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I can promise you one thing.  You're gonna get a better return betting this event than the UFC is getting in gate receipts for this fight.  Good lord. 

Apologies for the lack of fancy pictures and informative graphs.  Deadline approached quickly and time has been an expensive commodity lately.  Rest assured that this post will be updated with the appropriate bells-and-whistle later on in the day. 

On to the degeneracy...

Lyoto Machida vs. Mauricio Rua

Mauricio Rua's got it rough.  After spending four years as Wanderlei Silva's understudy in Pride, he jumps over to the UFC, hurts his knee, gets beat by overachieving goofball Forrest Griffin, has not one, but two reconstructive surgeries on his knee, looks less than impressive against a 44 year old decrepit old man, redeems himself against Chuck Liddell, and now finds the buzzsaw known as Lyoto Machida standing between him and light heavyweight glory.  That's a career bad beat for you.

Hopefully, Shogun doesn't take advice from UFC ringleader Dana White.  White characterized this fight as being between two of the best strikers at 205, guys who like to stand and bang.  Shogun isn't a bad striker by any means, but he's not on an elite level like Lyoto Machida, and it certainly isn't the best part of his game.  Rua takes too many strikes to succeed in a firefight with Machida.

We just have to look back to June of 2005 when Shogun fought Antonio Rogerio Nogueira during Pride's middleweight Grand Prix.  While the fight is an absolute classic, Nogueira floored Shogun with a beautiful right hook in the first round and used his superior boxing skills to punish Rua throughout the fight.  Shogun won the fight with his wrestling and top game, in addition to flooring Nogueira late in the fight.  Keep in mind, this is prime, pre-injury Shogun we're talking about as well.

If you watch Shogun defend a strike, you'll notice this: his first instinct is to cover his face with both arms.  There's two problems with this.  One, the lack of padding on the gloves makes it difficult to fortify yourself from attack; and, two, it's much easier to counter when you've dodged the attack and thrown your opponent off balance.

One talking point I hear from Shogun proponents surrounds Machida's ground game.  Without getting into detail, I don't think Machida will be in any danger if he gets put on his back.  However, the entire argument is moot.  I won't go so far as to say that Shogun will fail to take Machida down at any point in the fight, but I will say that the fight will be contested on the floor with Shogun on top for a very insignificant amount of time, if at all.

I don't feel the need to break down Machida's game in great detail.  I've done it in plenty of prior Spotlights, and the rest of the team at Bloody Elbow has lent plenty of their own superlatives as well.  Not only does he not get hit, but it's hard to put your hands on him in any sense.  Say what you will about the 2008 fused back version of Tito Ortiz, but Ortiz failed on all five of his takedown attempts during his bout with Machida at UFC 84 (per FightMetric).  That's an impressive piece of data no matter how you swing it. 

While I see the outcome of this fight being extremely lopsided for Machida, I do expect the bout to remain competitive to a degree.  Shogun, freak injuries aside, is a durable fighter.  If Machida finishes, I would be surprised if it came in the first 12.5 minutes of the fight.

But I do see it as a lopsided fight in any event.  For Shogun to win, I feel like we'll have to see some new facet to his game or a hole in Machida's game that we have not previously seen.  Machida will be able to do what he's done in every fight - make his opponent miss and capitalize on mistakes.  To be successful, Shogun will have to go through with the grueling process of grabbing Lyoto, bringing him to the ground, and then beating him up for three of five rounds (or hit a flash submission).

The money train left the station after the Evans fight (and by the way, I told you so, Cofield), but I still think you can be profitable with Machida under -450.  I like a multiunit play around -400 and would hold off if the line hits -500.

You know you're on the right side of a line when bar stool pundits start making statements like, "I'd take Rothwell if I were a betting man.  That experience is going to come into play."

One would be best served to ignore any advice served with such unmeasurable intangibles like grit, clutchness, and experience.  If a fighter has an edge over another fighter, there will be more obvious and measurable characteristics.

But since the issue has been strewn about, let's nip it in the bud right now.  Rothwell has more fights on his ledger than Velasquez (36 to 6); there's no doubting that.  But run through the lineup and pick out Rothwell's best wins.  Split decision over Kimbo slicer Roy Nelson.  Decision over Fat Ricco.  Two KO's of blown up light heavyweight Krzysztof Soszynski.  Submission over journeyman posterchild Travis Fulton.

But hey, that's not to say that Rothwell hasn't fought his fair share of top level guys.  Just take a look at his loss column.  Andrei Arlovski.  Tim Sylvia.  Mike Whitehead.  Ibragim Magomedov.  Dan Christison.  Carlos Barreto. Remember the Carlos Barreto UFC title run?  Me too.

And while Rothwell has been overvalued as a result of shaky logical foundations, Cain Velasquez has been undervalued for a perceived disappointing performance in his last fight against Cheick Kongo.  How a fighter (and a blue chip, 25 year old propect with five fights at that) can so thoroughly dominate a fight and still have his performance labeled underwhelming or overhyped is beyond me.

Sure, Cheick Kongo exposed some holes in Cain's standup game.  Namely, Cain needs to keep his stationary hand up when he punches and shouldn't be so willing to stand with lengthy strikers with power.  Still, Cain is 25 years old and has been showered with admiration for his dedication and work ethic.  Those traits, plus training with a top camp like AKA, suggest that these are not mistakes that will be so easily exploited in the future.

With that said, Velasquez looks like the real deal.  His fight with Denis Stojnic may have been a mismatch from the outset, but you can see how seamlessly Cain blends the various faces of MMA together.  The fluidity of his combinations especially impressed me.  This is not what you expect from a 25 year old wrestlers six fights into their MMA career.  The only future hiccup I see for Velasquez is the 265 pound roadblocks in the division.  Though, outside of Lesnar and to an extent Carwin, I'm not sure how many fighters have the necessary skills and athleticism to give Velasquez fits.

All told, I see Rothwell being on a similar level as Kongo, with more size and a better ground game to Cheick's athleticism and kickboxing advantages.  While I expect the final result to remain the same, styles do make fights and Ccain will have a stiffer challenge here.  He won't be able to ragdoll Rothwell and unleash nine million hammerfists like he did with Kongo.  I still expect Cain to dominate the fight from top control while utilizing the entirety of of his MMA game.  I like Cain for a unit around -350 and stop playing him above -400.

Gleison Tibau vs. Josh Neer

Did the nerdy MMA linesmaker wake up in his mom's basement, check out Tibau's Fight Finder, and stop at the Guillard "loss"?  And Neer, who moonlights as a dumber, 155 pound, poor man's Chris Lytle, just got controlled for 3 rounds by Kurt Pellegrino.  So why exactly did Neer open up so close to even?

Tibau has his faults for sure, but I don't see how he matches up poorly with Neer.  Neer's fun to watch with the go-foward style, but it's not an effective way to fight.  Expect Tibau to sail on top control.  I like a sizable multi-unit play on Tibau.

Anthony Johnson vs. Yoshiyuki Yoshida

I love Japanese imports fighting in the UFC, have a huge soft spot for them.  Unfortunately for Zenko, Johnson is a horse at 170.  Luigi Fioravanti and Rich Clementi were both small at 170, but Johnson absolutely dwarfed them.

And while Clementi showed that you can beat Johnson without the size, I think Rumble's shored up the conditioning problems that led to that loss.  Yoshida will always have a place in my heart for choking out Jon Koppenhaver, but this seems set up for a highlight Rumble KO.  If you can get the non-Bodog line, reach out and grab it.

Joe Stevenson vs. Spencer Fisher

It's always dangerous to draw conclusions about a guy from a single fight, but I really like what I saw in Stevenson's last fight with Nate Diaz, his first after beginning training at the Jackson camp.  While Fisher continues to grind away at the Miletich camp, Stevenson's sharpening his skills with some of the elite guys in the sport.  Most notably, Stevenson seemed to have greater focus and ability to follow a gameplan in the Diaz fight.  That said, I don't like a play on either side.