UFC Fight Night Prediction – Brandon Moreno vs. Amir Albazi: Fight card, odds, start time, live stream

Brandon Moreno and Amir Albazi are healed. The flyweight competitors' championship drafts were hampered by health problems. Moreno and Albazi headline UFC Fight Night in Edmonton, Canada on Saturday with a title shot on the horizon.

Moreno (21-8-2) is looking forward to fight week. It's been a while since he last felt this way. The former UFC flyweight champion returns from his longest break since 2020, which amusingly still only lasts eight months. This is what the life of a fighter is like, it seems. But Moreno says the time spent with his family and his LEGO collection has been hugely restorative as he looks to bounce back from consecutive losses to Alexandre Pantoja and Brandon Royval.

“I had to fight hard two or three years in a row. There was a lot of responsibility in fighting for the title,” Moreno told CBS Sports. “At some point it exploded in my head. Along with many physical injuries, I had to heal my mind and body in order to fight again.”

“In my last fight – and I don't want to apologize because Brandon Royval is a great fighter and deserves everything he's doing now – but in my mind, when I tried to remember that moment in the fight, it was me not.” My body was there and I hit, but my mind wasn't there. I was very frustrated because I knew I was a lot better than the guy who fought in February.

Albazi (17-1) returns after the toughest fight of his career. Albazi is a perfect 5-0 in the UFC, but was sidelined for more than a year due to serious health problems. Albazi fought Kai Kara-France in June 2023, later discovering an irregular heartbeat. Many scored the victory for Kara-France. Albazi refused to excuse his subpar performance but admitted he was not fully functional. Albazi learned he would need heart surgery after suffering a serious health problem during training.

“I felt like I was going to die,” Albazi told CBS Sports. “There's no way I should have been so tired after fighting for two minutes. I checked my phone’s heart rate monitor and it read 239.” [beats per minute]. I tried to fix the problem. I thought there was something wrong with the heart rate monitor because I've never seen a number that high. I would take it to 195 in an intense session. I tried to lower it but it wouldn't work.

Luckily, Albazi was at the UFC Performance Institute in Las Vegas. Medical staff helped lower his heart rate and he later underwent heart surgery. Albazi recovered and moved into enemy territory to prepare for his fight against Moreno at UFC Fight Night in Mexico City on February 24. Six weeks earlier, Albazi learned he was struggling with another health problem that was nearly paralyzing him.

“I couldn't even take a shower. I couldn’t lift my arm above my head,” Albazi said. “My arm literally stopped working.”

Albazi visited five different doctors, all of whom told him he needed to have neck surgery or recommended he stop fighting because of a spinal cord injury. Albazi stubbornly refused to withdraw from the fight. He found out via social media that his fight, like all the others, was canceled. A UFC doctor made the recommendation and Albazi was quickly removed from the card.

“When a doctor told me, 'Hey, brother to brother, trying to get a 9-to-5 job.' I sat quietly in the car for 15 minutes and thought, “Wait? I didn't come this far to stop. Is that it?” That was hard, even if I knew I was going to keep going, it would be hard to hear it from a doctor: “No, I'm not going to make it better.” There were a lot of dark days.

Check out the full interview with Amir Albazi below.

The co-main event on Saturday draws more fan interest than the headliner. Erin Blanchfield and Rose Namajunas are within striking distance of a UFC women's flyweight title fight. Manon Fiorot and Alexa Grasso are ahead of them in the pecking order. Still, a strong showing could benefit Blanchfield and Namajunas at a time when availability is increasingly having an impact on the UFC's matchmaking.

“Achieving a goal on Saturday means everything. This gets me back into title contention,” Blanchfield told CBS Sports, hoping to bounce back from the unanimous decision loss to Fiorot. “It's not just about winning, it's also about how you win. A good performance puts me in an even better position.”

“Even with a good performance, we could cross that bridge when the time comes, but for some reason I would still feel bad about jumping over it,” former UFC women's strawweight champion Namajunas told CBS Sports on skipping Fiorot, who defeated Namajunas in her flyweight debut. “…Ultimately the UFC is kind of the judge of that and it's up to me to put in a really good performance to justify it.”

Below you'll find the rest of Saturday's fight card with the latest odds before we make a prediction and pick the main event.

UFC Fight Night card, odds

UFC Fight Night ad information

Date: November 2nd | Start time: 8:00 p.m. ET (main card)
Location: Rogers Place – Edmonton, Canada
TV channels: ESPN+

forecast

Brandon Moreno vs Amir Albazi: Albazi's heart problems manipulate useful data in the fight between Kara and France. Albazi won a five-round split decision, but 19 of 21 media members scored for Kara-France in the fight, plus 91.5% of fan votes on MMA decisions. This won't change the outcome, but it's worth mentioning. Albazi figures he will have an advantage over Moreno in wrestling, but the former champion is no match for wrestling. Moreno statistically outperforms Albazi in every wrestling category – takedown average, accuracy and defense. Moreno also has greater power and accuracy. Pantoja landed six of 11 takedowns against Moreno, so I expect Albazi to have some success, but not enough. Moreno has better finishing ability in a fight where both men have five-round stamina. Moreno by unanimous decision