Mike Malott gets another headliner on home soil Saturday, Oct. 17, when he meets Joaquin Buckley in the welterweight main event of UFC Edmonton. The betting market makes the Canadian a -135 favorite, with Buckley coming back at +110, and the winner walks out with a real claim to move up the 170-pound ladder. In Canada, the prelims and main card air on Citytv and Sportsnet+, as Aaron Bronsteter noted on X.
The Malott-in-Canada thing has become a running bit. Since his third UFC fight, a June 2023 bout against Adam Fugitt, he hasn’t fought outside his home country, a detail Yahoo Sports flagged in its preview as a clear sign the promotion is building him for that market. The investment has mostly paid off. The lone blemish in that stretch is the loss to Neil Magny at UFC 297, which came in the final seconds and still stings for anybody who had Malott on a ticket. His last outing was the best of his career on paper, a main-event finish of Gilbert Burns at UFC Winnipeg in April.
Buckley arrives in a much worse mood. “New Mansa” put together a six-fight run that looked great on a résumé, though Yahoo argued several of those names were past their best days. That run ended with a decision loss to Kamaru Usman last June. Then came May, when Sean Brady beat him up in a fight Yahoo described as non-competitive. That makes two losses in a row, and the knock on Buckley is that he didn’t seem to adjust between them. He needs to show something new against a guy who has kept getting better on the feet.
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Now the math. A -135 price implies roughly a 57.4% chance for Malott. Buckley at +110 implies about 47.6%. Add those up and you get a touch over 100%, the extra slice being the book’s cut, so the fair number lands somewhere around 55-45 Malott. That’s a tight line, and the pundits aren’t far off it. Dan Tom at MMA Junkie called the headliner a tough call, while Yahoo picked Malott, arguing he’s improved more since his last loss than Buckley has across his recent stretch.
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The co-main carries its own stakes. Malott’s Niagara Top Team teammate Jasmine Jasudavicius takes on Erin Blanchfield at flyweight, with Blanchfield a -350 favorite and Jasudavicius at +275. Cageside Press reported the fight is being viewed as a possible title eliminator now that an injured Valentina Shevchenko vacated the belt and Natalia Silva claimed the vacant title. Blanchfield is 27. Jasudavicius is 37, and that age gap is a big part of why the price is so lopsided. Elsewhere on the main card, Contender Series winner Cristian Perez makes his UFC debut as a -400 favorite over 35-year-old Kyle Nelson.
My take: I love a live underdog more than most people love their kids, and plus money on a striker in a near pick’em is usually my kind of bait. Buckley isn’t the dog I want, though. Nothing in his last two fights says he fixed the problems Usman and Brady exposed, and backing a fighter on the hope that he must have changed something in camp is how I’ve funded a few sportsbook Christmas parties. Malott at -135 is a fair price on the better, more complete fighter. Bet him straight, keep him out of your 12-leg favorite parlay, and watch whether Buckley can find any room to throw once Malott starts crowding him early.
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