Study · UFC · 2023 to 2026 · 1,496 fights
The favourite
usually wins.
UFC favourites won 1,048 of 1,496 fights, or 70.1%. The closing odds expected 67.0%, about 45 fewer wins.
1,496 fights with closing prices from 3 or more books, 14 January 2023 to 3 October 2026 · Published 30 October 2026 ·
Free to quote under CC BY 4.0 ·
Download the data (CSV)
Favourites
by price.
Every band from 60% up won more often than its price. The clearest gap is in the 70-80% band.
| Favourite's price | Fights | Priced to win | Won | Lost |
|---|
| 50-60% | 418 | 55.3% | 56.5% | 182 |
| 60-70% | 541 | 65.1% | 67.5% | 176 |
| 70-80% | 344 | 74.7% | 80.5% | 67 |
| 80-90% | 187 | 83.9% | 87.7% | 23 |
| 90% and up | 6 | 91.0% | 100.0% | 0 |
| All favourites | 1,496 | 67.0% | 70.1% | 448 |
Fighters priced 70-80% were expected to win about 257 of 344 fights. They won 277. Resampled 4,000 times, that band's gap lands between 1.5 and 9.9 points.
Year
by year.
The pattern showed up in every year, and was strongest in 2026.
| Year | Fights | Favourites priced | Favourites won | Favourite wins |
|---|
| 2023 | 418 | 65.5% | 68.2% | 285 |
| 2024 | 364 | 66.7% | 68.4% | 249 |
| 2025 | 370 | 67.9% | 70.5% | 261 |
| 2026 (to 3 October) | 344 | 68.3% | 73.5% | 253 |
| All | 1,496 | 67.0% | 70.1% | 1,048 |
How fights
ended.
For the 714 fights since January 2025 where we have the finish, favourites did best when the fight ended by submission.
| Finish | Fights | Favourites priced | Favourites won |
|---|
| KO or TKO | 266 | 69.3% | 72.6% |
| Submission | 125 | 69.1% | 76.8% |
| Judges' decision | 323 | 66.8% | 69.7% |
Draws and no contests are left out of the whole study.
The big
upsets.
Fighters priced at 80% or more had 193 fights and lost 23.
| Date | Favourite | Priced to win | Lost to | Finish |
|---|
| 19 September 2026 | Gable Steveson | 90.0% | Sean Sharaf | KO/TKO |
| 15 August 2026 | Myktybek Orolbai | 88.4% | Jeremiah Wells | Submission |
| 23 November 2024 | Wang Cong | 88.0% | Gabriella Fernandes | — |
| 4 March 2023 | Valentina Shevchenko | 86.3% | Alexa Grasso | — |
| 2 March 2024 | Javid Basharat | 85.8% | Aiemann Zahabi | — |
| 19 July 2025 | Daniel Zellhuber | 85.3% | Michael Johnson | Decision |
| 15 March 2025 | Josias Musasa | 84.9% | Carlos Vera | Submission |
| 14 June 2025 | Oumar Sy | 84.8% | Alonzo Menifield | Decision |
| 15 August 2026 | Mansur Abdul-Malik | 84.0% | Dustin Stoltzfus | Submission |
| 18 January 2025 | Rinya Nakamura | 83.9% | Muin Gafurov | Decision |
| 16 March 2024 | Kennedy Nzechukwu | 83.3% | Ovince Saint Preux | — |
| 19 July 2025 | Kevin Holland | 82.9% | Daniel Rodriguez | Decision |
Twelve biggest shown. Finish is blank where our results feed does not have it (before 2025).
Is it
real?
This is the most solid pattern in our fight data. Across 1,496 fights the favourites beat their price by 3.1 points, and when we resample the fights 4,000 times that gap lands between 0.6 and 5.3 points, 95 times in 100: above zero. In plain words, the closing odds have made UFC underdogs look a little more likely to win than they really were.
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How we
measured.
The method
We took the closing moneyline for every UFC fight from 14 January 2023 to 3 October 2026 that had prices from at least three sportsbooks (about 9 on average, all taken before the fight started). Each book's two prices were turned into chances, then scaled so the two fighters add up to 100%, which removes the book's cut (on average 4.36%). We averaged the books for each fight and matched it to the result. Draws, no contests and midweek (Tuesday and Wednesday) Contender Series tryouts are left out.
On the Brier score (the average squared error of a chance; a coin flip scores 0.250), the closing prices scored 0.1984, better than the 0.211 they expected of themselves, because favourites won more often than the prices said.
The data file
ufc-favourites-2023-2026.csv has one row per game. Columns: date, favourite, underdog, fav_chance (margin-free closing chance for the favourite), books, fav_won, method (finish, 2025 on).
Free to use, share and adapt under CC BY 4.0. Please credit “Bet Better (betbetter.world)” and link to this page.
Cite this study
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