Mar 20, 2026; London, UNITED KINGDOM; Axel Sola of France at weigh-ins for UFC Fight Night at O2 Arena. Mandatory Credit: Peter van den Berg-Imagn Images Many really feel the means that you must guess on UFC is parlaying heavy favorites collectively, however underdogs win roughly 35% of the time in the world’s largest MMA promotion. Don’t be afraid to hunt for plus cash.
Years in the past, I developed a predictive mannequin that makes use of in-fight stats and fighter attributes to simulate UFC battle outcomes — as long as the combatants had at least 30 accomplished octagon minutes or 5 complete fights. I discovered that, in the UFC, moneyline favorites are often overvalued.
How is that doable? Well, in a battle setting with as many variables per second as MMA, it’s laborious to see the distinction between -150 and -350 in actual time. Great bets can lose. Terrible bets can win by fortunate measures.
Every week, I’m going to offer you my favourite underdog guess of the week. They’ll often be displaying worth in my mannequin, and I’ll clarify their path to victory.
Here’s my favourite bit of plus cash out there for UFC Fight Night: Hooker vs. Parnasse
Note: All battle odds come by way of Polymarket, the official prediction market of UFC.
Swaim’s Underdog of the Week: Axel Sola (+138)
Model Odds: +105
Model’s Favorite Exact Outcome and Implied Odds: Submission (+602)
In a number of fights on the card, there’s a French fighter in an advantageous spot. The UFC is forcing surging lightweights to jockey for positioning inside a loaded division in the co-main occasion as Lyon’s Fares Ziam battles Nice’s Axel Sola on dwelling turf.
These two truly kind of convey the identical bodily instruments to the desk. They’re tall for the weight class at 6’0” tall or bigger, and the statistical comparisons are type of loopy.
Ziam’s putting accuracy is 52% to Sola’s 50%. It’s one other two proportion factors in putting D (63%) over Sola (61%) for the “Smile Killer”. Both common precisely 1.9 takedowns and 0.5 submission makes an attempt per quarter-hour when rounded, and their takedown protection metrics are simply 4 proportion factors aside, too.
These shut stats aren’t the purpose alone to take Sola at plus cash, although. He’s simply considerably higher in two others that matter.
The underdog lands 1.82 extra important strikes per minute, which averages out to a bonus of practically 30 over the course of a full-length battle. That quantity pulls forward on the scorecards if not for a seminal second, and Ziam doesn’t produce many of these. Ziam’s 0.51% knockdown charge is properly beneath the divisional commonplace — and properly beneath Sola’s (1.40%).
Sola is simply 1-1 on this division, so many could not belief him reverse a fighter who had a six-fight profitable streak earlier than Tom “Big Train” Nolan dominated Ziam for quarter-hour in June.
But, a nearer look beneath the hood is why you shouldn’t simply depend wins and losses when betting UFC. Those six fighters that Ziam beat felt spectacular at the time, however they’re a collective 3-6 with the promotion since they fought him. Only two stay on the roster.
My mannequin weighs the stage of competitors, and it’s not the hole you’d suppose right here.
While the algorithm does favor Ziam general (51.1%), it’s a a lot smaller hole than these implied odds recommend. Plus, I’ve received Sola 31.5% prone to discover a end in comparison with Ziam’s 14.6%, and that hole in ending hazard is another excuse to only take the plus signal that — even in a Ziam win — is probably going a aggressive one which hits the scorecards.
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