(Lyoto Machida walked into the gym that day just to learn a little jiu-jitsu, but he walked out as a witness to murder.)

With Labor Day weekend upon us we are forced to admit that MMA’s Summer of Weird – the summer that saw us reach new highs with UFC 100 and bizarre new lows with the Affliction: Trilogy cancellation – is over.  Waiting for us in the future is a fall fighting season full of fistic goodness.  But since there’s no significant action until mid-September, we decided to take a look at some of the current betting lines on MMA’s coming attractions.

Naturally, we turn to our friends at BestFightOdds.com for the most profitable lines on some select match-ups:

UFC Fight Night 19: September 16

Melvin Guillard (+215) vs. Nate Diaz (-220)
Gray Maynard (-264) vs. Roger Huerta (+264)

UFC 103: September 19

Rich Franklin (-150) vs. Vitor Belfort (+135)
Frank Trigg (+310) vs. Josh Koscheck (-355)
Junior Dos Santos (-127) vs. Mirko Filipovic (+115)

(Try as he might, the referee could not focus on the fight as long as he was haunted by his dying mother’s wish that he do whatever he wanted with his life, as long as it did not bring upon his family the shame of the bow tie.)

The finals of Dream’s welterweight tournament goes down in Japan on Monday, and if there’s anything we’ve learned over the years it’s that betting on Japanese MMA is like buying heroin in a strange neighborhood.  You never know for sure what you’re getting, or whether it’s even halfway legitimate, but damn if it isn’t a rush.  Dream.10 betting odds come to us courtesy of BestFightOdds.com:

Shinya Aoki (-200) vs. Vitor Ribeiro (+175)
Hayato Sakurai (-600) vs. Marius Zaromskis (+475)
Andre Galvao (-360) vs. Jason High (+300)
Melvin Manhoef (+105) vs. Paulo Filho (-130)
Andre Amade (+145) vs. Katsunori Kikuno (-160)
Dong Sik Yoon (-225) vs. Jesse Taylor (+190)
Seichi Ikemoto (-150) vs. Tarec Saffiedine (+125)

Our thoughts…