Andrew Sanchez (+135) Vs. Bruno Silva (-160)

Straight up, this week’s pick is kind of a weird one.

The pick is Andrew Sanchez.

What makes it weird are the odds. The odds, I guess you could say, are a little odd: Silva has had only one fight in the UFC and it was against Wellington Turman, who in his last fight before that one lost to none other than Andrew Sanchez. So Silva’s only common opponent with Sanchez is also Silva’s only UFC fight. How did those fights go? Well, Sanchez knocked Turman out in the first round with three heavy right hands; Silva knocked Turman out slightly later in their first round, with short choppy ground punches from Turman’s full guard. As far as the body of the fights themselves, Sanchez mostly out-struck Turman on the feet, while Silva spent most of his fight trying to scrape Turman off of his back before escaping out the back door to take top position, leading to his finish.

The Sanchez fight with Turman was more dominant; the Silva fight with Turman was more equal with a bit of randomness to the ending. Sanchez has had nine UFC fights for a 5–4 UFC record, beating Khalil Rountree and losing to Anthony Smith and Marvin Vettori along the way. Silva, on the other hand, has had exactly one UFC fight, in which he beat a middling opponent after back-and-forth action.

So why on earth is Silva the favorite?

Andrew Sanchez is a tough fighter. I like his movement — almost karate-style, bladed stance, bouncy feet, lot’s of in-and-outs. He has a good jab. Good wrestling. He trains out of Tristar with Firas Zahabi, so it makes sense that he’s something of a very, very poor man’s Georges St. Pierre. The problem with Sanchez is that he gets hit way too much — so even though his chin is not bad, he has still been knocked out at least three or four times. Most of Silva’s wins have come by knockout, so that probably explains why Sanchez is an underdog here (although one odds site I found actually had him as a slight favorite).

But Silva didn’t get his knockouts (excepting the last one) against UFC-level competition. And he doesn’t look to me like some kind of monstrous puncher, either; he looks like a competent, somewhat unremarkable fighter with good-but-not-great overall skills.

Not enough tape exists on Silva in truly high-level fights for me to feel confident using the sort of creative-intuition that I would normally rely on when researching a fight and making a pick. But I like Sanchez’ movement versus a certain stiffness I may have detected in Silva; I like his camp and his far superior experience, given that these fighters are roughly the same age; and I like the odds.

This one is more of a value pick — not a lock. Let’s see how it goes.

OKP to the moon.