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No Bets Barred: Can Brendan Allen or Christian Leroy Duncan make a splash at UFC Vegas 122? artwork

No Bets Barred: Can Brendan Allen or Christian Leroy Duncan make a splash at UFC Vegas 122?

MMA Fighting

October 7, 2026

UFC 332 is in the books, and a card widely maligned for its quality delivered plenty of action. But can the UFC do it against with UFC Vegas 122?

Speakers Jed Meshew

TopicsSportsNewsSports News

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.

Jed Meshew (0:13)

What is up y'all, we are back for another edition of No Bets Barred. That is right, some of you may have been thinking, self, is Jed gonna do this this week? He has a tendency to skip out on the Apex cards, but I am trying my hardest not to. My focus, my goal moving forward is to get one for every card, so long as I can carve out an hour.

I mean more than an hour, because you gotta look at the fights, figure everything out, but we won't spend forever talking about Ufc Vegas 122, but I did want to get an episode out this week, and so here we go to talk about the return to the Apex amid what I believe and what I have argued is a pretty tough run for Ufc, a tough run for myself as well if we're being honest. Another losing week last week.

The underdog shots I took didn't pan out. The favorite shots I took didn't pan out. Only successfully managed one bet last week. So that brings, again, the summer just killed us, right? Like we were actually about even. The summer took it out of us. We are at a minus 1100 for the year. So down 11 units. Gotta pick that up. Just trying to eat into the deficit here as best we can. And actually, this is one of those cards where I think I'm gonna end up having a ton of action. And I don't even like the fights mostly. Like last week we talked about it and I was like, eh, at 332, I think there's an argument to be made about how this is a bad card. And yet I liked some of the fights. I liked the matchups, et cetera. It's just expectation versus delivery. Or what goals you're trying to hit. In this one, there are no high-end goals. I think if you talk to Brendan Allen and Christian Leroy Duncan, they'd even be honest and be like, yeah, no one cares. This is an apex card and a very, very forgettable one. And yet somehow as I was going down the lineup, I felt pretty good. I will say one thing about this card. There certainly are some squash matches and a squash match has been all in the MMA media circle right now, that term. There are still a few big heavy favorites on this card, but not an infinite number of them. A lot of closely lined fights, a couple of straight up pick-ups, which is not something we are going to see all that often, I don't think moving forward, but let us delay no further. Let us get into it. And as we get into it, I want to say right at the top, right out of the gate, no climb this week. For those of you who don't know what the climb is, I will, let me just tell you, it is my life's project at this point. I am attempting to string together 30 consecutive bets of minus 500 or better odds.

We were on a good run and then cratered a few weeks back last week was the reset. We restarted, we had two legs down and we cashed it. So we are two legs up the mountain, we had a successful start to the climb last week as we took, I mean, just quite frankly, we took advantage of all those squash matches, Payne, Talbot, Damien, Penis, Jacoby Smith, all delivering to get us two legs up the mountain.

And I was looking and there is honestly nothing I feel remotely confident in to that extent. In fact, the fight I feel the most confident on would be significantly lower odds. And as such, we're not going to do it, you know, we're just going to straight up play this card and we will look to hopefully continue the climb at Edmonton. I haven't started to look at that one yet. So without further ado, let us get into Ufc Vegas 122, headlined by a middleweight bout between Brendan Allen and Christian Leroy Duncan to top 15 Certainly it might even be top 10 I'm not entirely, I can't, if I was better at my job, I would have that pulled up off the top of my head. Also, of course, there are multiple rankings now. So meta versus media, whatever. The answer is we're getting two guys who are near the top of the 185 pound division fighting for, I don't know what, quite frankly, an opportunity to move up the ladder, basically. But as has been customary, that's where we're going to end today, folks. Don't forget the last few months, I got a lot of feedback. We wanted to start with where the card starts and builds up. And I'm sorry we're doing that because this card starts in the Women's Flyweight Division. Ernesta Caracady takes on Melissa Gatto. As I mentioned, though, straight up pick them. Minus 110s on either side, at least the book I'm using. I won't say that because no free ads, right? Like you guys want to cut a deal, happy to hear it, but no free advertisements ever. Ernesta Caracady coming in, one and two in the promotion. She just lost to Regina Tarrant in February. Gato 500 in the UFC 3-3, coming off a majority decision loss to Diani Barbosa back in April. If I were going to climb this week, I think the over two and a half in this fight is what I would have climbed with. It's probably the one I feel the best about as far as that kind of minus 500 range of things. A couple of others, but I just don't feel very good about it.

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