(Jon Jones warms up backstage by doing battle with a mummy. Photo courtesy of Combat Lifestyle.)

Your old friend the Enabler faced himself a quandary this week. Should he blow some money on college basketball, which he knows/cares almost nothing about, just for the warm feeling he gets from wagering irresponsibly large sums? Or should he save that cash and put it toward something useful, like a crazy parlay bet featuring all three of the Octagon newcomers in this Sunday’s ‘UFC Live’ event?

In the end he decided to try for the best of the both worlds, which means that if Julio Paulino and Cornell both win this weekend, somebody might finally be making a child support payment. Or purchasing a riding lawn mower. Definitely one of those two.

Betting lines today come to us courtesy of BestFightOdds.com:

Jon Jones (-220) vs. Brandon Vera (+215)
Junior dos Santos (-260) vs. Gabriel Gonzaga (+250)
Cheick Kongo (-365) vs. Paul Buentello (+335)
Alessio Sakara (+105) vs. James Irvin (-110)
Clay Guida (-380) vs. Shannon Gugerty (+335)
Eliot Marshall (+155) vs. Vladimir Matyushenko (-150)
Duane Ludwig (-155) vs. Darren Elkins (+153)
John Howard (-190) vs. Daniel Roberts (+190)
Brendan Schaub (-238) vs. Chase Gormley (+214)
Mike Pierce (-439) vs. Julio Paulino (+425)
Eric Schafer (+135) vs. Jason Brilz (-135)

Break it down…

- Given Vera’s slim chances at victory, this line is nowhere near good enough to justify the risk. Everything we’ve seen from both guys recently tells us that Jones is about to tap-dance on the man’s face. I’ll take Jones, but I’ll save it for the parlay.

- Think of Gonzaga and Buentello as two guys with roughly the same one chance to make you a lot of money, or several different chances to lose it for you. Buentello has the longer odds, but not surprisingly it’s Gonzaga who has a more realistic chance. He actually has the chance to put his opponent somewhere he’d rather not be, whereas Buentello doesn’t have that option. If you absolutely need to bet on a big underdog in a televised bout, take Gonzaga. Also, get some therapy.

- So which underdog do we like here? Forget Paulino, Gormley, Elkins, Roberts, and Gugerty. Those guys all seem headed for trouble. But Brilz, Marshall, and Sakara are all guys you could probably talk yourself into supporting. The safest choice is Sakara, who might be Irvin based purely on the virtue of having fought in the past year.

Official Cage Potato Parlay: Jones + Dos Santos + Sakara + Howard.