posted by Ariel Helwani

If you’re a degenerate combat sports gambler, boy, do I have the event for you.

It’s fitting that Saturday night’s “Ultimate Chaos” pay-per-view event is called such, because a quick look at the card shows a bunch of bizarre match-ups that don’t quite justify the $29.95 pay-per-view price tag. I mean, I’m down to watch Bobby Lashley vs. Bob Sapp any day of the week for a good laugh or two, but considering how bad Sapp has looked in his last few fights, I’m not expecting this one to last very long. It will be interesting to see whether Lashley can out-muscle the gigantic Sapp, as this is the first time in three pro MMA matches that he will be facing a fighter bigger than him. That said, I still like his chances via first-round TKO. The good people at bestfightodds.com have Lashley listed as a -550 favorite, so if you are feeling crazy you may want to drop a few on Sapp at +400 just for the hell of it. Don’t say that I didn’t warn you, though.

(By the way, did they travel back to 1986 to produce their preview video? I have never watched one of these hype videos and actually felt less excited afterwards about watching the event… video after the jump.)

The co-main event is a heavyweight match-up between veterans Gilbert Yvel and Pedro Rizzo. According to Affliction Vice President, Tom Atencio (more on him later), the winner of this fight will face Paul Buentello at “Affliction: Trilogy” on August 1. Of course, that’s if the winner doesn’t get seriously injured. This fight is pretty much listed as even, and it really is hard to predict who will win. The last time we saw both of these fighters in action they were losing pretty one-sided fights to Josh Barnett (Barnett KO’ed Rizzo at Affliction 1 last July, while Yvel lost to Barnett at Affliction 2 via submission due to strikes in January). Since Yvel looked better prior to the Barnett loss (7-1 since ’06) than Rizzo (2-1 since ’06), I’ll go with the Dutchman and his heavy hands via unanimous decision.

The other “big” fight on this card is Atencio shedding his Affliction clothes at 42 years old to face rookie Randy Hedderick. I’m not going to pretend I know anything about the 1-0 Hedderick (or is it 0-0? It’s hard to get a straight answer on this guy), who moonlights as a card dealer, and we already know how I feel about Atencio taking this fight a little over a month before Affliction 3. But I can’t deny the fact that I’m at least somewhat interested to see how Atencio fares. In case you’re wondering, Atencio, who is 1-0 in his pro MMA career after defeating some guy named David Martinez in 2005, is a -160 favorite, while Hedderick is a +130 dog. My advice? Don’t touch this one. Kind of hard to predict what is going to happen when both fighters have a combined two fights between them. Something tells me Atencio will win, but I would rather just enjoy this barnburner without any bets hanging over my head.

The other three fights on the pay-per-view card also appear to be one-sided match-ups. I like Din Thomas (-295) over Javier Vasquez (+235), Brett Cooper (-400) over Waachim Spiritwolf (+320) and Chris Horodecki (-600) over William Sriyapai (+450). If you’re looking for one underdog, go with Sriyapai. He’s a striker with a Muay Thai background, and the jury is still out on the former International Fight League phenom, Horodecki.

Finally, though, the best gambling advice I can give you today is that you should probably just save your betting dollars for little thing called UFC 100 in a couple of weeks.