(Ah, Nate Diaz’s salad days, when he was green in judgment and everybody who could hear the sound of his voice was a bitch.)

After a couple of weekends without any big time MMA, we begin an action-packed week of fighting on Wednesday night with UFC Fight Night 19 on Spike TV, and then we roll straight on in to season ten of “The Ultimate Fighter.”  Sadly, there aren’t many opportunities to wager on who makes it to the finals of the show, who breaks what household item, or what percentage of the words said in arguments between “Rampage” Jackson and Rashad Evans will be fit for air on basic cable.  The upside is, we still have some fights to bet on before we settle in for a season’s worth of ‘Oh, snap!’ moments.

The best betting lines on the internet come to us courtesy of BestFightOdds.com:

Nathan Diaz (-220) vs. Melvin Guillard (+210)
Gray Maynard (-278) vs. Roger Huerta (+285)
Carlos Condit (-350) vs. Jake Ellenberger (+338)
Nate Quarry (-245) vs. Tim Credeur (+250)
Steve Cantwell (-290) vs. Brian Stann (+264)
Chris Wilson (+115) vs. Mike Pyle (-127)
Sam Stout (-185) vs. Phillipe Nover (+166)
Jeremy Stephens (-240) vs. Justin Buchholz (+218)
Brock Larson (-455) vs. Mike Pierce (+450)
Steve Steinbeiss (+150) vs. Ryan Jensen (-160)

The breakdown… 

(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)

(It’s going to take more than a Sandstorm to intimidate Rich "The Cyborg Soldier" Franklin. Just like it takes more than two weeks of acting classes to hang with Tiffani-Amber Thiessen.)

Just a few days from now the UFC will invade Germany with the force of the Allies, the Soviet Red Army, and David Haselhoff all rolled into one.  If you’re anything like us, you’re sitting there right now wondering how you can make a quick, labor-free buck off the whole thing.  Take a good hard look at the latest betting lines, from BestFightOdds.com, and let’s see what we can come up with:

Wanderlei Silva (+126) vs. Rich Franklin (-139)
Cain Velasquez (-181) vs. Cheick Kongo (+165)
Mike Swick (-200) vs. Ben Saunders (+190)
Marcus Davis (-200) vs. Dan Hardy (+180)
Spencer Fisher (-188) vs. Caol Uno (+175)
Mirko "Cro Cop" Filipovic (-390) vs. Mostapha Al Turk (+350)
Dennis Siver (-170) vs. Dale Hartt (+150)
Terry Etim (-350) vs. Justin Buchholz (+300)
Paul Taylor (-350) vs. Peter Sobotta (+300)
Paul Kelly (-400) vs. Rolando Delgado (+325)
John Hathaway (-140) vs. Rick Story (+120)
Stefan Struve (-130) vs. Denis Stojnic (+110)

So where’s our money going?