UFC Paris Underdog of the Week: Axel Sola Is Worth a Look at Plus Money

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 Fight Night: Hooker vs. Parnasse

Note: All fight odds come via Polymarket, the official prediction market of UFC.

Swaim’s Underdog of the Week: Axel Sola (+138)

Model Odds: +105

Model’s Favorite Exact Outcome and Implied Odds: Submission (+602)

In several fights on the card, there’s a French fighter in an advantageous spot. The UFC is forcing surging lightweights to jockey for positioning within a loaded division in the co-main event as Lyon’s Fares Ziam battles Nice’s Axel Sola on home turf.

These two actually sort of bring the same physical tools to the table. They’re tall for the weight class at 6’0” tall or larger, and the statistical comparisons are kind of crazy.

Ziam’s striking accuracy is 52% to Sola’s 50%. It’s another two percentage points in striking D (63%) over Sola (61%) for the “Smile Killer”. Both average exactly 1.9 takedowns and 0.5 submission attempts per 15 minutes when rounded, and their takedown defense metrics are just 4 percentage points apart, too.

These close stats aren’t the reason alone to take Sola at plus money, though. He’s just significantly better in two others that matter.

The underdog lands 1.82 more significant strikes per minute, which averages out to an advantage of nearly 30 over the course of a full-length fight. That volume pulls ahead on the scorecards if not for a seminal moment, and Ziam doesn’t produce many of those. Ziam’s 0.51% knockdown rate is well below the divisional standard — and well below Sola’s (1.40%).

Sola is just 1-1 in this division, so many may not trust him opposite a fighter who had a six-fight winning streak before Tom “Big Train” Nolan dominated Ziam for 15 minutes in June.

But, a closer look under the hood is why you shouldn’t just count wins and losses when betting UFC. Those six fighters that Ziam beat felt impressive at the time, but they’re a collective 3-6 with the promotion since they fought him. Only two remain on the roster.

My model weighs the level of competition, and it’s not the gap you’d think here.

While the algorithm does favor Ziam overall (51.1%), it’s a much smaller gap than these implied odds suggest. Plus, I’ve got Sola 31.5% likely to find a finish compared to Ziam’s 14.6%, and that gap in finishing danger is another reason to just take the plus sign that — even in a Ziam win — is likely a competitive one that hits the scorecards.