Friday night, 1 AM.  You've just stumbled back home from a nine keg party.  That cute girl with the Fugazi t-shirt told you to politely shove off.  Your car's been dead for two weeks, and you had to walk home in a down pour.  You're starving and the only food in your house is a single slice of pizza from last night. 

So, before you and your depressing excuse for a life hops on to your off-shore book of choice with the last $100 you have to your name, check out this gambling analysis for UFC 102.  Maybe we'll turn that $100 to $110!

Without knowing anything else about either fighter, it's particularly interesting that as we head into UFC 102, we're not concerned about whether the 46 year old combatant has hit the proverbial wall.  Instead, the 33 year old standing across from him bears the brunt of questions about his future in the sport.

And yet, I find myself standing on the other side of the general opinion with regard to both men.  First, Couture.  I certainly don't believe that Randy is done as a fighter.  Even in the Lesnar fight, he showed me enough to convince me that he can remain competitive against the shallow talent pool of non-Fedor heavyweights in the world.  However, where I diverge from popular opinion is the mythical nature of Couture as some sort of nigh supernatural being.  The idea that one should "never bet against Randy Couture" continues to reign as an overused cliche that should have been slain by Brock Lesnar at UFC 91.

The unfortunate fact is that the man is 46 years of age.  Very few athletes remain competitive after 40, let alone 45.  At some point age will catch up with him, although predicting that phenomenon has shown to be more difficult than throwing darts blindfolded.

Meanwhile, everyone and their grandmother wants to peg "Minotauro" Nogueira as shot and a shell of his former self after an embarrassingly one-sided loss to Frank Mir at UFC 92.  Mir not only knocked down the Brazilian three times, but became the first man to finish him - a fate that not even the great Fedor Emelianenko could reproduce in two attempts.

Of course, all events can be explained and this one is no different.  Everyone from Nogueira to Ed Soares to Dana White himself corroborates the story of Nogueira dealing with some combination of illness (staph infection) and injury (to the knee).  Further, his weigh-in weight of 246 is well above his optimal fight weight, and visually it was clear he hadn't been able to put in a great camp.

Nogueira detractors will continue their analysis and cite the Sylvia and third Herring fights as evidence of Nog's steep decline.  Dealing with Sylvia first, I'm not sure what exactly people expected to see in that fight.  The 6'8" dude with the long reach beat up the 6'3" guy with questionable striking defense before being submitted in round three.  Pretty vintage Nogueira.

The Herring fight in particular infuriates me to no end.  I've probably watched this fight more than any other as I make sure I'm not crazy when I hear someone spout the idea that Nogueira "looked terrible."  Here's a fun exercise to try out.  Erase the last 40 seconds of round one.  Pretend like it didn't happen.  Now, I want you to try to tell me how this fight isn't completely dominated by Nogueira bell-to-bell.  And if you don't feel like tracking it down, just look at this.  I'm not too psyched on being Heath Herring in that picture.

Now that I've gotten that lengthy rant out of the way, how does the fight break down?  At striking distance, I think it's a fairly even affair.  Both have fairly clean footwork, though Randy does a better job protecting his face both with head movement and hand position.  Nogueira does a poor job of moving anywhere but straight back and keeps his hands too low.  However, I believe he has better striking technique, and he'll have a 2-3" reach buffer where he can pump a fairly effective jab.

The interesting aspect of the fight, and what I suspect will be the meat of the action, will revolve around the clinch and the ground game.  Couture likes to press the idea of "imposing your will" on his opponent and take them out of their comfort zone.  Consequently, Couture's modus operandi of shove-opponent-against-fence-and-punch will take all but the most masochistic fighters out of their comfort zone.  Nogueira doesn't throw with KO power and does not move well laterally, giving Couture little reason not to charge forward and pin him up against the fence whenever he feels like.

If Couture can hold that position for 15 minutes, he'll coast to a relatively effortless decision.  However, I expect it to hit the ground for at least one lengthy period of time where we'll enter into a very interesting counterintuitive dichotomy.  Couture, in the past, has shown susceptibility to submissions.  Granted those fights were all over 8 years ago, but he hasn't exactly fought a murderer's row of submission artists in the time since.  On the other hand, considering Nogueira's reputation as the best BJJ heavyweight, he hasn't been especially prolific against the elite of the division with Tim Sylvia, Mirko Filipovic, and Heath Herring being the top names he's submitted over the past 5+ years.  Not exactly the vanguards of submission defense and avoidance.

Given their styles, strengths and weaknesses, and the caveats of old age and unwarranted accusations of being done, I feel like the current well-adjusted line doesn't offer much value either way.  All things being equal, I think Couture's style provides for a particular challenge for Nogueira which makes him the favorite in the fight.  I do see this as a close grind of a battle, however, and if I see the Nogueira line trend back past +190, I might make a small play on it.

After watching Keith Jardine videos this week, I bluntly asked Bloody Elbow dictator Luke Thomas to explain to me how Keith Jardine has remained competitive at the elite level of mixed martial arts.  I didn't mean it as anything against Jardine, I was just trying to piece together the facts.  He doesn't have a strong wrestling game, his striking technique is whacked to hell, and I have few good things to say about his footwork.  As much as I hate the term, Jardine's seemingly made his career by being a grinder, making up for a deficiency in talent with a strong work ethic, a big heart, and a sense of fearlessness.

Thiago Silva, meanwhile, comes off a fight in which he was completely outclassed by current light heavyweight champ Lyoto Machida.  He has a fairly well-rounded game with an aggressive forward attack mentality.  Unfortunately, he's only fought mid-level fighters outside of Machida, which makes it difficult to properly place him within that wide gap of talent.

We have two "X factors" at play here.  1)  Greg Jackson and the rest of Jardine's camp should have little trouble conjuring up a capable gameplan for someone who fights as predictably as Thiago Silva.  2)  Keith Jardine may get ambushed like he did against Houston Alexander and Wanderlei Silva.

At the current line, I like a small play on Jardine.  Greg Jackson's seen him get mauled twice now, and I think they will try to take every precaution to prevent that happening a third time.  I like Silva at a line near +200, as I think he has enough oomph to put down Jardine.

As a quick aside, if Nate Marquardt was black, everyone would be going nuts about him being athletic and explosive.  Just saying.

I've waffled on this fight quite a bit.  I hit Marquardt near the line open at -135.  I may end up hedging before fight time.  Nate does a couple of things that, to put it bluntly, scare the shit out of me.  First, his footwork gets sloppy at times, and he ends up with his feet too close together standing fairly straight up.  A guy like Maia who likes to constantly press for trips and sweeps will have an opportunity to drag Marquardt down.

Second, Nate makes a really critical error when he shoots a single.  As seen in this picture, proper technique has the shooter's head inside his opponent's hip to avoid the guillotine.  Nate shoots with his head outside, and got caught in a guillotine in his last fight with Wilson Gouveia.

These examples highlight Nate's tendency to get wild and sacrifice technique for aggression.

At the same time, with Wanderlei Silva teaching him how to strike, Maia's shown a tendency to leave himself open when he throws which would be a tremendous mistake against someone who hits as hard as Marquardt.  In addition, Maia's go-to defense is to cover his head, which is a dangerous game with small MMA gloves.  Still, the aggression serves him well as it sets up his takedowns, I would just like to see him tighten up his technique instead of leaving himself wide open.

The big unknown is how Maia handles taking significant punishment.  If he has a prime Nog ability to absorb and recover from punishment, I like his chances of finding an opportunity lock on a submission.  Nate will put his chin to test as he hits hard.

I think the current line is well set, though I think about hitting Maia for a small play after +165.

Jake Rosholt may go down as the quintessential example of how not to groom your prospect.  I think the Team Takedown model can work, but only if you're willing to take a loss while the prospect is groomed.  Unfortunately, Rosholt gets thrown into the UFC with five fights on his resume in order to recoup the money invested in him.  More unfortunately, I think this is an awful matchup for him.  Nissen Osterneck lit him up on the feet before being GNP'd out.  If he allows Leben free reign on his face, it'll be a short night.  I think Rosholt will have a hard time finishing the iron jawed Crippler, and because of that I like a 1-2u play on Leben.

This fight is another example of why MMA betting can be so profitable as both guys opened at -115.  Vera should be a pretty heavy favorite, and I think you can still find value here.  I think Soszynski's being overvalued after being on a handful of scrubs, and Vera's still dealing with looking "unimpressive" at 205.  He certainly looked sluggish against Reese Andy, but I thought he looked more or less like Brandon Vera with Jardine (a fight that could have gone either way or been scored a draw) and Mike Patt.  Soszynski hasn't beat anyone near the level of Vera, and I have a hard time seeing how he does it here.  I like Vera for a unit.