When it comes to betting UFC odds online, picking a winner will always be the most popular bet. After that it’s usually the over/under or the fight does/doesn’t go to decision. But when it comes to prop betting, the most popular are the victory bets.
Just a refresher on prop bets: they’re anything you can bet on that doesn’t fall under money line, over/under or fight goes/doesn’t go to decision. Obviously, that can be just about anything. For example, a fight might feature a prop bet on how many times a certain fighter gets knocked down. In the McGregor vs. Mayweather superfight, there was a prop bet on whether Justin Bieber would walk out with Mayweather.
Victory bets are usually released during fight week (unless it’s a superfight, in which case they’re released much earlier), and they let you try and predict how a fight will end. Examples of this include whether you think a fight will end in a submission or knockout.
In general, victory bets are attached to a fighter, which makes them a much riskier bet: not only does the fighter have to win, but they have to do so in the manner you specified. Of course, the UFC odds at BookMaker.eu offer a much higher return for these types of bets. Because of that, they aren’t bets that we typically recommend when we come out with our picks beforehand. There are situations when you should definitely be making a victory bet - you just need to look at the context.
When You Should Make Victory Bets at the Online Sportsbook
You’ve got to know your UFC to confidently place victory bets. More specifically, it’s extremely important to know a fighter’s tendencies and abilities. What is the knockout ratio? What are the results of the last five fights? What’s the style matchup? You need to consider all of these things when making victory bets.
Take for example, the superfight between Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov. Is there any way you saw McGregor winning besides a knockout? Plus, MMA fans are extremely aware of the fact that McGregor tends to slow down in the middle-to-late rounds. Paired up against one of the best grinders against the generation, there simply was almost zero chance that McGregor could win on points over the course of 25 minutes. He certainly wasn’t going to submit him - grappling isn’t a specialty of his.
The takeaway here is that you should be relatively sure of a fighter’s path to victory. Obviously, this is easy for vaunted knockout artists like Francis Ngannou, who almost always wins by KO. The chances that somebody lasts 25 minutes with him are extremely low, so why not maximize your payout with a victory bet?
On the other side of the equation, guys like Alistair Overeem and Luke Rockhold are known to have glass chins - if they’re facing guys with killshot power than you’d better seriously consider a victory bet on their opponents. What’s more, because they have established names, you can often get great odds on their lesser known opponents.
The victory bet doesn’t just apply to finishers - you can wager that a fighter wins by decision. When Georges St. Pierre was at his peak, he won seven straight title fights by way of judges’ scorecards. Jon Jones, despite his early reputation as a killer, is slowly becoming a decision fighter as well.
A victory bet makes a great hedge bet because the greater payout it usually offers. Hedge bets involve placing bets on a different outcome of your original bet to create a situation where win or lose, there is guaranteed profit.
Going back to the McGregor example above, our recommendation was to take Nurmagomedov, but advised taking the Irishman by TKO as a hedge play. This nicely covered the chance of an upset, in the only way that McGregor could have sprung it.
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