UFC 309 fight week is upon us and while most of the attention has been on the fights atop the bill, circumstances have required the promotion to tinker with the undercard.

Thursday, the promotion made two changes to Saturday’s card at Madison Square Garden in New York official. With Lucas Almeida out of his preliminary card bout vs. David Onama, in steps promotional newcomer Roberto Romero.

Romero (8-3-1 MMA, 0-0 UFC) went 6-1-1 in Combate Global in the eight fights prior to his UFC signing. He most recently competed in July and won by first-round rear-naked choke. The win bounced him back from a loss in December.

Onama (12-2 MMA, 4-2 UFC) has proven himself a must-watch fighter over the span of his six-fight UFC tenure to date. Whether it’s his brutal knockout of Gabriel Santos or his back-and-forth wars against Nate Landwehr and Mason Jones, Onama has proven himself a tough test for all opposition.

Additionally, the main card opener between Mauricio Ruffy (10-1 MMA, 1-0 UFC) and James Llontop (14-4 MMA, 0-2 UFC) has been changed from lightweight (155 pounds) to super lightweight (165 pounds). No reason was given for this change.

With the changes, the UFC 309 lineup now includes:

MAIN CARD (Pay-per-view, 10 p.m. ET)

• Champ Jon Jones vs. Stipe Miocic – for heavyweight title
• Michael Chandler vs. Charles Oliveira
• Paul Craig vs. Bo Nickal
• Viviane Araujo vs. Karine Silva
• James Llontop vs. Mauricio Ruffy

PRELIMINARY CARD (ESPNews/FX/Hulu, 8 p.m. ET)

• Jonathan Martinez vs. Marcus McGhee
• Eryk Anders vs. Chris Weidman
• Damon Jackson vs. Jim Miller
• David Onama vs. Roberto Romero

PRELIMINARY CARD (Hulu/ESPN+, 6 p.m. ET)

• Jhonata Diniz vs. Marcin Tybura
• Ramiz Brahimaj vs. Mickey Gall
• Bassil Hafez vs. Oban Elliott
• Veronica Hardy vs. Eduarda Moura

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 309.

Patrick Everson

FOX Sports Betting Analyst

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Last season, the Colorado Buffaloes were a public darling the first few weeks. But after a 3-0 start, the Buffs fell apart, winning just once more in a 4-8 campaign.

Fast-forward to the latter stages of this season, and Coach Prime & Co. have a legitimate shot at a College Football Playoff berth. Colorado is a sizable favorite vs. Utah on the college football Week 12 oddsboard. 

And the public betting masses are back.

“We’ve certainly seen an uptick in Colorado action, week after week,” Caesars Sports head of football trading Joey Feazel said.

Bookmakers and sharp bettors serve up their insights on Utah vs. Colorado odds and more, in this week’s college football betting nuggets.

College Football Rocks On FOX

Last week, in the Big Noon Kickoff on FOX matchup, Colorado erased a 13-point first-quarter deficit at Texas Tech and rolled to a 41-27 victory as 4.5-point favorites. That put the Buffs at 7-2 straight up (SU) and against the spread (ATS).

This week, Colorado is again in the Big Noon Kickoff, hosting Utah at noon ET on Saturday. The Buffaloes have been bet up to 11.5-point favorites at Caesars, after opening at -10.

Deion Sanders’ squad is 6-1 SU and a perfect 7-0 ATS in its last seven games.

“This is a team with a lot of talent,” Feazel said, alluding to Heisman Trophy favorite Travis Hunter and QB Shedeur Sanders, among others. “The Buffaloes were kind of over-hyped last year, but they’re now proving themselves.”

On the flip side, Utah was a preseason favorite to win the Big 12, but is a disappointing 4-5 SU/3-6 ATS. The Utes got out to a 4-0 SU start, but lost their next five. Quarterback Cameron Rising missed three of the first six games and was ruled out for the rest of the year after a leg injury vs. Arizona State.

So it’s no surprise to see the point spread jump 1.5 points in favor of host Colorado.

“The action is telling the same story. We’re seeing more Colorado action here,” Feazel said.

Utah vs. Colorado: Who will win this Big 12 showdown?

Another SEC Showdown

Every week, it seems as if there’s a massive SEC game. In Week 11 college football odds, it’s Tennessee vs. Georgia. Neither team can afford a loss.

Georgia (7-2 SU/2-7 ATS) just fell at Ole Miss 28-10. A third loss would likely end any hopes of the Bulldogs making the College Football Playoff.

Tennessee is 8-1 SU/5-4 ATS, but probably can’t absorb a second loss and still make the CFP. Making things more difficult for the Vols this week: Quarterback Nico Iamaleava is in concussion protocol. So, as of late Wednesday night, Iamaleava is questionable to play in this 7:30 p.m. ET clash on Saturday.

Caesars opened Georgia as a 9-point home favorite and made stops at -9.5/-10 on the way to -10.5 by Wednesday afternoon.

“The line is suggesting that Iamaleava’s not gonna play. But I think he probably goes,” Feazel said. “This is a huge game for Georgia, probably an elimination game. Right now, it’s pretty good two-way action, leaning a little bit more toward Georgia.”

Georgia vs. Tennessee best bets, predictions & odds in CFB Week 12

On-Campus Sharp Side

College football betting expert Paul Stone isn’t interested in Utah vs. Colorado. But he is involved with another key Big 12 game: Arizona State vs. Kansas State, with both teams looking to stay alive in the conference title chase.

Both teams are 7-2 SU overall and 4-2 SU in the Big 12. ASU is much better vs. the spread, though, at 7-2 ATS, while K-State is 3-6 ATS.

Stone noted that the winner of Saturday’s 7 p.m. ET kickoff will need some help, but will remain alive for a spot in the Big 12 Championship Game.

Kansas State is coming off a bye week, after losing 24-19 at Houston as a 12.5-point favorite. Dating back to late in the 2021 season, the Wildcats have covered nine straight games off a straight-up loss.

Stone likes Kansas State to bounce back and also pointed out the Wildcats have thrived as home favorites in recent seasons. K-State is an 8-point favorite vs. ASU.

“Handicappers shouldn’t rely solely on point-spread trends. But they certainly can complement the other pieces of your handicapping process,” Stone said. “Kansas State is off both a bye and a loss — plus the Wildcats are 13-4 ATS as a home favorite since the start of the 2022 season. I view all those elements as positives from the Kansas State perspective.

“Additionally, Kansas State quarterback Avery Johnson is off a two-interception showing against Houston and will be out to make amends for that performance. I look for Kansas State to put its best foot forward and win by double-digits over Arizona State.”

Colorado vs. Utah: CFB Week 12 Super Six

I Like Big Bets And I Cannot Lie

By late Wednesday night, only a few big bets were reported on college football Week 12 odds. The most interesting one involved wagering quite a bit to win not nearly as much on the biggest game of the week.

At Caesars Sports, a customer put $20,000 on Georgia moneyline -355 vs. Tennessee. To win the bet, the customer just needs Georgia to win. The point spread doesn’t matter.

If the Bulldogs win, then the bettor profits $5,633.80, for a total payout of $25,633.80. That might not seem like much, relative to the size of the bet. But if you just look at its return on investment, 28.1% is not too bad.

Other notable early bets at Caesars:

• $55,000 Georgia State -2 vs. Arkansas State. If the Panthers win and cover, then the bettor profits $50,000 (total payout $105,000).
• $10,000 Hawaii -2.5 at Utah State. If the Rainbow Warriors win and cover, then the bettor profits $9,090.91 (total payout $19,090.91).

Patrick Everson is a sports betting analyst for FOX Sports and senior reporter for VegasInsider.com. He is a distinguished journalist in the national sports betting space. He’s based in Las Vegas, where he enjoys golfing in 110-degree heat. Follow him on Twitter: @PatrickE_Vegas

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Tom Aspinall obliged a unique autograph request ahead of UFC 309.

The interim heavyweight champion is in New York for fight week as he prepares to weigh in as the backup for Saturday’s main event featuring Jon Jones defending his share of the heavyweight title against Stipe Miocic. In the lead-up to the fight, much has been made of Aspinall’s attempts to secure a future unification bout with Jones or Miocic, with neither committing to competing again after this weekend much less guaranteeing they will fight Aspinall.

During his visit to “The Big Apple,” Aspinall had a humorous interaction with a fan sympathetic to the cause. Aspinall posted a video to his Instagram Stories showing the fan asking him to sign a rubber duck that just so happened to have Jones’ name on it, a reference to Jones “ducking” the British star.

Watch the scene below (h/t Championship Rounds).

“Wild place New York,” Aspinall wrote on the video.

Though Jones and Aspinall are not scheduled to fight, tensions between the two have been at an all-time high. Jones—the greatest fighter in the history of the light heavyweight division and arguably the best pound-for-pound fighter of all time—won a vacant heavyweight title with a dominant submission of Ciryl Gane at UFC 285, but was unable to defend his title in a scheduled bout against Miocic at UFC 295 after suffering a pectoral injury.

In Jones’ absence, Aspinall defeated Sergei Pavlovich to claim an interim title and has already successfully defended it once, while Jones and Miocic have remained focused on their duel that was re-booked for Nov. 16.

Jones has given a number of reasons for not acknowledging Aspinall’s suggestion of a unification bout, most recently saying Aspinall is “such an assh*le that I don’t want to do business with him.”

NEW YORK – James Llontop has seen the hype surrounding his Saturday opponent.

In some ways, how could he not? Brazil’s Mauricio Ruffy is part of the upstart Fighting Nerds gym that quickly has taken the MMA world by storm. Not only has the team found a way to use a playful gimmick – the classic nerd-as-hidden-in-plain-sight-tough-guy trope – to appeal to fans, but its fighters have been near-flawless in 2024 in the UFC.

Ruffy (10-1 MMA, 1-0 UFC) is who stands between Llontop (14-4 MMA, 0-2 UFC) and his first UFC win at UFC 309 (pay-per-view, ESPNews/Hulu/FX, ESPN+) at Madison Square Garden in New York. For Llontop, from Peru, to pull it off, it will mean a massive upset against a 10-1 betting favorite.

“I’m coming with a different mentality, different kind of energy, different kind of preparation for this fight, and he’s going to find out that we have a lot of great warriors in Peru,” Llontop said at Wednesday’s UFC 309 media day in New York.

But Ruffy is from Brazil, known for fighting warriors of its own. All 10 of his wins are knockouts, including one on DWCS to get into the UFC. Once there, he knocked out Jamie Mullarkey in May with a flying knee to get his promotional tenure started with an extra $50,000. He quickly drew comparisons to the type of skills Conor McGregor showed when he was on the rise, before he mostly bowed out of the sport.

Llontop sees it, but thinks he has the antidote after he stepped in for Charlie Campbell on short notice. Ruffy is a 10-1 betting favorite.

“I think there’s some similarities there (to McGregor), but I think this kind of fighter, what you need to do is you can’t let them fight,” Llontop said. “You need to actually pressure him from start to finish, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

Check out Llontop’s full interview in the video above.

For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 309.

Jon Jones finally defends his heavyweight title this weekend when he faces Stipe Miocic in the main event of UFC 309. It’s a fight nearly two years in the making and could possibly be the last dance for both of the future Hall of Famers.

How can each man walk away Saturday as the champion and what are the most important parts of this long-awaited matchup? Let’s dive in.

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Paths to Victory for Jon Jones at UFC 309

What is there to say about Jon Jones that hasn’t already been said? Jones is universally agreed to be one of the greatest fighter of all time and the greatest light heavyweight ever. At his peak, Jones was a tour de force of imagination and execution, capable of seemingly anything inside of the cage.

In the early stages of his career, Jones was all creativity and violence; the rare kind of talent who fought like an action hero, except the stuff he did actually worked. As time went on and he got older, Jones then morphed from a chaotic dervish of destruction into a cerebral assassin who minimized risk with a sniping jab and his patented oblique kick to slowly diminish his opposition over 25 minutes. Then, Jones took three years off to move up to heavyweight and, in his return fight up a weight class, Jones showed a ruthless efficiency in going back to his grappling roots.

So which version of Jones will show up Saturday? All of them? None? In truth, we don’t really know.

Jones is probably the most talented fighter of all time but he’s also very likely declining (his transparent refusal to fight Tom Aspinall hints that Jones himself may be aware of this fact). He’s 37 and been fighting professionally for 16 years. That’s a lot of wear and tear on the body and given how rarely he’s fought in recent years, it is very hard to feel confident in what version of Jones shows up Saturday.

Fortunately, it probably doesn’t matter. If Jones wants to stay standing, Miocic can’t take him down, and his particular brand of out-fighting is well-suited against Miocic, who doesn’t have the best footwork and struggles to close range. On the other hand, perhaps Jones decides the safest course of action is to put Miocic on the mat where Miocic has never shown to be much of a threat. Miocic can wrestle but Jones is better there and should have enough horsepower to force the issue and pursue victory that way as well.

My best guess is that Jones does a bit of both, drawing Miocic in with a striking battle before changing levels and getting takedowns. Once on top, Jones is (well, was and may still be) a terrifying force of nature with elbows and ground-and-pound, so he should have the run of play in this scenario.

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Paths to victory for Stipe Miocic at UFC 309

For all the question marks around Jones in this fight, Stipe Miocic somehow has more. The two-time heavyweight champion is 42 years old, has not fought in over three years and hasn’t won a fight in over four years. He currently has no wins over fighters who compete in the UFC. There’s a reason people are entirely writing him off on Saturday.

Then again, being written off is sort of par for the course for Miocic. Even as he rose up the ranks and began putting together the most successful résumé ever for a UFC heavyweight, the Cleveland native never really felt like a generational champion. There was always a sense that Miocic was a placeholder until the next great heavyweight showed up. Except they never did and he kept going to work, punching in, and getting wins.

Well, he’s going to have to do the same on Saturday.

Again, we don’t really know what to expect from either guy but if we go by their most recent performances, Miocic has an uphill battle ahead of him. Jones is certainly the superior grappler and the better athlete. Also—and I mean this as respectfully as possible—Jones has a much better team. It took Miocic nearly two full fights with Daniel Cormier to realize he should attack the body, despite Jones putting that very thing on tape against him! It’s a fair bet that if either man comes into Saturday with some brilliant game plan, it’s probably Jones.

So where are Miocic’s advantages? On the feet. Don’t get me wrong, Jones is probably the better kickboxer of the two (and he’s vastly superior in the clinch because Jones is one of the greatest clinch fighters ever) but Jones is very beatable in a striking match.

The biggest weakness Jones has on the feet is he’s risk averse to the point of a problem. This is a guy who barely scraped out a win over Thiago Santos—who blew out both his knees during the fight—because he would not do anything for fear of getting hit back. Young Jon Jones would have obliterated Dominick Reyes, but Jones should have lost to Reyes primarily because Reyes took chances and Jones will not. So the biggest thing for Miocic is to simply adopt the Dricus du Plessis methodology of “eff it, I’ll keep throwing, eventually it’ll hurt him.”

Along those same lines, power is the one definitive edge Miocic has over Jones. Stipe is not a Francis Ngannou-level puncher, but he’s a darn good one and though Jones has shown a very good chin, he also clearly doesn’t want to get hit. Miocic needs to make this messy early and land some shots to put that reticence into Jones and make him clam up. The more comfortable Jones is in the cage, the worse it is for his opponents, and they way to make him uncomfortable is to hit him.

Finally, it’s never been a huge weapon in his arsenal, but I hope Miocic has been working on low kicks. Jones’s stance and spindly stems make him an ideal target for chopping the legs out from under him, limiting movement, scoring points, and taking away his explosion. Stipe needs to chop that wood to have any chance in this fight.

One Big Thing

The outcome of most high level fights depends on dozens of different things, but frankly, it’s a lot to list all of those out. Instead, let’s simplify things by determining the One Big Thing that will determine Saturday’s winner.

Does heavyweight matter?

This is Jones’s second fight at heavyweight and he’s reportedly smaller for this matchup than he was for the fight with Ciryl Gane. More importantly, Jones appears to have no interest in sticking around at heavyweight and continues to suggest he wants to fight dudes his size. Maybe that’s all a game, or maybe Jones really isn’t comfortable in this weight class. After all, the people who gave Jones the most difficult time in his career were simply the largest guys he fought (save Gane).

If Stipe comes out and puts mitts on Jones and he can’t take the shots the same as he did at 205 pounds, things get very interesting very quickly.

One Small Thing

Now we know the single most important factor of Saturday’s main event, but what about something else entirely that almost certainly won’t happen but if it does could change everything.

Are the MMA gods paying attention?

The buildup for this fight has been among the most frustrating to watch in years. A couple of month ago Jones was teasing he might fight Tom Aspinall after the Stipe fight. Then it turned into “I’m probably retiring.” Then in the last couple of weeks the Jones narrative shifted to “Actually I want to fight Alex Pereira and Tom Aspinall doesn’t deserve it” and he admitted that Stipe is a good stylistic matchup for him coming off an injury.

This all culminated this week at Media Day where Jones entirely dismissed Aspinall as an opponent, said he only wants to fight fun matchups with “guys my size” despite being heavyweight champion, stated outright that beating Ciryl Gane was meaningless, and then issued an ultimatum of “either it’s Pereira or I retire.” It’s an astonishingly shameless admission that Jones is not looking for challenges, he’s looking for easy paydays. Jones is in his Floyd Mayweather era and for whatever reason the UFC is going along with it.

But the MMA gods are not so pliable.

It would truly be the funniest thing in the history of this sport if Jones went through all of this ridiculousness and then ultimately got knocked out by the 42-year-old firefighter who hasn’t fought since 2021. And he is certainly giving the MMA gods plenty of reasons to make it so.

Prediction

Perhaps you could tell from everything above, but I don’t think much of this fight. Even if you could take a time machine and pluck the perfect versions of themselves, I don’t think Miocic has much to offer Jones in a fight, and this is far from that. Jones is still somewhat near his peak while Miocic is well beyond it, and I suspect he gets rolled up in short order.

Jon Jones def. Stipe Miocic via TKO (12-6 elbows) — Round 1, 3:41