The main event at UFC 246 features the return of Conor McGregor as he takes on Donald Cerrone in a welterweight matchup. With McGregor a heavy favorite, does Cerrone have a bettor’s chance?
Short answer: no. Despite the fact that Cerrone has been active and shown well against younger fighters like Mike Perry, Alexander Hernandez and Al Iaquinta, he likely will be stopped by McGregor.
In his last two outings, Cerrone fell to Tony Ferguson via doctor stoppage (recall he blew his nose which caused his eyes to close) and a KO to Justin Gaethje in September. Certainly losing to Ferguson and Gaethje are not to be frowned upon. It does question how Cerrone is holding up after years of training camp after training camp without much rest.
Cerrone is put in a bad spot here. He is expected to put on a good show, but lose to McGregor. If he defeats McGregor, Cerrone is in a logjam at welterweight as its not likely he’d get a shot at Jorge Masvidal or Kamaru Usman. Even if he did, he’d be an underdog against those two bigger welterweights. Similarly, he’d be blocked at lightweight as he’d have lost to Ferguson and Gaethje. Two fighters that likely stand in line for Khabib.
Everyone is wondering what type of McGregor we will see in the Octagon and if he has lost any luster since his loss to Khabib Nurmogomedov at UFC 229. At this point, it looks like that McGregor is happy and training has been going well with this fight. He hasn’t been drawn out due to weight-cutting since his walk-around weight is round the 170 pound limit.
Although Cerrone is a tough fighter, we saw in the Gaethje fight that he is susceptible to a huge right. In this case, McGregor packs a big left hand.
At a 3-1 underdog with most betting establishments, it might seem wise to side with the Cowboy. But, if you were to make any bet it should be what round this fight will end rather than who will win.
For this reason, MPO believes that the main event pick is Conor McGregor via TKO in round 2. The first round will be a feeling out process and then we will see McGregor use his speed to set up a left hand.
The pathway for Cerrone to win is to keep active and use his kicks to wear down McGregor so that the fight goes into the 4th and 5th rounds. This would be a test of McGregor’s cardio which has been suspect in the past.
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