UFC Fight Night Santos vs. Hill Preview, Odds, Prediction

The UFC Fight Night Santos vs. Hill, or the UFC on ESPN 40 as some call it, brings the lightweight bout between the former challenger, Thiago Santos, and Jamahal Hill. The two guys are entering this event with the same goal, a win, but for different purposes. While Santos wants to stay among the best in the division, Hill wants to make a breakthrough deep into the top ten light heavyweight fighters. The odds are favoring the American, yet that won’t discourage the veteran Brazilian.

Preview

Thiago Santos (22-10) (+225) lost three of his last four fights after an unsuccessful title attack against Jon Jones. Santos’ career was on the decline after a painful defeat against Jones, which he didn’t deserve.

He was submitted by the latter champion, Glover Teixeira, then lost to Aleksandar Rakic via unanimous decision, bouncing back vs. Johnny Walker before losing to Magomed Ankalaev in his last trip to the octagon. All these bouts were decided via unanimous decision. Santos still feels the consequences of the title fight with Jones. After that split decision loss, he had to take several surgeries on both of his knees and legs to repair the damage, and as we see, he never fully recovered.

Santos is still very strong when it comes to punching and kicking, but his footwork is limited, and his movement isn’t as fast as before. Also, his whole body mechanic had to change, which is why he lost explosiveness. Santos isn’t that gifted on the ground, and we saw that even Rakic managed to beat him on the mat.

Jamahal Hill (10-1-1) (-275) is the no.10 in the division, and he aims to jump at least two places higher following this event. In order to do so, the American needs to post a win, if possible via finish which would boost his stocks massively.

The American comes of back-to-back victories, both of them after first-round knockouts, one against Jimmy Crute and the other against Johnny Walker. He was pretty impressive in both of these events, and this was a perfect way to cover up his defeat against Paul Craig, which is his only failure in MMA so far.

Hill holds wins over Ovince Saint Preux, Dequan Townsend, and Darko Stosic, and he defeated Klidson Abreu. Still, he was later found positive on marijuana, and that one was declared a no contest. He is very aggressive in the octagon but knows when to start or stop pushing hard. Hill mostly relies upon hard punches and kicks, and he isn’t very dominant on the mat.

Prediction

First of all, we need to say that Santos’ experience goes beyond anything that Hill has experienced so far. Second, the Brazilian’s rivals in the past several fights were all superb fighters, the elite of the division – Jones and Teixeira, two champions, Rakic and Ankalaev, two bound-to-be-challengers. We can’t see why he is such an underdog here, with the odds being incredibly underestimating. With all due respect to Hill, we are sure that he hadn’t faced a guy like Santos in his career, despite the Marreta being “crippled,” as some might say.

Pick: Santos wins +225