MMA ODDS AND ENDS FOR THURSDAY: TWO INJURY REPLACEMENT BOUTS ANNOUNCED
Another day, yet another accident — in actuality, this time there were two. For the current MMA Odds and Ends, I’ll list the 2 fights that were altered and give my thoughts on each of these. Mark Eddiva vs. Levan Makashvili, UFC Fight Night 66 Alex White has been forced to pull out of his fight with Mark Eddiva at UFC Fight Night 66, and Levan Makashvili will now take on Eddiva on extremely short notice as the card happens May 16 at Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay, Philippines. Eddiva is 1-1 at the UFC with a surprise decision win over Jumabieke Tuerxun along with a TKO loss to Kevin Souza. He has actually outperformed expectations within the Octagon and general is a pretty good grinder that can bang a bit. Makashvili, meanwhile, is still a grinder-type who is making his UFC debut. He was supposed to combat Nik Lentz back in UFC Fight Night 60, but the fight was cancelled at the last minute when Lentz got ill. This is a difficult one to predict. I’d assert Makashvili is the better fighter and the greater prospect of the pair, but Eddiva gets the UFC experience and he will be fighting in his home country of Manila here. Eddiva is not the type of fighter who will get much respect from the gambling public, but he’s pretty strong and I think he sets up a fantastic struggle against Makashvili. I’d anticipate a close line with this one having a small lean towards Makashvili because he’s got a little more hype surrounding himbut it’s a fight I believe can go either way. Jake Collier vs. Ricardo Abreu, UFC Fight Night 68 Because of an accident to Daniel Sarafian, Ricardo Abreu needed a new opponent and the UFC called upon Jake Collier to combat him UFC Fight Night 68, which takes place June 6 at Smoothie King Center at New Orleans, Louisiana. Collier is 0-1 in the UFC with a first-round knockout loss to Vitor Miranda in his introduction. He had been doing really well in the struggle and then in the end of this initial circular faded badly and compensated for it using a KO defeat. Abreu, on the other hand, is undefeated at 5-0 in his profession and conquered Wagner Silva via entry in his UFC debut. On the other hand, the struggle was a year ago and that he has not fought because, so he’ll presumably have some ring rust going into this one. That is another tough one. I believe Collier is the better fighter of the two, however he’s not someone to be trusted with your hard-earned money after we watched what happened in his UFC debut. I really don’t think Abreu is like his record suggests, but he’s a fantastic chance of picking up a win in this fight. It is a close one, though, one which may go either way, and that I hope the line to signify that.