New UFC middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre has opened as a betting favorite over lightweight titleholder Conor McGregor.
Wait, what?
Yes, there are already betting lines for a fictional fight between St-Pierre and McGregor… should it happen in 2018.
Should they step into the Octagon in the coming year, according to Bovada, St-Pierre is a -150 favorite to McGregor’s +120.
No, no one is actively trying to make this fight happen right now, as far as we know. After St-Pierre returned to the Octagon following a four-year layoff to capture the middleweight title from Michael Bisping, UFC president Dana White insisted that St-Pierre’s next opponent would be interim middleweight champion Robert Whittaker.
St-Pierre has admitted that he is contractually obligated to fight Whittaker next, but St-Pierre’s coach, Freddie Roach, who also helped facilitate his current deal, thinks it might be best if St-Pierre didn’t remain at middleweight.
“I think I would like to go to the lower weight division, back to the weight that he’s more comfortable with and more used to,” Roach said on Monday’s The MMA Hour. “But the thing is, that might not be available at this point. We do need to work that out with the promoter.”
Should St-Pierre remain at middleweight to try and unify his belt with that of Whittaker, he is even more of a favorite in that fight. The odds on St-Pierre are -160 to Whittaker’s +130.
While it may sound a little off the mark to already be throwing McGregor’s name around with St-Pierre’s, just remember how crazy it sounded less than a year ago that McGregor wanted to face Floyd Mayweather in a boxing ring. Once momentum shifted, Mayweather vs. McGregor came together in a hurry… and that was with several outside parties involved. St-Pierre vs. McGregor, in theory, should be even easier to conjure together, as they reside under the same promotional umbrella and both have fought at welterweight, the likely target weight should it ever happen.
In addition to odds on St-Pierre’s next bout, Bovada also released odds on a potential match-up between UFC flyweight champion Demetrious Johnson and newly minted bantamweight titleholder TJ Dillashaw. White and Dillashaw have wanted to make that fight happen for several months, and both rekindled their interest after Dillashaw reclaimed the belt from Cody Garbrandt at UFC 217, but Johnson has resisted.
If the bout does happen, the odds currently favor Johnson as a 2-to-1 favorite (Johnson -200 / Dillashaw +160). Again, the stipulation is that the fight would have to take place in 2018 for anyone that wants to put any money down with those odds.
