The Bet: Daniel Zellhuber -130
In just his third bout under the UFC banner, Daniel "Golden Boy" Zellhuber will face Lando "Groovy" Vannata on the undercard of UFC Fight Night: Holloway vs. Allen, in Kansas City Missouri. Neither fighter has taken the UFC by storm. Vannata is 4-6-2 with the promotion since 2016, while Zellhuber is 1-1 to date. However, the Mexican boasts a couple of natural advantages that suggest his record will improve following Saturday's action. Accordingly, we are backing "Golden Boy" on the moneyline versus journeyman opposition.
For one, Zellhuber enjoys a 6" reach advantage. In almost 2,300 fights in the BetMMA.tips database (which dates back to 2013), fighters with more than 3" reach advantages have won at a 55.4% clip. This win rate proved statistically significant different than the 52.4% probability of success implied by average odds for fighters in this spot, at the 99% confidence level. This observation conveys high conviction that the 6% return on investment to this angle is not due to chance, and that reach does in fact matter.
Zellhuber is also about 7 years younger than Vannata. Combatants more than 5 years their opposition's junior have had their hands raised 63% of the time, in roughly 2,700 fights logged by BetMMA.tips. This finding likewise proved statistically significant at the 99% confidence level versus the 58.3% implied probability based on average odds of -140.
Linking these two results, we note that fighters that enjoyed more than 5" reach edges AND that were more than 5 years younger than their competition experienced the thrill of victory 64.8% of the time in 230 instances over about the last ten years. This result too is statistically significantly different than the approximately 56% probability implied by Zellhuber's moneyline odds, at the 99% confidence level.
Moreover, when both fighters were off losses, as is the case for Saturday's action, the younger, longer fighter was an even more impressive 20-7 (74.1%).
Separately, we The Action Network's crowd-sourced odds make Zellhuber the biggest value play among favored fighters on the UFC Fight Night: Holloway vs. Allen card.
The bottom line is that we make Zellhuber a much bigger favorite than current odds suggest. We give "Golden Boy" somewhere between a 65-74% chance of victory, suggesting a price in the range of -185 to -285 as fair. As such, we are happy to lay the -130.
Happy betting!!