Betting on MMA and the UFC in the UK

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

Online bookmakers offering MMA/UFC betting

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£20 free bet welcome offer

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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 bet on a sport like MMA and it’s
largest tournament the UFC.

In the recent years we have seen how the big names in the UFC have
gained more and more attention, maybe it’s because 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 and the 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: In
advance 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 2^nd
round, or if a round will have Over/under a certain amount of
takedowns, punches or similar.

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 or the UFC

When placing a bet on the UFC it can
be good with some well researched MMA or 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 brake 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.

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 fighter in a show fight. We
also have ONE Championship which is Asia’s nr. 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.