Online MMA Bet Types Explained

by Rae Dover
| 30/08/2020
 

MMA Bet TypesMixed martial arts can bring many betting opportunities your way. It's because top online sportsbooks tend to have a large selection of MMA betting markets in their offer. We are now going to discuss the most popular of those markets.

MMA Moneyline Betting

Same as with any other sport, the moneyline in MMA also focuses on the winner. How it works is that you put your money on one fighter and if he/she wins the fight, you win the money. If not, both of you end up losing.  With MMA online betting, you usually have two options in the moneyline market – Fighter A or Fighter B. A draw is almost never offered by online bookmakers, the reason being that such scenarios don’t play out very often. Actually, it took 18 years for the UFC to see the first MMA draw in its history.

If it does happen in the fight you’ve bet on, the sportsbook will probably make your bet void. This means that you’re going to get your entire stake back, without losing any money.   

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Method of Victory

In addition to betting on the fight winner, you can also bet on the method through which the win is going to come. There are several MMA bet types that belong to this category, namely the following:

  • Victory by knock-out – If this is your betting choice, you’re going to win if one of the two fighters defeats the other one by this knocking them out.
  • Victory by technical knock-out – If the referee declares one of the fighters the winner due to a TKO, you’re going to win.
  • Victory by submission – If one of the two fighters taps-out, your bet is going to win.
  • Victory by opponent’s disqualification – A fighter can get disqualified for eye gouging, hair pulling, or any other foul, their opponent is going to be awarded a win.
  • Victory by points – If there’s no winner after the final bell, it’s the job of three MMA judges to declare the match-winner.

If you don’t know that the terms like technical knock-out or submission mean, you better check out the beginner’s guide to online MMA betting. That’s where you can read all about the words commonly used in the mixed martial arts lingo.

MMA Round Betting

What is the maximum number of rounds in an MMA fight is something that depends on the rules of the promotion. For example, the UFC allows fights to last up to either three or five rounds. Regular fights last no more than three rounds, while title fights and main event bouts usually have five rounds.  A big percentage of fights finish before the final bell, which is the reason why round betting has become one of the most popular MMA betting types.  You can bet on Over/Under markets, but also on the exact round when the fight is going to end. If you think that the fight will see the maximum number of rounds, you should put your money on the wager type commonly called “to go the distance.”

Combo Bets

Some bookmakers come up with combination bets on their own; others let the bettors make them using a bet-builder. Whatever the case might be with your preferred sportsbook, you should definitely pay attention to this wager type.  The reason is that not only can this type of bet be very interesting, but it can also bring more money your way. To understand why MMA combo bets have a higher money-making potential, first, you need to learn how they work.  As its name suggests, an MMA combo bet combines two or more bets. You can bet on the match-winner, plus the method of victory. An example of this bet would be “Khabib to win by submission”.   You can also add round betting to the equation, in which case, the aforementioned bet would be “Khabib to win by submission in round 3”.

MMA Futures

MMA is not like most other sports in the sense that there isn’t a season with a specific start and end dates. This means that you can’t make the so-called future bets on who’s going to win the season. However, you can bet on which fighter will have the championship belt at the end of the year.  You can also bet on the fights that are going to happen weeks or even months in the future. In fact, some sportsbooks even let you bet on potential fights that are still far from being confirmed. A good example of this is the highly-anticipated bout between Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov.

This fight can be found in the betting offers of many online sportsbooks. The reason for that is that the two lightweight fighters were supposed to go toe-to-toe many times in the past, but their fights ended up canceled every time.

Exotic MMA Bets

Exotic bets, specials, props – whatever you may call them, these MMA bet types are the ones that don’t have anything to do with what’s happening inside the cage.  Instead, these bets are focused on more trivial things. To give you an idea of what these bets entail, here are some examples:

  • Tony Ferguson to choose US National Anthem as his entrance song.
  • Khabib to mention his late father in the post-fight interview.
  • Donald Trump to tweet about the next UFC event.

In many cases, sportsbooks offer bets like these in order to hype up an upcoming MMA event. If that’s the case, the odds are often much more attractive than they should be, which gives you an opportunity to win big.  

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