UFC Sacramento and PFL Tampa: weekend preview and predictions

Two cards, one Saturday, and they overlap. UFC Fight Night: Hernandez vs Rodrigues runs from Golden 1 Center in Sacramento with prelims at 5 PM ET and the main card at 8 PM ET on Paramount+ (TNT Sports in the UK, full country grid here). PFL Tampa: Cyborg vs. Vieira starts at 5:30 PM ET on ESPN+, which means the Tampa headliners will be walking right as Sacramento's main card heats up. My sympathies to your remote.

Predictions below for every Sacramento main card fight and the Tampa fights that matter. My picks are argued from form lines and the 25-book consensus odds on our event pages; you came here to make fun of me when they go wrong, and that is fine too.

UFC Sacramento, fight by fight

Anthony Hernandez (15-3) vs Gregory Rodrigues (19-6), middleweight. The division's No. 6 against its No. 11, and a genuinely nasty style pairing. Anthony Hernandez had won four straight, submitting Roman Dolidze, out-working Brendan Allen and stopping Michel Pereira in the fifth, before Sean Strickland knocked him out in February. That was the first crack in the Fluffy armor in years, and it is doing work in the odds: he opened -168 and the books now have him -180, so the money still believes. Gregory Rodrigues (+154) has won three straight, two by first-round knockout, and hits harder than anyone Hernandez has faced except the man who just starched him. That is the case for the upset, and for about a round it will look prophetic. But Rodrigues fades as fights get long, Jared Cannonier stopped him in the fourth, and Hernandez's pace is precisely the thing that makes people fade. I flirted with the dog here and talked myself out of it.

Prediction: Hernandez by submission.

Serghei Spivac (18-6) vs Vitor Petrino (14-2), heavyweight. Spivac, ranked No. 6, rebounded from the Jailton Almeida and Waldo Cortes Acosta losses with a unanimous decision over Ante Delija in February. Petrino has won three straight since moving to heavyweight, all finishes or clear decisions, but the step up in grappling class is steep. Spivac's clinch-and-drag game is exactly the kind of test Petrino has not seen at 265.

Prediction: Spivac by decision.

Photo: ReinierdeRidder / CC BY-SA 4.0

Roman Dolidze (15-5) vs Reinier de Ridder (21-4), light heavyweight. The loser-leaves-the-rankings fight. Both middleweights arrive on two-fight skids and both chose to solve it by moving up 20 pounds. Reinier de Ridder went from beating Robert Whittaker in a five-round split to getting knocked out by Brendan Allen and out-pointed by Caio Borralho inside five months. Roman Dolidze lost to Hernandez and Christian Leroy Duncan back to back. The books make de Ridder -400, which feels rich for a man on a skid until you remember his floor: submissions of Kevin Holland and Gerald Meerschaert, a knockout of Bo Nickal. Dolidze at +300 is live in the scramble exchanges, but de Ridder is the bigger, longer grappler now that neither has to cut.

Prediction: de Ridder by submission.

MarQuel Mederos (11-1-1) vs Mason Jones (18-2), lightweight. Jones (-282) is quietly 3-0 in his second UFC run, including a decision over Jeremy Stephens and a knockout of Bolaji Oki. Mederos (+232) has not lost in the UFC but is coming off a majority draw with Chris Padilla, who, in a scheduling joke someone at the UFC surely enjoyed, fights on the prelims of this same card. Jones's pressure boxing should bank rounds.

Prediction: Jones by decision.

Carli Judice (6-2) vs Jeisla Chaves, women's flyweight. Judice is a massive -550 favorite over the unbeaten Brazilian. Unbeaten records built outside the UFC tend to have a short shelf life, and the books are pricing this one accordingly.

Prediction: Judice by TKO.

Terrance Chatman vs Anthony Wint, heavyweight. Wint is -1050, the widest line on the card. I have nothing poetic to say about a -1050 heavyweight fight and neither do you.

Prediction: Wint by decision.

The prelims, briefly. The one to actually watch is Kennedy Nzechukwu (14-6-1) vs Shamil Gaziev (14-3), a heavyweight fight where both men have been finished in the opening round since last July and neither has a reverse gear; the books have drifted toward Gaziev all week (-130 to -139). Chris Padilla vs Nasrat Haqparast (18-6) is priced as a coin flip and probably is one. And Shanelle Dyer (7-1) has been steamed from -650 to -850 over Elise Reed, the sharpest move on the card.

PFL Tampa: the short version

Cris Cyborg (29-2) vs Ketlen Vieira (16-5) is a real main event: the 41-year-old, unbeaten since 2018, against a woman who was a UFC top-five bantamweight three months ago. The books opened Cyborg -295 and have pushed her to -350. Vieira's five-round wins over Miesha Tate and Holly Holm say she can grind a legend; Cyborg's 8-0 post-UFC run says legends grind back. Age is the only argument for the dog, and one day it will be right. I do not think it is Saturday.

Prediction: Cyborg by decision.

Elsewhere: Taila Santos (23-4, -175) meets the unbeaten Sabrinna de Sousa and should be a class above (Santos by decision); Daniel Marcos (18-1) vs Magomed Magomedov (22-5) opened with Marcos a -152 favorite and is now dead even, the most interesting line movement in Tampa (Marcos by decision); and Gadzhi Rabadanov is -3333 over Tracy Reeder, the widest price of the entire weekend. Six former UFC fighters populate this card, which is its own story.

Friday's warm-up is ONE Friday Fights 167 from Lumpinee Stadium at 7:30 AM ET, free on ONE's YouTube and watch.onefc.com.

Make your own calls on the pick'em page, and join us Saturday: live results, scorecards and play-by-play on both event pages all night.