Liz Carmouche is leagues beyond her opponent on the feet. | 📷: PFL MMA
Eight months into the year and the Professional Fighters League is already staging its penultimate world tournament event. The bantamweight, lightweight and women’s flyweight divisions will have their victorious finalists all receiving giant checks for $500,000 on Friday at Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. Ahead of PFL 2025 World Tournament 9, we look to a couple of betting lines that may or may not make sense and discuss how we can navigate their treacherous waters.
Fighters only get one shot! Watch the PFL World Tournament Finals LIVE Friday, Aug. 15 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN and ESPN+
PARLAYING & PRAYING
Liz Carmouche (-260)
Mads Burnell (-170)
Total Odds: +120
When the entire lineup of this event only has one favored fighter any closer than -200, it becomes a tough lane to traverse on Prime Picks. Whether due to the betting populace learning more about these fighters or more bettors simply willing to throw down and weigh the lines more heavily in one direction or the other, they are not making it easy on us. In order to take home something worth discussing—the subsequent breakdown should not merit more than a flier—we have to bundle two options based on a similar tactic and approach against two opponents susceptible to that kind of attack.
The anchor of this parlay is a former Bellator MMA champ in Carmouche, who has generally cruised through her opposition despite her advanced age. In five go-’rounds in the PFL cage thus far, the only one to set her back is Taila Santos—a woman beaten so badly by Dakota Ditcheva that she did not enter the tournament again this year, even though it would have been her belt to claim. By “Girl-Rilla” imposing her wrestling all over Jena Bishop, she will frustrate a grappler who might at times be forced to play jiu-jitsu off her back. If they stay on the feet, Carmouche is leagues beyond her opponent. On the other half of this accumulator is a lightweight in Burnell who also loves to glom onto his opponents. It might not be the prettiest performance, but given that Watley’s defeats came to counterparts who smother, another smotherer is exactly what he does not want to see. Put these two wins together to drift into plus-money territory.
’Dog Will Hunt
Saray Orozco (+775)
In what world should 3-0 Sabrina de Sousa, fighting out of Bahrain at the age of 24, be a -1400 betting favorite against anyone in the sport? To spell out her brief MMA career, the young woman has beaten Monika Kiran Ghag, an Indian athlete who feasted on subpar local opposition until finding out the world was a big place. Then, she armbarred diminutive 5-foot-1 Filipino Marine Mariano after just under a year off. Returning in May to her home country of Brazil, she made 1-0 Sara dos Santos, 23, say mattei about 30 seconds into the second frame. No victory appears that exciting, that substantial or that accelerating to the point where she should be expected to be such a massive favorite against anyone.
Her next test is LUX Fight League graduate Saray Orozco, who has watched her pro record take a nosedive when joining the ranks of the PFL in 2024. She could not get past Sumiko Inaba in 2024, and Ilara Joanne was too much to handle in June. This establishes a ceiling, but it is quite unclear at this point of whether de Sousa is up to that level yet. The fighters to beat Orozco regionally or otherwise have some name recognition, like Silvana Gomez Juarez, Kanako Murata or the aforementioned Bellator veterans. All Orozco has to do is keep it close, never stop throwing hands and avoid any traps set by a woman 10 years her junior, and suddenly, two judges could have her up two rounds and in position to pull off the upset. Stranger things have definitely happened in this sport.
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