Breaking down odds for possible McGregor-Mendes fight
— -- Although Conor McGregor vs. Jose Aldo at UFC 189 had fans fired up, Aldo was forced to withdraw due to injury.
Chad Mendes replaces Aldo, pitting the No. 3 ranked McGregor against two-time former title challenger and No. 1 ranked Featherweight Mendes. The betting odds are as tight as the margin of error for both men.
Let's break down the opening odds and potential early pick on the fight.
Breaking down the odds
Oddsmaker Nick Kalikas of MMAOddsbreaker.com released the opening odds that have set the initial market price for the matchup. Mendes opened a minus-130 favorite, with the comeback on underdog McGregor at plus-100. The lines are practically a pick 'em, and nearly identical to the McGregor-Aldo odds before the injury was announced. The initial pairing saw McGregor as just a slight underdog, but the lines flipped soon after the rib injury was revealed. Currently, McGregor is a minus-140 favorite over Aldo, who is now plus-120.
The McGregor-Aldo matchup had so much buzz when it was first announced that oddsmakers released three separate early betting lines that factored in whether the fight would be held in Brazil, Ireland, or the U.S. Las Vegas won out on the location, and markets stabilized the betting lines with McGregor as a slight underdog for the first time in his UFC career.
But that obviously changed with the Aldo injury announcement, and now the biggest development is not just that McGregor may face a new opponent, but that the matchup is a completely different stylistic pairing. Instead of two skilled strikers facing off, a Mendes matchup means we are bound to see a striker-wrestler fight.
The performance stats
These performance stats demonstrate the huge difference in fighting styles and strengths. McGregor has nearly a clean-sweep of all striking metrics in addition to the traditional anthropometrics of age, reach, and stance. McGregor is younger, longer, and a southpaw, which compound his superior striking metrics that reveal a dominant pace, exceptional accuracy and defensive avoidance, and also clear knockdown power. In fact, the only striking metric that favors Mendes is jab accuracy, partly because McGregor is a power striker who rarely uses his jab, and partly because Mendes has a reserved pace, relying on counters that lead to higher accuracy. However, with the extreme reach differential of eight inches, Mendes is unlikely to utilize his jab very much. Closing the distance for him will be much more about wrestling than striking. And yet that is quite a distance to overcome. Only three Featherweight fights have seen a reach differential of more than eight inches, and the longer man took two out of three of those fights.
On the mat is where Mendes has been dominant. He attempts takedowns at twice the usual rate, lands them with high success, and has never been taken down himself. He clearly wants to use his wrestling to expose any holes in McGregor's game that we haven't seen yet. And that's the critical aspect of this matchup: Can Mendes take McGregor down? McGregor has only faced five opponent takedown attempts, and he's never been taken down. Yet that has remained the big criticism for McGregor: That he hasn't faced any strong wrestlers through his dominant win streak to a title shot. Mendes will be the first real test of McGregor's wrestling. However, it's worth noting that both of Mendes's losses have come against Aldo, who had superior striking and was able to stay off of his back against Mendes. That will be McGregor's game plan, no doubt.
The first round could be very revealing. McGregor will surely want to keep his distance, firing long-range attacks with quick retreats to stay on the outside. McGregor's striking is clearly superior to Mendes's, but we simply don't know if McGregor can be put on his back and kept there. This will be a very strategic fight, should it actually happen, and action will likely be heavy on both sides of the betting lines as fans make their predictions.