UFC 264 will stay in Las Vegas on Saturday, July 10, but will move to the T-Mobile Arena for a full crowd of fans, as Dustin Poirier and Conor McGregor finish their trilogy in a lightweight tilt. Gilbert Burns meets Stephen Thompson in the co-main event. Let’s take a look at the full fight card as scheduled, as well as some of the early UFC betting odds and some thoughts for your perusal.
UFC 264: Poirier vs McGregor 3 Odds and Predictions
Main Card (Pay Per View)
Dustin Poirier (27-6, 1 NC) vs Conor McGregor (22-5) (Lightweight)
Gilbert Burns (19-4) vs Stephen Thompson (16-4-1) (Welterweight)
Tai Tuivasa (12-3) vs Greg Hardy (7-3, 1 NC) (Heavyweight)
Irene Aldana (12-6) vs Yana Kunitskaya (14-5, 1 NC) (Women’s Bantamweight)
Sean O’Malley (13-1) vs Louis Smolka (17-7) (Bantamweight)
Preliminary Card (ESPN)
Carlos Condit (32-13) vs Max Griffin (17-8) (Welterweight)
Niko Price (14-4, 2 NC) vs Michel Pereira (25-11, 2 NC) (Welterweight)
Ryan Hall (8-1) vs Ilia Topuria (10-0) (Featherweight)
Early Preliminary Card (UFC Fight Pass)
Trevin Giles (14-2) vs Dricus Du Plessis (15-2) (Middleweight)
Jennifer Maia (18-7-1) vs Jessica Eye (15-9, 1 NC) (Women’s Flyweight)
Omari Akhmedov (21-5-1) vs Brad Tavares (18-7) (Middleweight)
Zhalgas Zhumagulov (13-5) vs Jerome Rivera (10-5) (Flyweight)
Yaozong Hu (3-2) vs Alen Amedovski (8-2) (Middleweight)
In the main event, the odds are a push, with both fighters coming on a -110 moneyline. In this trilogy, both fights have ended in knockout fashion. McGregor got the first win back in 2014, when Poirier was still new (and vulnerable to McGregor’s mental games). In January, Poirier delivered the big bomb at UFC 257, and now we have the final fight between the two just six months later.
McGregor is generally the favorite when he comes into the Octagon. There have only been two times when he has been an Octagon underdog, and one other time when he took on Floyd Mayweather in the boxing ring. This is the first time McGregor has appeared in a push. When Poirier knocked out McGregor in January, it was the only time in his career when McGregor was knocked down in a knockout loss. Even so, McGregor did deliver some damage before Poirier started his strategy of kicking McGregor’s legs to sap his energy. McGregor will have made some adjustments to his style so that he can get around Poirier this time.
Some possible choices for McGregor include using a “blitz” approach, simply bringing so much pressure with so much speed that Poirier does not have a chance to deploy the kicking game. McGregor brought pressure in the first round and did some damage to Poirier; Poirier’s response was to go for a takedown, and he succeeded. If McGregor had been able to defend against the takedown, the fight could have been completely different. Poirier said after the fight that he was hurt at that point ant that a few more bombs from McGregor would have ended things.
McGregor has the power to end this fight in the first round. However, his signature posture involves a wide stance with an exposed front leg, which keeps his head back from the damage of his opponent, and then it also gives him a balance point as he leans forward to deliver damage at greater distance. If Poirier can wear away that leg again, then he will win. It’s hard to imagine that McGregor would not have come up with a new plan for this, though.
Another lesson that McGregor should have learned was to pursue Poirier with his own leg kicks. Near the end of the first round, McGregor landed a solid kick on Poirier’s quad. After that, though, McGregor never went back to it. He only tried one more kick in the whole fight, a wild back kick that did not come close to landing on Poirier’s chin. McGregor clearly came in with one plan — to knock out Poirier in the first round. When that did not happen, McGregor did not have a Plan B.
Poirier tends to land more blows while taking on less damage than does McGregor, and I think that he will take this third win simply because of the confidence he got in January. For now, I would wait until the casual bettors come in and put money on McGregor, pushing up the value on Poirier. At that point, I would swoop in and pick Poirier to beat McGregor again.
Final Prediction: Poirier wins via knockout
UFC Betting Odds
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