The UFC heads to the Netherlands this weekend with a Fight Night card featuring a couple of big heavyweight fights and also a very important Welterweight fight between fan favourite Gunnar Nelson and #13 ranked Albert Tumenov. These three fights are all significant in the UFC, but the card does tail off after these. I’ll be giving you my picks for these big three fights below.
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Alistair Overeem vs Andrei Arlovski
This is an interesting heavyweight fight between a couple of guys who both train at Jackson-Wink MMA in Albequerque, New Mexico. It’s very rare you get a fight between two guys from the same gym, but with Overeem ranked #3 and Arlovski ranked #5, this fight made sense to make on the Netherlands card.
Overeem will be fighting in front of his home fans and he’s really improved his overall game at Jackson-Wink and has shown this with three straight big wins dating back to his Stefan Struve KO in December of 2014. He’s also beaten Heavyweight stalwart Roy Nelson and finished former champion Junior Dos Santos since that fight. He definitely has the momentum, the fan support and I would also venture to say he is the more skilled fighter with a bigger tool chest of skills to draw from.
Arlovski had his amazing run just stopped with a quick TKO loss to Stipe Miocic and he’s been put right back into the fire with this fight against Overeem.
Arlovski definitely has a punchers chance with the ability to finish Overeem with one punch, but Overeem’s recent success has me leaning towards him in this fight.
Play: Overeem -200
Antonio Silva vs Stefan Struve
This fight will surely end in a knockout finish. Struve is coming off of a loss to Jared Rosholt where he was just out wrestled and never got anything going. He did win his previous fight against Big Nog, but that was also a pretty brutal fight where Struve didn’t do much damage on his way to the decision.
Struve is just not very good and he is very susceptible to being KO’d.
The flip side is that Bigfoot has been equally as unimpressive lately. He’s coming off a TKO loss to Mark Hunt and he’s been knocked out in the first round in 3 of his last 4 fights. The one win was a second round TKO over Sao Palelei.
The problem in this fight is I just don’t see Struve really being able to pull the trigger to knock Silva out early, and if Silva doesn’t get finished in the first few minutes of the fight he becomes a very dangerous opponent. Both of these guys are really brutal and I think either one would lose to most up and coming prospects in the Heavyweight Division, but luckily they are fighting each other. I’m going to take Silva as the dog in this one. If he can’t get it done I think retirement is in order.
Play: Silva +165
Gunnar Nelson vs Albert Tumenov
After getting absolutely destroyed on the mat by Demian Maia, Gunnar is back in the Octagon against a very difficult opponent. I’m a Gunnar fan and I was very impressed with his huge submission win over Brandon Thatch at UFC 189 (I was there live) after he knocked Thatch to the canvas with a smartly timed counter. Gunnar will want to get this fight to the ground, but he will have to be willing to exchange some with Tumenov or else his shots could very well be stuff easily.
Tumenov is on an absolute tear through the UFC with 5 wins in a row, but he did have a very tight split decision win over Lorenz Larkin in his last fight and Gunnar will no doubt by his stiffest test to date.
I see this fight as more of a pick’em so I’ll be taking Nelson and hoping he can get Tumenov to the ground and use his superior jiu jitsu.
Play: Nelson +150
Arlovski • Overeem • ufc betting