UFC 124 Odds: Georges-St. Pierre vs. Josh Koscheck Betting Preview
by Richard Gardner | Bodog Sportsbook Manager - 12/8/2010
Mixed martial arts fans in Montreal, Canada will be revved up and ready to go this Saturday as UFC 124 hits the Bell Centre. At Bodog’s online sportsbook, we’ll be ready to go too as we expect huge action on this card.
Obviously the headliner of the event is Canadian Georges-St. Pierre, who will take on American Josh Koscheck in a Welterweight Championship bout. This is a rematch of the pair’s UFC 74 battle in August of 2007, which GSP won unanimously.
Already the war of words has begun between the two fighters.
"From the outside, [Koscheck] wants to look like a bully, like a guy who can bully me around," St. Pierre told ESPN.com. "But inside, he is very worried. He's very insecure about himself.
"That's why he acts like this. He tries to insult me, to make me worry. But in reality, he's the one who's worried; he's the one who's nervous too."
Let’s get it on!
As for the betting, we’ve got St. Pierre as the commanding -500 favorite to Koscheck’s +300.
The line for the fight opened with St. Pierre at -450, but heavy action on both the favorite and related parlays moved the line to -525. At this point we saw significant buyback on the underdog Koscheck and decided to move the line to St. Pierre -500, where it currently sits now and is generating two-sided action.
A little betting history for your review:
In the first match between St. Pierre and Koscheck at UFC 74, St Pierre closed as a -240 favorite as he cruised to the aforementioned unanimous decision.
St Pierre is taking his typical role of favorite in this bout. In his previous seven bouts, he’s been the favorite and has gone 7-0 in those fights. The only time he’s been a bigger favorite than he is for UFC 124 was at UFC 111 when he was -625 against British striker Dan Hardy.
Koscheck finds himself in the unfamiliar position of being the underdog in a fight. He hasn’t been an underdog in his last eight fights in the UFC. In fact, the last time he was an underdog was against St Pierre at UFC 74.
There have been two popular betting strategies that we’ve noticed for this fight.
The first one has been to bet Koscheck straight up and try to take advantage of the big odds. The second has been to bet St. Pierre in a parlay with some of the other upcoming championship favorites to increase the payout. For example, a parlay involving St. Pierre (-500 on Saturday), Anderson "The Spider" Silva (-325 in February), and Cain Velasquez (-225 in May) pays +127.
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