Wanna make some big bucks if Fedor somehow knocks himself out up against Hong Man Choi at the end of this month? That probably won’t happen, but here are some other fights to bring in some extra after-Christmas (or whatever you celebrate) shopping.

Nick Thomas over at Bloody Elbow has a nice little article highlighting some of the betting odds for upcoming MMA events.  In my opinion, there’s a couple of money makers in there, but be sure to rule out the Emelianenko/Choi fight early. Even with Fedor at -1700 and Choi at +850, I doubt many would drop $1700 to win a measly $100, but I guess if you wanted to take the chance of a lifetime, you could drop $100 and hope to pick up another $850. If anyone does this, please let me know!

Here are the potential money makers:

St. Pierre -200 Hughes +160 - Although I can see St. Pierre taking the win, keep in mind that he’s only taken the fight on five weeks notice. Hughes, however, has been training for a five round fight for a long time. These odds should not be spread this far apart.

Penn -285 Stevenson +225 - We have only seen BJ Penn fight once. That was against someone who doesn’t even walk around at 155 while Penn had been up against Welterweights. There’s a good chance that Stevenson could steal this fight with his great conditioning.

Swick -175 Burkman +135 - Josh Burkman has gone up against Karo Parisyan and Forrest Petz while taking the decision against the latter and dropping the loss against the former in the past 7 months. Parisyan is said to be one of the top in his class and Burkman showed some heart during their UFC 71 undercard bout. While Mike Swick is 10-2, his wins are mostly from smaller organizations. This one is 50/50 in my eyes.

Lesnar -205 Mir +165 - This one is my favorite. The WWE wrestler with one win is favored over UFC veteran, Frank Mir. This is where you can make some big bucks on the off chance that Lesnar can dominate a seasoned MMA fighter.

In a string of bad luck decisions/good luck decision consequences, the much maligned stretch of two B-level UFC pay-per-view broadcasts kicks off tomorrow night in Cincinnati. Perhaps, being more realistic, it’s bad luck, even more horrible luck (some might say karma), followed by decent luck in consequences. But Fedor signing with M-1, followed by Couture leaving the UFC abruptly, has left the Brandon Vera vs Tim Sylvia heavyweight bout meaning much more.

Add to that a main event with a hot crowd for hometown hero Rich Franklin in his quest to dethrone the heavily favored champion Anderson Silva, and we have the storyline aspects for a compelling night of fights. Many have questioned the fights themselves, but I would submit that those people, though they consider themselves “real” fans, are falling into a casual fan’s trap of looking for star power to guide them. I’m not sleeping on this card, and I think it’ll be the kind of surprising strong show the last UFC trip to Ohio provided. You know the one where an old man grabbed the heavyweight crown to cap a solid show, all said and done.

We in the MMA blog world, and those who put their blogs into a more authentic-looking traditional sports journalism form, tend to micromanage every Mixed Martial Arts related decision. Certainly this is true of the largest MMA company in the world, the Ultimate Fighting Championships, and its public face, Dana White. Dana hates the online bloggers and media (you make your own distinctions of who is what, as I do), and they in turn make a story out of anything he says or does. It’s a cute, if not tiring, war that yield some great stories and a lot of babble talk. Perhaps this is never more true than this instance because with a perceived weak card, the focus will be much more on what Dana does and says during the entire weekend, than what goes on inside the ring from 10pm until 1am, Eastern.

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Check out an article I wrote for Sprawl-n-Brawl.com here about how TUF is good for the Sport. Adam Morgan has been kind enough to let me write for his site as he focuses some of his efforts for 5 Oz of Pain with Sam Caplan while Sam focuses his efforts on working as the head editor of ProElite.com! I am still looking for writers for MMA Opinion so please email me or visit the Contact page.

It looks like the card for UFC 77 is set to go and although there should be some exciting matchups, I don’t see a fun middleweight title fight - at least not for Rich Franklin. You can say that Anderson Silva is over-rated, but I don’t see anyone beating this guy unless they find a way to exploit his game plan because Silva always seems to have an answer to whatever you throw at him. Hopefully we don’t see a repeat of Franklin prematurely crumpling to the ground again for the sake of an exciting fight.

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