different prop bets for this fight. With both fighters being pretty durable, the easiest way to get a better line on Song is to take him to win and the fight to go over 2.5 rounds at -165 on DraftKings. My favorite prop bet to get a plus money return on this fight is for Song to win in the latter rounds or by decision, which is currently sitting at +105 on FanDuel. You can also get Song to win by Decision at +180 on FanDuel.