Last week we placed a one unit bet on Teofimo Lopez even though we didn’t expect him to win. It seemed like a risk worth taking. And he won. At this point it almost looks like we know what we’re doing:
Boxing Betting Annualized Rate of Return (since 9/17/20): 405.00%
Mutual Funds Annualized Rate of Return (since 9/17/20): 28.88%
Now, there is no shortage of underdog plays available to us in any given week. It may seem like the right thing to place small bets on long odds every time out. When you win it feels like hitting a scratch-off lottery ticket. But people generally don’t keep track of how much they are spending on losing scratch-off tickets, and it’s almost certainly a losing proposition over the long haul. We’re unfortunately broadcasting our losing picks for our entire readership to see. And we don’t want to look bad in front of those two people.
I mention all of this because the Showtime card this Saturday provides us with three bouts that we want to bet. It feels like the prudent thing would be to bet some favorites. But we’ve looked over the fights and we’re going with some underdog plays again. We don’t expect this to become a habit, but we still haven’t done this long enough to understand the greater landscape. So here goes nothing.
The first fight we’ll look at is the opener, Malik Hawkins vs Subriel Matias. Hawkins comes in as a -155 betting favorite. He will enjoy a height and reach advantage here as he does in most of his fights. But he’s not the kind of fighter that utilizes his dimensions. He’d rather stay in range and try to outwork you. We don’t really know much about his chin at this stage of his career but it will need to be good for him to have success with his style. He doesn’t possess one punch knockout power but rather relies on combination volume punching. In his last fight against Darwin Price, he looked to be on his way to his first defeat when Price blew his knee out and couldn’t continue. But Price was a poor style matchup for Hawkins and was able to control range with his feet and jab. Hawkins won’t have to deal with that against Matias. If this fight had taken place last year, Matias would almost certainly have come into it as the comfortable favorite. He was starting to gain some momentum and earned a showcase on the Tyson Fury-Deontay Wilder undercard in February of this year against Petros Ananyan, a +2070 underdog. He came out flat and was dropped and hurt and lost a close decision in a good scrap. The question for us is whether Matias was overconfident or under conditioned or suffering the psychological effects of competing in a bout in July 2019 that resulted in the death of his opponent, Maxim Dadashev. We don’t know. But we know that like Malik Hawkins, Matias likes to work on the inside and try to grind you down. We could be in for a very good battle here. We think Matias has more pop and will be highly motivated on Saturday.
$35 on Subriel Matias at +135
The next fight we’ll look at is the crossroads matchup of Xavier Martinez vs Claudio Marrero. Martinez is the young house fighter taking a substantial step up. He’s also a massive favorite, much to our surprise. It’s not that we don’t think Martinez is a good fighter, he does look like he has real potential. But he’s just 22 years old and has never been beyond 6 rounds. He’s scheduled to go 12 here against a seasoned veteran that has seen a lot. Martinez won his last fight in 21 seconds in highlight reel fashion. But while we don’t want to disparage Jessie Cris Rosales, we have to admit that he’s rather knockoutable. We don’t yet know what Martinez’s ceiling will be. He may well be ready for this step up, but we don’t understand why he’s a -948 favorite. Marrero has 137 rounds of professional experience to Martinez’s 41. He’s also defeated several fighters who are better than anyone Martinez has ever faced, and by devastating knockout in some cases. Yes, Marrero has been beaten. But he’s been beaten by fighters at the highest level, most recently Kid Galahad and Tugstsogt Nyambayar. Marrero will give you plenty of opportunities to land on him, but he’s dangerous. And we don’t think he’s washed by any measure. We established from the very beginning that we’d probably never bet massive underdogs because it just doesn’t seem like it can be a winning strategy over the long term. And we just reiterated it a couple of paragraphs above this. But…
$11 on Claudio Marrero at +610
The last fight we’re betting this week is the main event on Saturday, Sergey Lipinets vs Custio Clayton. Clayton is a late replacement for Kudratillo Abdukakharov, which may benefit him here. This is the biggest fight of his career, on the biggest stage he’s fought on. He’s a sculpted specimen but doesn’t really fight like you think he might. We haven’t seen a whole lot of him but he’ll use the jab and look for spots to come forward. Lipinets will likely be more aggressive. We think this will be a close fight to complete a very competitive card from top to bottom. But we like Lipinets to win this one.
$47 on Sergey Lipinets at -200