MMA Betting Free Picks: Joseph Benavidez vs. Dominick Cruz

Added on Aug 17, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

UFC & MMA

World Extreme Cagefighting (WEC) will hold a fight card on Wednesday night televised on the Versus cable network in the US headlined by a Bantamweight Championship battle between Dominick Cruz and challenger Joseph Benavidez. This promotion, owned by UFC parent company Zuffa LLC, focuses on the lighter weight classes and may present the most consistently excellent fight cards of any MMA organization in the world. It also presents a number of good MMA betting opportunities and this week’s main event looks especially promising.

WEC: Cruz vs. Benavidez
August 18, 2010—7:00 PM Pacific

The WEC Bantamweight Title has been passed around like the proverbial ‘hot potato’ in the past couple of years. Miguel Angel Torres won the belt in February 2008 and held the title for the next year and a half until he has shocked by Brian Bowles in August 2009. Bowles held the belt until his first and only title defense in March of this year when he was overwhelmed by current champ Dominick Cruz.

This fight is a rematch of the number 1 contender’s bout won by Cruz to set up the title shot against Bowles. Cruz won a unanimous decision victory to give Benavidez his first career loss in a very entertaining and competitive bout that won ‘fight of the night’ honors. Cruz’s status as champion and the fact that he’s already got at victory over Benavidez is the reason that he’s a -250 favorite in this fight.

So will history repeat itself and will Cruz earn another unanimous decision victory over Benavidez? We don’t think so. Winning the Bantamweight Title has proven easier of late than defending it and Cruz simply isn’t the type of fighter that can be expected to dominate an opponent like Benavidez. Training with Urijah Faber’s Team Alpha Male, Benavidez has demonstrated his ability to fight a smart tactical fight and it’s not like he was overwhelmed by Cruz the first time around. The aforementioned Faber handed Cruz his only professional loss (at featherweight) and no doubt ‘The California Kid’ has some wisdom to pass along to his training partner. Most importantly, you’re just not going to outwork Benavidez or best his physical conditioning. If the fight moves into the later rounds it becomes an advantage for the challenger, who is essentially a human ‘Energizer Bunny’.

We see this fight as a tossup, and getting a proposition that is essentially a coin flip at better than 2 to 1 odds is the epitome of good line value. Look for Benavidez to become WEC Bantamweight Champion and a very attractive underdog price.

Bet Joseph Benavidez +210 over Dominick Cruz