It’s officially L season for Drake, who placed CA$2 million (AU$2.2 million) on Israel Adesanya at this past weekend‘s UFC 281 middleweight title fight against the latter’s career nemesis and newly-crowned division king, Alex Pereira.
Prior to the hostilities, the Grammy Award-winning rapper posted a Stake betting slip on his Instagram story and captioned: “Been focused on the album gotta get back to stacking up.” Had his bet actually gone through, he would’ve collected CA$2.9 million (AU$3.3 million). But why are we wasting time with counterfactuals?
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Heading into the championship round (Round 5 of a possible five, for the uninitiated), it looked as though Adesanya had secured his sixth successful title defence with the judges’ scorecards giving The Last Stylebender three rounds to Pereira’s one. But as any MMA fan will happily tell you, it’s not over until it’s over (just ask Kamaru Usman).
Through sheer willpower and the knowledge he’d pulled it off once before during their kickboxing days, with roughly three minutes left on the clock, Alex Pereira emptied the tank for a clutch TKO finish against the incumbent, ascending to the UFC middleweight throne at New York City’s Madison Square Garden in the process.
Pereira solidified his status after an extremely brief four-fight stint within the organisation (and eight MMA fights in total). Near unprecedented. Things we learned at UFC 281: Poatan’s left hook may be strong, but the Drake Curse is stronger.
Incidentally, yet another extremely safe pick backfired on Drizzy after August’s UFC 278: Kamaru Usman vs Leon Edwards II concluded with a shocking upset.
The man threw down CA$200,000 (AU$225,000) on the then-reigning welterweight champion and #1 P4P fighter Kamaru Usman, also via Stake. Betting odds across the board had the Nigerian Nightmare as the overwhelming favourite in his sixth title defence 0 and against someone he’d previously beaten via unanimous decision, no less.
In the final minute of the championship round – mirroring what had been witnessed between Dominick Cruz and Marlon Vera during the UFC Fight Night event just a week prior and, to an extent, UFC 281 – Edwards hid a ballistic missile of a head kick behind his left jab, sending Kamaru Usman into the shadow realm. KO.
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The wallet bleeding didn’t stop there. For that same event, Drake placed another wager on former lightweight champion Jose Aldo amounting to CA$240,000 (AU$270,000).
In the beginning, it seemed as though the King of Rio had it on lock with technical striking and a 100% success rate in the takedown defence department. Due to a lack of aggression in Rounds 2 and 3, however, coupled with the considerable control time logged by opponent Merab Dvalishvili, Aldo would eventually lose via unanimous decision.
It’d almost be painful if it weren’t for the fact he was never really punting with his own money.
Side note: there’s a joke somewhere here about it being His Loss.
Side note II: once again we’d like to brag about another 100% score for BH’s card prediction series Octagon Oracle.
