Volkanovski vs Holloway betting tips & predictions – UFC 276

Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway will meet for the third time this Saturday night with the UFC Featherweight Championship on the line. Here’s a preview and prediction for this highly anticipated co-main event title fight leading up to Israel Adesanya vs Jared Cannonier in the main event of UFC 276 in Las Vegas.

Volkanovski vs Holloway preview, records & stats

Alexander Volkanovski (24-1-0) cruised to a fairly easy knockout win against Chan Sung Jung in his last UFC Featherweight title defence at UFC 273. Volkanovski is a perfect 21-0-0 over his last 21 fights including an undefeated 11-0-0 record since joining the UFC in 2016. Volkanovski defeated Max Holloway to win the featherweight championship at UFC 245 in December of 2019 and has since successfully defended it three times against Holloway, Brian Ortega and Sung Jung.

Max Holloway (23-6-0) has bounced back from his back-to-back losses to Volkanovski with a pair of dominant decision wins over Calvin Kattar and Yair Rodriguez. Holloway won Fight of the Night honours in both of those bouts and set multiple UFC records in his win over Kattar including the most strikes landed in a single bout in UFC history with 447. Since 2014, Holloway is 16-0 as a featherweight against all opponents besides Volkanovski.

Volkanovski vs Holloway betting predictions

The first bout between these two featherweight greats was a decisive win in Alexander Volkanovski’s favour. The second fight was far less decisive, with many people believing that Max Holloway did enough to defeat Volkanovski and the judges coming back with a split decision. Holloway dominated the first two rounds of that fight before Volkanovski turned the tides in the final three rounds.

Can Holloway recapture the success he had early at UFC 251 and carry it into a five-round effort? Or was Volkanovski’s ability to withstand that attack and turn things in his favour an indication that the champion can handle Holloway’s best shot? The odds indicate that online bookmakers and most bettors are leaning towards the latter explanation.

These are clearly the best two featherweights in the world, and also two of the best pound-for-pound fighters in the world as well. Volkanovski has established himself as the better fighter in this rivalry and deserves to be the favourite. But we don’t see this one being quite as lopsided as the betting odds make it out to be; look for another extremely competitive fight like the last one was, and maybe this time around it goes Holloway’s way.

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