The Octagon Yields to T-Mobile Center at Las Vegas for Saturday night’s 11-fight UFC 239 card.
The series features a pair of title fights, together with MMA’s best-ever fighters on the men’s and women’s side defending their individual belts.
Jon’Bones’ Jones is set to take on Thiago Santos at the main event. Jones was a -600 favored at most books as of Tuesday, but the Westgate SuperBook had Jones in -850 late Friday afternoon. Santos was a +575 underdog at the Westgate. A number of offshore shops had Jones at a cheaper price from the -650 area. The total was 2.5 rounds (‘beneath’ -135,”over’ +105) at most spots.
Jones (24-1-1 MMA, 18-1-1 UFC) has had his hands raised 25 times in 26 career conflicts. His only”loss” was a disqualification for illegal 12-to-6 elbows in a blowout win over Matt Hamill on Dec. 5 of 2009. His third-round knockout win over Daniel Cormier in UFC 214 was overturned and changed to a no-decision when Jones tested positive for the PED turinabol.
Jones seems — for now at least — to be on the ideal path outside the cage recently. This will be his third battle in a period of six months and a week, marking his most action since 2011-12. He has indicated he wishes to fight at least three times in 2019.
Jones is off a unanimous-decision win over Anthony Smith in UFC 235 at March. He dominated Alexander Gustafsson using a third-round KO victory at UFC 232 on Dec. 29 of 2018. Before those two victories, various suspensions and arrests enabled him to compete just four times in a span of more than five decades.
Jones has cleaned out the light-heavyweight division during his dominant career. In a five-fight stretch from March 19 of 2011 to Sept. 22 of 2012, he won the belt and successfully defended it four occasions. All five of those wins came over former champions — Shogun Rua, Rampage Jackson, Lyoto Machida, Rashad Evans and Vitor Belfort. Just Evans went the distance with Jones during this span.
Santos (21-6 MMA, 13-5 UFC) is 8-1 in his past nine struggles since February of 2017. He’s bagged six fight-night bonuses in this stretch. The 35-year-old Santos competed at middleweight his whole career until moving up to 205 pounds to face Eryk Anders from the UFC Fight Night 137 headliner at Sao Paulo last September.
Anders took the fight on six days of notice if Jimi Manuwa pulled his bout with Santos because of an injury. The former University of Alabama football player needed to fly to Brazil and make weight in rapid purchase. Plus, he was heading up a weight class for the first time in his profession.
The garbage was a slugfest that earned Battle of the Night honors. Unfortunately, Anders collapsed due to exhaustion when trying to walk back to his corner when the third round finished. The referee immediately known as the fight to give Santos a TKO victory.
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