Ike Villanueva and Vinicius Moreira face off in the main card in a light heavyweight bout at UFC Fight Island 8 on Wednesday at UFC Fight Island in Abu Dhabi.
Ike “Hurricane” Villanueva is probably fighting for his UFC future with this fight. Villanueva overall has a 16-11 record but he has lost two fights in a row. Each of the two losses have come by knockout, and the last one only happened 1:31 seconds into it. Villanueva is averaging 3.14 significant strikes per minute while absorbing 9.00 significant strikes per minute. Villanueva is a pretty simple fighter who is going to keep the fight on the feet and try to trade browns, even though that hasn’t happened yet this year. Villanueva is averaging 0.00 successful takedowns every 15 minutes and 0.0 submission attempts every 15 minutes. Villanueva’s chin has been suspect in his career and in this one he is going to need to take some damage if he wants to come away with the victory.
On the other side of this matchup is Vinicius Moreira comes into this fight with a 9-4 record overall but he is also fighting for his spot going forward in the UFC. After winning his first fight in the UFC he has lost three straight fights. In September of 2019 against Paul Craig he didn’t last long as he got into a bad spot as he was submitted 3:19 into the fight. Moreira is averaging 2.79 significant strikes per minute and 5.34 significant strikes per minute. Moreira wants to get the fight to the ground and he is currently averaging 2.61 successful takedowns every 15 minutes but he is only successful on 18 percent of his takedown attempts.
These are two fighters who really can’t be trusted, but there is no way I am laying -140 with Ike Villanueva. In this game, Vinicius Moreira is going to get the fight to the ground and that will be the difference as he grinds out a victory. Back Moreira +110 on the money line.
AUTHOR: Shane Mickle
