MMA fans – well, MMA bettors, anyway – like Robert Whittaker’s chances to beat Luke Rockhold.
As announced on Thursday, middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre (26-2 MMA, 20-2 UFC) has vacated his belt, and an interim titleholder Whittaker (19-4 MMA, 10-2 UFC) is now slated to fight ex-champ Rockhold (16-3 MMA, 6-2 UFC) for the vacant middleweight.
Odds have opened for the pay-per-view bout, which takes place Feb. 10 at Perth Arena in Perth, and initially they favored Whittaker.
ESPN.com’s Brett Okamoto first reported the opening odds, which had Whittaker as a slight favorite (-125) over -105 Rockhold (via Twitter):
However, initial betting has largely favored Whittaker.
As of this writing, Whittaker, who’s No. 2 in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie MMA middleweight rankings, had been bet all the way up to -195 while No. 3-ranked Rockhold moved to plus money – specifically, +160.
At those odds, a winning $100 bet on Whittaker would result in a net profit of $51.28 (implied win probability of 66.1 percent). A winning $100 bet on Rockhold, meanwhile, would net a profit of $160 (38.5 percent win probability).
Should Whittaker be the pick here? Cast your vote below.
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The Blue Corner is MMAjunkie‘s official blog and is edited by Mike Bohn.
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