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Super middleweight champion Canelo Alvarez puts his WBA and WBC belts on the line this Saturday, February 27 when he faces Avni Yildirim at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. The card gets underway at 7 p.m. ET with the main event starting at approximately 10 p.m. on DAZN.
Alvarez is heavily favored in this fight at DraftKings Sportsbook, sitting at -10000 in the two-way market, while Avni Yildirim’s odds are at +1200. There are no sure things in boxing, but Alvarez is a heavy favorite for a reason. He is the first fighter mentioned in pound-for-pound arguments and he is facing a fighter who lost his last fight and has not been in the ring in two years.
And yet, the betting public likes themselves an underdog. Heading into fight night, 51 percent of handle and 52 percent of total bets on the fight are on the underdog Yildirim. While it’s hard to find a boxing reason Yildirim might spring the upset, we can point to the odds as the likely reason.
At -10000, there’s virtually no value in betting on Alvarez. If you bet $100,000 on Alvarez to win and he won, you’d win $1000 plus your money back. While money’s money, boxing only requires one lucky punch to end someone’s day in a hurry. It’s a longshot to happen, but at those kinds of odds, the juice likely isn’t worth the squeeze. And so, you get some folks throwing a hail mary on the +1200 odds hoping for a few bucks. They’re likely to lose that money, but they don’t need to bet much for a decent windfall in the unlikely event of an upset.
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