UFC 221 odds: Early money on Robert Whittaker over Luke Rockhold

MMA fans – well, MMA bettors, anyway – like Robert Whittaker’s chances to beat Luke Rockhold.

As announced on Thursday, middleweight champion Georges St-Pierre (26-2 MMA, 20-2 UFC) has vacated his belt, and an interim titleholder Whittaker (19-4 MMA, 10-2 UFC) is now slated to fight ex-champ Rockhold (16-3 MMA, 6-2 UFC) for the vacant middleweight.

Odds have opened for the pay-per-view bout, which takes place Feb. 10 at Perth Arena in Perth, and initially they favored Whittaker.

ESPN.com’s Brett Okamoto first reported the opening odds, which had Whittaker as a slight favorite (-125) over -105 Rockhold (via Twitter):

However, initial betting has largely favored Whittaker.

As of this writing, Whittaker, who’s No. 2 in the USA TODAY Sports/MMAjunkie MMA middleweight rankings, had been bet all the way up to -195 while No. 3-ranked Rockhold moved to plus money – specifically, +160.

At those odds, a winning $100 bet on Whittaker would result in a net profit of $51.28 (implied win probability of 66.1 percent). A winning $100 bet on Rockhold, meanwhile, would net a profit of $160 (38.5 percent win probability).

Should Whittaker be the pick here? Cast your vote below.

And for more on UFC 221, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.

The Blue Corner is MMAjunkie‘s official blog and is edited by Mike Bohn.