UFC Fight Night 142 Odds & Expert Picks

UFC Fight Night 142 takes us down under to Adelaide, Australia, on Sunday. The preliminary card will start at 7pm Eastern time, with the main card set for three hours later. The main event features a heavyweight bout between Junior dos Santos and Tai Tuivasa, and the co-main event is also of the heavyweight variety, pitting Mark Hunt against Justin Willis. The main card contains six fights overall and will be televised on Fox Sports 1. The preliminary card offer sfour fights, also on Fox Sports 1, while the pair of early prelims will be on UFC Fight Pass. Check out our MMA betting thoughts about several of the fights to come.

UFC Fight Night 142 Odds & Expert Picks

OFFICIAL!#UFCAdelaide: 🇧🇷 @Junior_Cigano vs 🇦🇺 @BamBamTuivasa pic.twitter.com/mVSCIjBWVV

— UFC (@ufc) November 30, 2018

Main Card (10:00pm ET, FS1)

• Junior dos Santos vs Tai Tuivasa (heavyweight)
• Mark Hunt vs Justin Willis (heavyweight)
• Mauricio Rua vs Tyson Pedro (light heavyweight)
• Jake Matthews vs Tony Martin (welterweight)
• Suman Mokhtarian vs Sodiq Yusuff (featherweight)
• Paul Craig vs Jim Crute (light heavyweight)

Preliminary Card (7:00pm ET, FS1)

• Yushin Okami vs Alexey Kunchenko (welterweight)
• Wilson Reis vs Ben Nguyen (flyweight)
• Keita Nakamura vs Salim Touahri (welterweight)
• Elias Garcia vs Kai Kara-France (flyweight)

Early Preliminary Card (UFC Fight Pass)

• Mizuto Hirota vs Christos Giagos (lightweight)
• Alex Gorgees vs Damir Ismagulov (lightweight)

Junior dos Santos (19-5, -150) vs Tai Tuivasa (8-0, +130) gives us another look at the great dos Santos, who may well be moving past his prime but still has some gas in the tank. The three fights he had with Cain Velasquez showed us both of their peaks as fighters five years ago, but dos Santos has had more staying power, even though he is one-dimensional, relying on his boxing skills to compete. Stipe Miocic took advantage of this in delivering a knockout back in 2017, but then dos Santos delivered knockouts against Ben Rothwell and Blagoy Ivanov, starting on the path back toward a title shot. Tuivasa has a shot to be the heavyweight name in Oceania — if not even further around the world. He comes from Samoa and grew up learning from Mark Hunt. In his early career, he came out too aggressively, trying to use power and athleticism to compensate for technical skill that still needed some improvement. He took down Rashad Coulter via knockout in his UFC debut, but his skills were still raw. Since then, they have improved, as we saw in a fast finish of Cyril Asker and an impressive decision victory over Andrei Arlovski, the first UFC fight in which Tuivasa had had to contend past the first round. He’s at the point where he will need to start beating the big names if he wants to get a title bout. Dos Santos is one of the best strikers in the classification, but if Tuivasa can rock his chin, he has a chance. Tuivasa will need to counteract that length disadvantage by getting inside. I’m not sure, though, that Tuivasa has the skill to make it past that jab. UFC Fight Night 142 Prediction:: Dos Santos wins via decision Mark Hunt (13-13-1, -120) vs Justin Willis (7-1, +100) is most likely Hunt’s UFC finale, as he does not have a contract with the promotion past this bout. Hunt has had the best run of his career in UFC; his debut featured a submission loss to Sean McCorkle, but then he put together an impressive winning streak as his takedown defense grew and he was able to come out ahead in bouts that seemed little more than street brawls. His knockout highlight reel is impressive, but his athleticism is starting to slip away. In his last fight, he lost to another aging veteran, Alexey Oleynik, via submission. Justin Willis has done nicely in his three UFC bouts so far. He had to put this bout off so that he could make weight at 265 pounds. He has done a solid job of learning when to use his natural power, even though he does not have quite the same athleticism as Tuivasa.  If he can take down the aging Hunt, he has a shot to start moving into main-event slots. He has the power to finish Hunt early — and given the way Hunt’s last fight went, that wouldn’t be a surprise at all. UFC Fight Night 142 Prediction: Willis wins via knockout