Analysis | Thursday, December 14, 2023 8:56 AM

How to Bet on UFC Fights: MMA Betting Guide

IMAGO / Inpho Photography Dustin Poirier in action against Conor McGregor.

bettingexpert Senior Global Sports Editor

The UFC is by far the most dominant and loved MMA organisation in the world. It has created some of the biggest names in the sport like Conor McGregor, Khabib Nurmagomedov, Jon Jones, the Diaz brothers, Georges St-Pierre and more.

However, compared to sports like football or basketball, MMA is a fairly young sport. Most of its development has come in just the past decade. This means that both bookmakers and punters are still learning how to navigate the waters, leaving lots of potential for finding betting value.

MMA & sports betting expert Milan Stanojic has created a compact betting guide for anyone looking to try out MMA betting.

In This Article:

What is the UFC?

The UFC was established in November 1993, with the purpose of settling the dispute over the most effective martial arts. The events involved minimal rules with no weight classes and paired fighters from a wide range of disciplines. They involved boxing, judo, karate, kickboxing, Brazilian jiu-jitsu and others.

The promotion immediately captured the attention of the American public. It earned an impressive 86,592 television subscribers on pay-per-view for UFC 1.

However, the promotion faced a lot of negative press from the US authorities who banned “no-holds-barred” fighting due to the violent nature of the events. This forced the organization to install strict rules, such as weight classes, no headbutting, no groin strikes, gloves, etc. The UFC suddenly turned into a sport rather than a spectacle and allowed the athletic commissions to slowly lift the ban on cage fighting.

Unfortunately, the UFC faced financial hardships due to a lack of availability and struggled mightily up until UFC 40 in 2004. This event, along with the introduction of the series ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ contributed to the organization’s popularity. Today, the UFC is now the world’s most popular MMA organisation valued at about $7 billion.

UFC Weight Divisions

The UFC has fighters in 2 main categories: men and women. Both categories are classified into weight divisions based on their weight, which is typically measured a day before the fight. Here is the list of all UFC weight divisions and the weight limitations.

Men:

Flyweight (56.7 kg)
Bantamweight (61.2 kg),
Featherweight (65.8 kg),
Lightweight (70.3 kg),
Welterweight (77.1 kg),
Middleweight (83.9),
Light-heavyweight (102.1 kg)
Heavyweight (120.2 kg)

Women:

Strawweight (52.2 kg),
Flyweight (56.7 kg),
Bantamweight (61.2kg),
Featherweight*.(65.8)

Typically, two fighters from the same weight division can be paired up for a fight. The fight is scheduled a few months in advance. This gives both fighters more than enough time to train, cut weight and prepare.

How Are UFC Fights Decided?

There 3 ways in which a fight can be decided. It can end via finish, decision or disqualification. A finish can be by KO/TKO or submission, whilst disqualification can occur for a number of reasons, but the most common reason is illegal strikes. But what is the common way in which UFC fights are decided?

Well, out of a total of 509 UFC fights in 2021…

50.5% have been decided by decision
33.4% by KO/TKO
14.7% by submission
1% no contests (draw)
0.4% disqualifications.

This trend remains strong in the young 2022 year, as well as in the past decade.

So, with half of the total UFC fights every year being decided by decision, what exactly are the criteria, and who gets to decide which fighter won?

For each fight, 3 judges use the 10-point must system to decide who won each round. This means that one fighter must get 10 points, whilst the other gets 9, unless they get absolutely dominated, in which the fighter receives 8 points. Therefore, the points are combined for each round, and whoever has won more rounds during the fight will be given the victory, either unanimous or split decision.

The key factors judges take into consideration are:

Effective striking – the number of strikes a fighter has inflicted on their opponent. Power shots and knockdowns are valued more than those that deal cumulative damage, for example, leg kicks.
Effective grappling – How successful a fighter is in completing takedowns and using them to attempt a finish (submission/TKO)
Aggressiveness – How often fighters attempt to finish the fight. This is only used when the previous two categories are neck-and-neck, which is a very occurrence.
Fighting area control – How long a fighter controls the centre of the octagon and dictates the pace of the fight. This criterion is also used very rarely.

Take these factors into consideration when picking a winner for each fight. A fighter may be an elite striker, but poor takedown defence usually results in the fight going mostly on the ground, where their striking is neutralized.

What are the Most Popular UFC Betting Markets?

There are a number of ways to bet on the UFC. The most popular of these are:

Fight Winner

This is the most basic type of bet you can place. All it takes for your bet to be successful is for your fighter to win the fight. It doesn’t matter if he/she wins by KO/TKO, submission, decision or disqualification.

Fight Outcome

This is where it gets a bit more complicated. In this market you must choose which fighter will win, but also how they do it. Depending on the bookmaker, you can choose the following types of victories:

Decision/technical decision
KO/TKO, submission or disqualification

You can also bet on the draw, but this is something that happens very rarely.

Round Betting

This market allows you to pick who will win the fight, and in which round the fight will come to an end. Typically, only title fights are scheduled for 5 rounds, with the rest only going for 3.

This is a very difficult market to navigate because of how specific it is, but also because the margins are usually very high. The odds are typically higher than in the 1X2 market, but I advise only betting in this market if you are absolutely certain of the outcome.

Total Rounds

In this market, you can bet on how many rounds the fight will go. This is basically an Over/Under market, so unless the fight is a 5-rounder, there isn’t too much room for finding value.

Fight to go the Distance

Apart from the fight winner market, this one is the simplest. The bettor basically predicts whether the fight will go through all of the designated rounds or not. The winner of the fight is irrelevant in this market.

How To Find UFC Value Bets

The biggest difference between MMA and other sports is that each fighter can only perform 3 or 4 times a year. This means there is no reliable way of keeping statistics or knowing how prepared a fighter is for the event.

So what can bettors do to maximize their chances of being successful in betting on UFC fights? The first step is reading this article. The second step is following the advice listed in this article. That’s it. Without further delay, let’s get to it.

Know the sport, Watch and Learn

Now, this seems like an obvious piece of advice, but most bettors don’t take nearly enough time to get to know the sport and all its nuances. It’s important to be familiar with the fighting style of each fighter. This includes strengths, weaknesses, current form, endurance and durability (chin, injuries).

This is an excellent foundation for being able to predict the outcomes of fights, and even though this alone won’t be enough to make you a profitable UFC bettor long term, it does play a crucial part. Watching UFC events will give you an understanding of how fights work, what are the advantages or disadvantages of each fighting style and skill.

You should also be aware of the different betting markets. Because the sport of MMA is still very young compared to football and basketball, there are a lot fewer markets bettors can explore.

Statistics

As mentioned above, the UFC is a young organization, and MMA is a very young sport, which means that the statistics can sometimes be unreliable. That said, they can give you a good idea of how accurate, active and dangerous the fighter is.

Height, weight, age and reach are some of the most basic pieces of information you should know about a fighter before making a call to back them or not. But the more interesting stats are as follows:

Significant Strikes Landed per Minute
Significant Striking Accuracy
Significant Strikes Absorbed per Minute
Significant Strike Defence (the % of opponents strikes that did not land)
Takedowns Landed per 15 minutes
Takedown Accuracy
Takedown Defense (the % of opponents’ TD attempts that did not land)
Average Submissions Attempted per 15 minutes

These stats refer to the fighter’s career performance, but you can also find them for each of their career fights. You can monitor how, for example, their takedown defence has improved or diminished over their career. This can be especially useful when a fighter you are considering to back is facing a grappler.

We saw this in ‘Stipe Miocic and Francis Ngannou 2’. Miocic had a lot of success in their first fight with grappling. He won the engagement as a result of terrible takedown defence and grappling by Ngannou. But in their second bout, as soon as the French-Cameronian stuffed the first takedown attempt Miocic, it was obvious who would come out on top.

Again, these stats aren’t always reliable because of the small sample size, but they can give you a solid idea of how your fighter has changed throughout the years. They can also expose some weaknesses that others aren’t aware of – giving you an edge.

Always Look for an Edge

This is something we constantly highlight at bettingexpert. This is because it’s the most important factor that separates sharps from squares. Always make sure to find value betting situations, which of course involves steering clear of heavy favourites. Underdogs have historically carried the most value in sports betting, and the UFC is no different.

For example, Julianna Pena pulled off one of the biggest upsets in UFC history at UFC 269, defeating Amanda Nunes by submission. Nunes was the heavy favourite at 1.09 odds whilst Pena was available as high as 10.50 odds at one point. It’s safe to say anyone who backed her to win got their money’s worth. Now, this type of situation is very rare, but there is always value to be found in each given event. This is because most bettors tend to back either the heavy favourite or their favourite fighter. This can cause the betting lines to shift too much, giving unrealistic odds.

This doesn’t mean that you need to constantly be backing the underdog, in fact, I urge you not to. You should only do this when you have a very good reason for thinking that a certain fighter might win. Whether it be their overall fighting style or their recent form, you always need to be looking for an edge that most bettors don’t know about.

Bankroll & Stakes

You can’t be in profit if you don’t have a bankroll. Why? Because having a specific amount of money you only use for betting and you can afford to lose will help you stay in control. It doesn’t really matter how much money you have in your bankroll, gambling is entertainment after all.

It’s very important to maintain balance when it comes to betting, especially in the UFC. No matter how good you feel about a fight, if you want to avoid going bankrupt, never place more than 1-2% of your bankroll on a single event. This will help you keep in control and remind you to stick with your strategy of consistently finding value. I suggest using the Kelly method to find the best stakes (minimize risks and maximize returns) if you have an estimated value for your picks.

Track your results

‘We can’t know where to go if we don’t know where we’ve been’.

This is the last, and frankly the most important part of your betting journey. Remember it, write it down, put it on a wall, whatever you need to remind yourself that this is something you absolutely must not overlook.

If you want to be a serious bettor with a profitable portfolio, you first need to have a portfolio, to begin with. It doesn’t matter if you just won a ton of money on a fight last weekend if your long-term results are negative (And you don’t even know it).

Therefore, every single bet you place, along with the odds, and the stakes you placed all must go into a spreadsheet where you can keep track of your results and profits. But don’t kick yourself if you are in the red in the first few weeks – the only thing that matters is that you stick to your strategy of finding value bets.

Now that you know exactly how much money you have placed on each fight, how much you have received in returns, you have a much better chance of achieving long-term profitability.

Best Bookmakers for Betting on the UFC

Should you care about bookmakers and can a bookmaker impact your long-term profitability? Yes, and yes. Choosing the right bookmaker to place your bet is one of the most important factors when it comes to UFC betting. You would be surprised how odds can vary with different bookmakers for any given fight. But even if the differences seem small, they add up over time and could make or break your long-term profitability.

But before going any further, you must first understand how bookmakers make money, and why the odds can differ. In a perfect world, if Fighter A has a 50% probability of winning a fight, the bookmakers should provide odds of 2.00 to his/her name. This means that if you place 100 euros on him/her to win, you double your money

But this doesn’t happen. Why? Bookmakers make money by providing odds that are shorter than the actual probability. In the mentioned example, they would offer odds of 1.90 or lower, meaning your potential profit gets lower by 10 euros. This is called the bookmaker margin, or the vig. All bookies take a slice for themselves, which is fine, but it’s in the bettors’ best interest to choose from the best odds so as to minimise this bookmaker margin.

For example, let’s use the fight between Amanda Nunes and Juliana Pena. Pena was available at 10.00 odds to win atBookmaker A shortly before the fight, and at just 6.41 odds at Bookmaker B.

This is why it’s very important to find the very best price for each bet. This unfortunately involves creating accounts with a lot of different bookmakers. The differences in odds between bookmakers won’t always be this huge, but they add up over time and make a huge difference in your bankroll in the long term.

Some of the best UK-based bookmakers for betting on the UFC are:

Bet here with bet365

How to Find UFC Betting Tips?

The bettingexpert community provides tips for every UFC event, so visit bettingexpert.com for the latest UFC betting tips & predictions.

You can also find more UFC Picks & parlays on the bettingexpert Expert insights section.

SAFER GAMBLING

At bettingexpert, we always take a safe approach to gambling. We’ll never bet more than we can afford or chase losses. For more advice, head to our Safer Gambling hub.

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