In 2011, the UFC decided that all main event bouts would be five-round contests. Previously, only title fights were given that honor. Since then, every card has at least one five-rounder, with some big cards having two or three. (Some cards have multiple title fights, and every once in a while a fight that is neither for a championship nor the main event is given two extra rounds. Nate Diaz vs. Leon Edwards is a notable example.)
This creates a unique situation for DFS. With the exception of overtime – which we can’t definitively predict – in no other sport do some athletes get to play longer than others. Of course, they don’t necessarily use all five rounds in MMA. However, if they don’t go the distance, the winning fighter necessarily secures a stoppage bonus. Depending on when it happened, that confers between 10 and 85 extra fantasy points.
So how big of an advantage is it to roster fighters in five-round fights? I pulled some data from the last 15 five-rounders to find out.
Using ownership and the rate at which these fighters end up in the optimal (or at least, GPP winning) lineup, we can develop a strategy for handling these fights.
Let’s start with cash games before getting into tournaments.
Cash Games
Given the (lack of) availability of UFC contest history, finding hard data on cash games is a challenge. However, I’ve been playing them consistently for some time, and there’s a clearly dominant strategy. Roster both fighters. (This, and the rest of this article, primarily applies to DraftKings.)
As a general rule, if you’re able to fill your lineup with four winning fighters (in six spots) you’ll cash the majority of the time. It seems a bit counter-intuitive to guarantee a loss, but when we dig into the math it makes a bit more sense.
Every fight on DraftKings costs a combined $16,200 in salary for both fighters. That means your “cost per win” is $16,200 by rostering them both. However, our average salary allowed per fighter is a bit over $8,300. Therefore, this gives us a bit of extra salary to play with to fill our other four spots.
Of course, this logic could be applied to any two fights on the card, so why just five-round fights? That’s where the extra rounds – or the guaranteed stoppage – come in. There are more total points available for the winning fighter in a five-round fight as a general rule.
Additionally, the losing fighter, on average, ends up with more points than they would for a three-round fight.
Multiple Five-Round Fights
This does get a bit trickier when there are multiple five-round fights on the card though. If three such fights are happening, rostering all six fighters is pretty clearly a losing strategy. We still want exposure to as many of the winners of these fights as possible, so four total fighters makes the most sense. Depending on how heavily favored these fighters are, it can be a challenge to find the salary to do so. My extremely general rule would be to roster both fighters in the most evenly matched fight, and at least one – but ideally two – of the other favorites. However, this is where being able to predict winners independently is more valuable.
With two five-round fights, it’s a bit easier. I prefer to just lock in all four fighters. This gives you an average salary of $8,800 to find two more wins in your roster. That’s significantly better than the $8,333 average salary per fighter, and should be enough to give you two clear favorites.
Depending on your confidence level though, fading one of the fighters is fine as well. Don’t get overconfident on extreme underdogs though. I made this mistake in fading Julianna Pena vs. Amanda Nunes – and we saw how that worked out. I’m far more likely to employ this strategy if there’s another fighter in the underdog’s price range who I like.
Don’t fade a five-round underdog just to fade them – there needs to be a reasonable pivot.
Tournaments
Now for what you’re really here for — how to take down a tournament. I was able to pull ownership and results from the last 15 five-round fights (taking place over 11 slates). The winning lineup was mostly taken from the 5,882 entry “MMA Hook” contests. That’s a big enough field that usually somebody finds the optimal lineup, though that’s not necessarily the case.
First, let’s take a look at which fighter ends up in the optimal (or in some cases, GPP-winning) lineup:
As a caveat, there was a fairly improbable string of underdog winners in five-round fights over this period. This won’t always be the case, but it’s still a solid strategy. One reason why is that it’s very hard for an underdog to win without being in the optimal lineup. By definition, they cost no more than $8,000 on DraftKings. They will almost always score enough points in a five-round decision or with a stoppage bonus to be one of the best points-per-dollar options on the slate.
The only exception to this rule that I found in these contests was when Rose Namajunas defeated Weili Zhang in the co-main event at UFC 268. There are a few confounding variables though. First, there was another five-round fight on the card. Second, while Rose closed as a slight underdog in betting markets, she had the higher DraftKings salary.
DraftKings releases salaries early in the week, and sometimes line movement causes the cheaper fighter to end up as a slight favorite. There were also seven knockout victories on the 14-fight card, which is fairly high. That makes a split-decision winner – even with five rounds – less likely to be in the optimal.
The favorite, on the other hand, is more likely to win the fight but not win you a GPP. Both of the “neithers” in the chart above came from fights where the favorites won. I highlighted that possibility for UFC 271. That event is a fairly solid example of how this can happen. Israel Adesanya was a heavy favorite, and cost $9,200 on DraftKings. However, his odds of winning by stoppage weren’t great, nor is/was his activity rate.
Adesanya of course won the fight, but he scored only 75.4 DraftKings points. With the winning lineup averaging over 14 points per $1,000 of salary, Adesnaya’s 8.2 wasn’t nearly enough. Had Robert Whittaker won with a similar score, he would’ve been at nearly 11 Pts/$1,000. That would’ve been at least close to enough to help your lineups.
Ownership
The other obvious advantage to rostering underdogs is the ownership discount. The field tends to roster underdogs far less than they should, relative to their betting odds. For example, Rob Font was rostered by over 62% of the field. His betting odds (-150) imply a 60% chance of winning. That’s an edge even if the field has one of the fighters from his fight. That wasn’t the case though: only 17% of the field was on his opponent, Jose Aldo.
With Aldo having a roughly 40% chance of winning, that’s a huge leverage opportunity.
Feel free to go through the past ownership and betting odds of such underdogs. More often than not, you’ll find these fighters are undervalued based on their betting lines. (I’d be happy to share any ownership data I’ve collected via Twitter.) That’s assuming betting lines are efficient as well. If you can find underdogs more likely to win than the betting market implies, you’re in an even better spot.
Underdogs average roughly 29% ownership overall and makeup just 34% of the “five-round fight” ownership in these contents. Therefore, if you can find underdogs at +200 or less, they’re generally a good play. (+200 odds convert to a 33% chance of winning. When we remove the vig, it works out to over the 34% threshold.)
Given the size of the fighter pool, managing the ownership of your lineups is crucial for MMA. Avoiding the dreaded “dupe” is important. Even if you win slightly fewer contests, winning those with a unique lineup (and not splitting the first place prize) is more profitable over time. That’s why we want to roster fighters not based on how likely they are to win/put up a good score. We want to roster fighters that are more likely to have a good score than the field thinks.
Five-round fight underdogs is a very solid starting point.
Wrapping Up
Speaking very generally, maximizing the number of five-round fighters in cash games is ideal. While there’s some more nuance to GPP strategy, we always need the cheaper fighter on DraftKings if they win. Most of the time, we need winning favorites as well, though this is less set in stone.
Our MMA breakdowns, which can be found here can help highlight some of those situations.
Good Luck!
