Cesar Almeida -395 v Ihor Potieria

We’ve made a lot of money fading Potieria, and I think we can do it again here.  Potieria’s two wins in the UFC are against a retiring Rua, and a debutant from Russia who looked awful.  He’s been finished in all four of his losses as his gas tank lasts for about a round, and then it vanishes, and we're at high altitude in Salt Lake City so his lack of cardio should be even worse.  He has good power on the feet for the first few minutes, and then his KO power is gone, and he’s ripe to get finished.  Almeida is a kickboxer who has impressed since his fight on Contender Series where he pulled the big upset, and he followed that up with a KO win in his debut, and split decision loss to Kopylov where he was dominated in round one, but really showed heart in skill to almost get the win.  All Almeida has to do is not get knocked out in the first round, and he should cruise to decision win or get the KO when Potieria gets tired.

Tecia Pennington -170 v Carla Esparza

This checks a couple of boxes for me as an automatic fade of Carla Esparza.  This is a Fade The Baby Theory and Retirement Theory for her as she had her first kid a year ago, and she’s coming back for one last fight as this will be her final fight.  It’s interesting, because we faded Pennington in her last fight as she was coming back after having her first baby, and even though we cashed against Tabatha Ricci, Pennington looked great.  Her cardio was on point, striking was good, and in round three she didn’t show signs of slowing down too much, and she landed over 100 strikes in the fight.  The last time we saw Esparza was two years ago when she lost the title to Zhang, and I know Zhang is an all-time great fighter, but Esparza couldn’t get anything going on offense.  She had one moment in the first where she got on top of Zhang for a bit, but Zhang landed heavy shots, and reversed the position and continued to do heavy damage with her striking.  Esparza looked defeated after some striking exchanges, and was quickly finished in the second round.  I can’t see that Esparza is going to have a lot in the tank in this one, It’s Pennington all day for me.