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MMA sportsbooks aren’t wasting any time handicapping Jon Jones’ first UFC title defense. Jon Jones vs. Rashad Evans betting odds have opened up with Bones Jones as a huge favorite. If you believe in Rashad Evans then now is the time to jump on these odds and make some big bucks with the challenger.

MMA odds are a funny thing in the gambling world. Bookmakers are still wrestling with how to handicap MMA as most oddsmakers really don’t understand the intricacies of MMA. Thus fighters are often given favorable odds based more on popularity and hype than skill. In the case of Jon Jones, I’d like to think it is A, B, and C.

Even the biggest Bones Jones fans have to be surprised at the early odds on the Evans vs. Jones UFC light heavyweight title fight. Jon Jones opened up as a 4-to-1 favorite on most sportsbooks. Apparently a lot of early money came in on the champion as the odds have now gone up 5.5-to-1 in Jones’ favor with Evans getting 4-to-1 odds as an underdog. That is amazing considering we are only a few days out from the match announcement and potentially five months before the fight actually takes place.

I have heard several MMA oddsmakers say that if gamblers continually bet strictly on the underdogs, they will almost always wind up coming out ahead. As of today I do think that Bones Jones is going to beat Rashad, yet there are a lot of intangibles that make Evans a hell of a bet at these odds. I think the fact that these two guys are former training partners is something that is greatly undervalued here. Jones is so unorthodox that someone like Evans with inside knowledge of the champion is going to have a bigger edge than almost anyone else in fighting Bones. That alone makes Evans a great underdog bet in my opinion.

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Bones Jones betting lines for his last two fights saw Bones as a -280 against Ryan Bader and a 2-to-1 favorite as challenger against Mauricio Shogun Rua at UFC 128. These odds indicate that either most MMA gamblers think that Rashad Evans really sucks or they are in the midst of an enormous man-crush on Bones Jones. The idea that gamblers believe that Ryan Bader has a better chance of beating Jon Jones than Rashad Evans tells you everything you need to know about MMA betting.

This is also the first grudge match of Jones’ short career. Rashad Evans is angry and he is letting everyone know.

“I feel disrespected on many levels and the worst part is that it comes from people who I felt were like family. I would have done anything for Greg Jackson, and I would still do anything for Greg Jackson but I felt disrespected beyond belief,” Evans said. “I feel disrespected by Jon because when I think about when we trained or when we were chilling, was the [expletive] even real? Or was he just trying to be a master manipulator and try to manipulate the situation so he could get what he wanted out of it?”

It is certainly not uncommon for huge underdogs to win MMA championships and Rashad Evans has as much of a chance of winning (maybe more) as anyone else. Keep an eye on these odds over the next few months. By fight time you may be able to get 6-to-1 odds on Evans and whether you think Evans can win or not, that is a heck of a bet worth taking.

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