BETS: Reyes (-160); Offley (+135)
A resurgent Ofley will look to score a third straight Octagon victory over Reyes, who made a successful UFC debut in February.
Coming out of Season 32 of “The Ultimate Fighter,” Ofley looked like a late bloomer (he was already 31 years old at the “TUF” finale) but a promising featherweight fighter with some upside. He is a stocky, powerful athlete with an aggressive style, equally adept at finding hard shots to the legs or grappling and grappling opponents in the mud.
Losses in his first two UFC fights to fellow finalists Myron Santos and Muhammadjon Naimov seemed to show the limitations of Ofley’s skill set and approach: his hard-hitting attacking style on the feet threw him face-first into Santos’ superior firepower for six minutes and took over, while a loss to Naimov saw him out-muscled and overpowered (is that a word?) by an opponent who was slightly bigger and a more effective fighter. Ofley has since bounced back with a pair of wins over Ricardo Ramos and Zha Yi, even though the Yi fight was a terrible decision, and he has a chance to break .500 in one of the UFC’s toughest divisions.
Like Ofley, Reyes was a relative latecomer to the top-tier promotion, winning Dana White’s Contender Series last fall before making his UFC debut as a 32-year-old rookie. Facing an aging but tough veteran in Douglas Silva de Andrade, Reyes endured some difficulty on the feet before stunning the Brazilian almost beyond recognition with ground strikes, earning a first-round TKO.
Reyes is a heavyweight featherweight who works at a steady pace and tends to build his potential throughout the fight. His kicks and hard work with the body reinforce the idea that he wants to wear down his opponent and drag him into deep waters. While he is not a particularly skilled wrestler either offensively or defensively, the Colombian is a good submission wrestler who can sometimes spend too much time attacking from behind when he might be better off trying to get back up. However, against Silva de Andrade, Reyes was completely focused on the ground, perhaps indicating that he had turned the corner.
Ofley is a bit of an underdog here and if Yi had made a different decision the line would probably have been a bit wider, but I like his chances. Reyes will be the bigger fighter, but he’s not prone to using his size in the kind of bully performances that have given Ofley problems in the past. And although Ofley lost that decision to Naimov, he took the fight into his own hands and began winning once he increased his work rate and aggression, lessons that clearly influenced all of his subsequent performances. Ofley was chosen by decision.
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