UFC 332 Underdog Pick: King Green vs. Esteban Ribovics

Many feel the way that you have to bet on UFC is parlaying heavy favorites together, but underdogs win approximately 35% of the time in the world’s largest MMA promotion. Don’t be afraid to hunt for plus money.

Years ago, I developed a predictive model that uses in-fight stats and fighter attributes to simulate UFC fight outcomes — so long as the combatants had at least 30 completed octagon minutes or 5 total fights. I found that, in the UFC, moneyline favorites are usually overvalued.

How is that possible? Well, in a fight environment with as many variables per second as MMA, it’s hard to see the difference between -150 and -350 in real time. Great bets can lose. Terrible bets can win by lucky measures.

Every week, I’m going to give you my favorite underdog bet of the week. They’ll usually be showing value in my model, and I’ll explain their path to victory.

Here’s my favorite bit of plus money available for UFC 332: Silva vs. Wang. Note: All fight odds come via Polymarket, the official prediction market of UFC. 

Swaim’s Underdog of the Week: King Green (+190)

Model Odds: +111 

Model’s Favorite Exact Outcome and Implied Odds: Decision (+291) 

I’ve been here before. Since starting MMA betting analysis formally in 2020, I’ve bet on King Green four times as an underdog and cashed. This seems like a good week to push it to five.

Of course, there have also been bets as a favorite or brutal beats in an underdog position — such as losing to Thiago Moises despite a +43 striking differential. I still don’t know what fight the judges were watching. But, I’ve sort of supported Green’s late-career charge all the way through, and I think he’s just now getting the flowers he deserves.

The Californian’s +2.86 striking success rate (SSR) is a demonstration of greatness across a sample of 342 octagon minutes. His striking defense (62%) would be the best inside the lightweight rankings. Because of lapses in durability against elite power punchers or highlights, I don’t think many have accepted what the analytics say: Green is one of the best 155-pound strikers ever.

This matchup with Esteban Ribovics is interesting. The young brawler pushes a mighty pace at 17.28 significant strikes attempted per minute, but his career just hasn’t jettisoned the way many anticipated after winning four of his first five.

Ribovics lost to Nasrat Haqparast and was involved in tight decisions against Daniel Zellhuber and Elves Brener. All three, at the moment, are well outside the rankings, and the first two are former King Green opponents.

I’m not a giant advocate of “win-loss” MMA math, but I do think striking and/or wrestling performances can translate between matchups. Green posted a +112 striking differential against Haqparast; Ribovics was at +12. Similarly, King styled on Zellhuber for a +69 striking differential and found the knockout while Ribovics (+35) fought much closer.

I think a good chunk of this betting line is the fact that Green is 40 with plenty of attrition, but Ribovics (0.43% knockdown rate) just hasn’t had one-shot power in a vacuum when Green’s defense is still elite.The underdog’s striking accuracy and defense are both at least 8 percentage points higher. If this isn’t a quick meme, how is the fight at least not extremely competitive?

That’s ostensibly what my model believes. I’ve got Ribovics about 20.8% likely to find a knockout, but after that, it normalizes to quite an even fight. The difference between a Ribovics decision (26.3%) and Green decision (25.6%) is fairly negligible.

At nearly two-to-one odds, the underdog is easily the side, and it didn’t hurt that this fight — at elevation in Salt Lake City — could be impacted by Ribovics missing weight on Friday.