Andrei Arlovski vs Jared Vanderaa: Arlovski to win by decision, no other way for him

UFC 271 will take place on February 13 in Houston, USA. One of the preliminary card fights will feature former champion Andrei Arlovski and American fighter Jared Vanderaa.

The fight will take place in the heavyweight division. None of the fighters are in the top 15 of the official UFC rankings. The bookies' favorite is Andrei Arlovski.

The veteran has been rebooting his career for several years now, fighting desperately against himself, and he seems to even be getting somewhere. At least in 2018 he was finally written off, but having changed his attitude towards fighting in the first place, Arlovski is fighting quite well now – his last five fights saw him lose only once (he made a mistake and was choked by Tom Aspinall).

He hasn't made any serious mistakes in other fights and consequently won. Andrei's fights now are not just entertaining but rather boring. Still, it brings the result, so we do not mind at all.

In his last fight, Arlovski won by decision over Carlos Felipe (11-1 record at the time). Arlovski took the first round then on a class, the second round was very close, and in the third round he got very tired and gave it up without any questions. Nevertheless, the judges ruled in his favor.

Vanderaa won Dana White's Contender Series in 2020 and got a contract in the UFC, but things aren't going great for him here. He has two TKO losses in the league (Sergey Spivak and Alexander Romanov did their best) and one decision win over Justin Tafa.

Arlovski prefers to work in the standup, Jared Wanderaa has also won most of his victories by KO/TKO. So it seems reasonable to expect that this fight won't last to the end. However, Arlovski is not taking much risk lately, he's been working on counterattacks, so the fight is actually not very likely to end early.

We shouldn't expect anything out of the ordinary from Andrei. He'll be using the same fight plan that often brings success – slow attacks, careful defense, no provocations, no risk. Slowly but surely, he'll try to score points and believe in the right judge's decision.

Jared has to take risks here, and he's not much of a risk-taker. In general, I'm not expecting any action from this encounter and I'd rather bet on either Arlovski's victory or Total Over.

Bookmakers are of the same opinion. 1xbet offers odds of 1.675 on a win of the Belarusian, while Vanderaa’s victory is estimated at around 2.30. The most interesting betting option seems to be Arlovsky’s win by decision for 2.40 offered by Bet365.