Updated Updated: 2024

Betting on MMA UFC

This page will tell you everything you need to know to start (or continue) betting on UFC fights as a UK player.

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UFC Betting Overview

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It is one of the fastest-growing sports around the world as well as in the UK, and of course, we want to know how to find the best MMA tips and UFC predictions. UFC and MMA has made it onto the world scene with it’s brutal, ruthless fight game and we do not want to miss out on this extreme action. Punches, kicks, wrestling, you name it. The sport almost allows it all and is something for you if you can handle the blood and the pain of the fighters. With names like Conor McGregor, Khabib Nurmagomedov and Georges St. Pierre it is not strange that the sport has exploded in recent years, they have great intensity leading up to every fight, even press conferences are exciting! We don’t want you to miss out on the action either and have made you a betting guide on how to begin your sports betting adventure and how to bet on MMA and it’s largest tournament the UFC.

In recent years, we have seen how the big names in the UFC have gained more and more attention, maybe it’s because of the sport itself or maybe just because of all the action surrounding the events. With fights even outside of the ring, like the one between McGregor and Khabib, you can be sure there is always something to look forward to. In the UK we can see more fighters trying to make it to the big leagues every year and even in the country we find more MMA-events than previously, and that is for a reason. It’s not about who can punch the hardest or make the coolest takedown, with so many aspects to the game you have to be an all-round fighter to even have a chance in MMA. If it’s not a punch, you can expect a kick or a takedown, you have to prepare for everything, both mentally and technically and we believe this to be the reason behind the sport exploding in recent years.

How to Bet on MMA/UFC

When we want to bet on MMA and the UFC we need to make sure we understand everything regarding the sport and it’s markets. Otherwise, it can be hard to get the winning UFC bets. As the sport has grown rapidly now we can see more markets as well as more bookies offering bets on the sport. We will go through the biggest markets to bet on and give you some tips for your MMA bets, markets offered in MMA are pretty similar to markets in boxing and other fighting sports. Please have a look below to see the most popular markets:

  • Moneyline: 

Also known as the outright winner market. The most popular market when it comes to MMA-fighting, here you can pick a winner of the fight regardless of how you think he will win. If you have chosen one fighter to win on the moneyline bet it means you win in all outcomes where your pick is the winner regardless if he wins by knockout or decision.

  • Over/Under betting: 

Inadvance of every fight bookmakers release a number of rounds they
believe the fight will last. So for this bet you can bet against their line and decide if the fight will go over or under the set amount of rounds. A simple bet similar to the moneyline bet with 2 options to decide between, good for newbies to the sport. Since MMA is fought in 3 or 5 rounds this sometimes forces you to decide if you think the bout will go all rounds or not.

  • Method of victory: 

You decide by what method the winner will win, may it be by decision,
TKO, KO, Submission etc. Here you have to pick both a winner and the
method of his win. For this type of bet you really need to know the fighters and their styles.

  • Total number of rounds: 

Similar to the Over/Under bet but you decide in which round the fight will be won.

  • Live bets: 

You can also find a number of markets in the live betting section, they offer the same markets as for pre-match bets but for specific rounds and similar. For instance, you could bet on who to win the 2nd round, or if a round will have Over/under a certain amount of takedowns, punches or similar. Some bookies offer live streaming of main events so you can watch and bet as the action unfolds.

  • Prop betting: 

We can also find prop bets about anything, maybe “How many punches will a fighter land?” or “Who gets the first takedown?” and similar bets. A bit more fun for you with more exciting markets, though usually a tad harder to win.

These are the most common markets found in MMA-betting, as for all sports you need to do your research if you want to have a higher chance of winning your bet.

Things to Keep in Mind When Placing a Bet on MMA/UFC

When placing a bet on the UFC it can be good with some well researched MMA/UFC tips and predictions. For the best UFC betting tips we recommend you follow some professional punters who keep track of the fighters. This as there are so many good fighters out there to keep track off, it’s almost impossible to do it all yourself with training camps, injuries, weight drops and the list just goes on. All these things are important factors before a fight.

In MMA there are several types of fighting styles, so you need to know what styles are competing against each other and how well they know other martial arts as well.

Say for instance you have a boxer fighting a submission wrestler, an interesting fight to say the least, we can expect the boxer to try to keep the fight standing while the other fighter would want it to go to the ground where he has his strongest abilities.

But excepts for their main martial art all other styles are also as important if you can better your worst sides you’ll be unbeatable once you get them to your strongest side. A good tip is to see how the fighters have performed previously against certain styles and what they have done to improve against this technique. As there are several different styles it means that a lot is allowed in MMA, you can kick, strangle, punch, wrestle and more.

Another important factor is of course their record, in MMA just as in boxing the record is really important to stay in the top tier. Look at a fighter’s previous record with wins and losses, if they are coming from a winning streak and against what styles they have previously lost. Take for instance a fight like the one between McGregor and Nurmagomedov, many people thought McGregor would win with his slick fast hands, but he ended having no chance against Khabib’s strong ground game, even though McGregor is fast he couldn’t land many punches because Khabib had really worked on his stand up defensive game. In this fight we saw Khabib come in super hungry and on a winning streak, all previous battles easily won, unless his opponent had shown exceptional skills in takedown defense and in his ground game we could expect Khabib to win unless anything unexpected would happen. But please be aware that this is the sport where you can expect the unexpected.

Leading up to a fight the fighters normally have a training camp, for real depth of knowledge we can look at these to see at what level the fighters are preparing themselves, it can really make or break a fighter. If you have a training camp that is too hard you may end up injuring yourself and missing the fight. If it’s too easy you may instead not be as prepared for the real action later when you fight. It is important to find a good balance which evolves the fighter instead of weakening them, so you can look at their partners to see their levels. Normally fighters surround themselves with people from all different disciplines to improve their game.

Last but not least we look at the weight game. Fighters are fighting in different weight classes and some drop weight to make the weigh-ins. For someone who drops 10 pounds before a weigh-in and then gains it back between the time of the fight and the weigh-in it will be to their advantage as they’ll have more power than someone who stays at the same weight all the time. If a fighter makes weight without problems and has a good weight loss leading up to the weigh-ins he will feel much better than someone who had to drop a lot fast. Dropping much weight in short time stresses the body and takes longer to recover from giving the other person the upper hand. Many fights have been lost due to bad weight drop before a fight, there are even fights that have been canceled because of this.

MMA Betting Tips

If you want to get the best tips and predictions for MMA and the UFC there are many sites out there with loads of information. But we have one favorite where we like to get the latest UFC and MMA news, and it is the MMA podcast with the UFC host Joe Rogan, he invites different fighters, big-timers and small-timers, and gives them a chance to talk about how they see things and make their predictions to upcoming bouts. We hear from the inside about everything you can imagine regarding the sport which adds a lot of depth to your knowledge about the fights. You can also hear some fighters discussing what went wrong and how they can improve, very interesting and a good way to acquire your latest MMA news.

When searching for a new bookie to place your bets with we highly recommend signing up and claiming your free bets which are given to new punters as a welcome gift from the betting site. This way you won’t have to spend too much of your own money when testing out a new bookie.

MMA Around the World and the UK

We have all heard about the UFC and their fighters. The UFC have taken over the MMA world and most people place their bets on the largest organization of the sport. But there are other big organizations as well who are growing, UFC has received a lot of negative attention due to their sponsor deal with Reebok that leaves fighters depending on them, they have also been criticized because of the show business they have made the sport become.

If you want to see MMA you can also follow Bellator which is another big organizations with some big names, in Europe we find several Russian MMA promotions as well as Polish, MMA is quite big in the east but how about in the UK? Here we can find one of Europe’s most well known MMA promotions in Cage Warriors. This is where Conor McGregor got his
first large fights before he made it to the UFC, it is a very interesting promotion with loads of up and coming fighters from Europe, previously some of the UK’s biggest fighters in Michael Bisping and Gegard Mousasi. All big names who started off with Cage Warriors, as MMA is growing all over the world we can see more promotions starting up and trying to compete with the more traditional ones.

For Asia MMA is also very big, we have several MMA promotions which all pay really well and attract a lot of fans, take for instance Rizin FF where boxing legend Floyd Mayweather made an appearance to fight one of their super fighters in a show fight. We also have ONE Championship which is Asia’s no. 1 promotion, they just recently signed Demetrious Johnson and Sage Northcutt who used to be in the UFC.

As you can see there is lots to choose from if you want to start betting on MMA around the world, UFC is, of course, the largest most popular promotion, but it is always nice to see the super stars before they actually become stars and follow the as they climb through the rankings.

FAQ

It is quite easy to bet on MMA/UFC as it is always 1vs1. You can either bet on the winner/loser or you can do different bet. You can bet on a fighter to win by submission, KO or by decision ofn the judges. In any case it is recommended to look at the stats of the fighters before betting.

Several bookies are offering odds on UFC/MMA fights such as:

See the full list of online bookies offering UFC/MMA odds here.