Sean Brady returned to the win column in a major way at UFC 328.
The No. 6-ranked welterweight contender dominated Joaquin Buckley for 15 minutes to send a message to the rest of the 170-pound division that he is still a threat to the title.
Brady, 33, had been closing in on a title shot before he was knocked out by Michael Morales at UFC 322 in November. Prior to that, he had gone 18-1 in the sport and was coming off a submission win over former champ Leon Edwards.
Buckley, the No. 9 contender in the division, was coming off a loss to former longtime titleholder Kamaru Usman in which he was outwrestled for nearly the entire 25-minute Fight Night main event last June.
Brady was able to replicate Usman’s ground dominance against Buckley and then some, landing four takedowns and 245 total strikes compared to only 21 for Buckley.
The impressive performance wasn’t the only storyline of this matchup, though, as some suspicious betting line movement in the lead-up to the fight garnered attention from members of both the combat sports and sports betting communities earlier in the day.
Brady had opened as roughly a -180 favourite at most sportsbooks when the matchup was announced, and after some slight adjusting, Brady was still a -150 favourite at the beginning of the week.
However, on Saturday afternoon in the hours leading up to the event at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., the odds began to drastically flip in Buckley’s direction.
The option to wager on the matchup was even removed from multiple sportsbooks entirely, and others removed prop bet options prior to the event starting, as Buckley’s odds to win swung to as short as -250 on some books.
It should be noted that there can be many explanations for a steep shift in odds, and just because it happens doesn’t mean anything nefarious has taken place.
However, this is not the first time in recent UFC history that there has been an instance of a dramatic fight-day shift in betting odds.
Earlier this year, ahead of UFC 324 in January, a scheduled lightweight bout between Alexander Hernandez and Michael Johnson was cancelled on the day of the fight due to irregular betting activities.
There was a dramatic shift in odds towards Johnson in the hours before that event, and the bout was called off once it was flagged by a gaming integrity service that monitors UFC and other sporting events. Hernandez released a statement denying any knowledge of the situation, and he returned to action in a different matchup in April.
Back in November at a UFC Fight Night event in Las Vegas, Isaac Dulgarian’s loss to Yadier del Valle opened a serious can of worms within the MMA and sports betting worlds.
Suspicious betting activity ahead of the fight tainted the result and led to many questions and eventually an FBI investigation.
Dulgarian had been hovering at around a -250 betting favourite in the days leading up to the fight, but a surge of wagers in the hour or so before the fight itself caused significant and suspicious line movement. Dulgarian’s odds fell dramatically, and many of the wagers coming in were specifically for del Valle to win in the first round, which is what happened.
The FBI investigation remains ongoing. Dulgarian was temporarily suspended by the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) and released by the UFC.
In 2022, featherweight fighter Darrick Minner and his coach James Krause were involved in a controversy when a dramatic pre-fight shift in betting odds preceded a curious 67-second Minner loss to Shayilan Nuerdanbieke.
Minner and Krause were excommunicated from the UFC. Krause had his licence suspended by the NSAC, and the UFC announced that “fighters who choose to continue to be coached by Krause or who continue to train in his gym will not be permitted to participate in UFC events.”
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