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UFC Fight Night preview: Font first to stop Vera?
For ESPN’s 100th Fight Night we have a mouth-watering main card at the UFC Apex, Las Vegas, Nevada, where Rob Font takes on Marlon Vera in the main event, which is set to be a five-round bantamweight brawl.
Before that we have a heavyweight co-main event with former world champion Andrei Arlovski facing off against a hungry Jake Collier.
We preview the best of Saturday’s card below.
Rob Font v Marlon Vera
The action returns to the octagon this weekend with a main event in the stacked bantamweight division. Fifth-ranked Rob Font and eighth-ranked Marlon Vera are fighting to prove their dominance and that they are worthy of climbing the rankings in a competitive division.
Font makes his third consecutive main event appearance, having won four of his last five fights, with the only defeat being against Jose Aldo last December in a closely contested match that went the distance. Font is a dangerous striker, fighting out of an orthodox stance, and he is the favourite to win in this match-up at 8/11. Given his impressive resume, with wins against Cody Garbrandt, Ricky Simon and Marlon Moraes, it is no doubt going to be a tough fight for Vera.
Font has the fifth highest number of significant strikes landed of all time in the bantamweight division, with 847 landed, and may even rise in these rankings to usurp current bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling (891) and Petr Yan (883) after Saturday night.
Vera, however, is yet to be stopped, with all of his losses coming from decisions and the odds of the fight going the distance are 4/6. Brazilian jiu-jitsu expert Vera now has back-to-back wins following his last outing where he produced a highlight reel front-kick knockout against Frankie Edgar last November. This showed that although he has an impressive ground game with several spectacular submission wins, he still has knockout power.
Should Vera be able to take it to the ground, he should be able to secure a slick submission, and the odds of this are 3/1. However, this may be harder than it seems considering Font has a 55% takedown defence rate. If you fancy Vera to repeat his previous performance, a knockout for the Ecuadorian is priced at 3/1.
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Andrei Arlovski v Jake Collier
The co-main event this weekend will be a clash of the titans in the heavyweight division between Andrei Arlovski and Jake Collier. Both men possess immense power, and it may only take one punch to end it all.
Arlovski is on a three-fight win streak, with all bouts having gone the distance. He is a previous UFC heavyweight champion, having won the belt at UFC 51. He has 17 wins by knockout, 13 decision wins and is one of the most experienced fighters still competing in the UFC. Arlovski has lost only one of his last six fights, which was in February 2021 when he was submitted by Tom Aspinall in the second round.
However, his upcoming opponent Collier also has a defeat to Aspinall, which ended in round one by TKO. Arlovski is the slight favourite going into this match-up, with odds of 8/13 to win the fight. At 43 years of age, does he have the stamina and power to hold off a much younger and dangerous Collier?
Collier is coming off a Performance of the Night submission stoppage in the first round of UFC Vegas 46 in January and was keen to get back into the ring as soon as possible. He expressed his displeasure at the judges’ decision the previous time out in the post-fight interview, and said he wasn’t willing to let another fight go to the scorecards. Having moved up from middleweight since his heavyweight debut in 2020 against Aspinall, he has been looking better than ever in this division.
Both fighters pack serious heat, and only six of Collier’s 19 fights have gone the distance. Arlovski is 10/3 to win by KO/TKO/Submission, with Collier 13/4 – both a steal considering their fight-ending power.
