Buckley vs Malott: why the line keeps moving toward the underdog

The first price we recorded on Saturday's main event, on October 9, had Joaquin Buckley at +131 and Mike Malott at -151. By Monday night the consensus across 18 sportsbooks was +107 and -130. Take the bookmakers' margin out and Buckley has gone from a 41.8 percent shot to 46.1 in four days, without a single headline to explain why.

That makes this an odd sort of main event. Buckley is ranked three places above Malott on the official welterweight board. He is also the underdog, and he is the one the money has been coming back to. The fans on our pick'em are going the other way: 12 of the 21 who have called the fight took Malott.

UFC Fight Night: Buckley vs Malott is Saturday, October 17, at Rogers Place in Edmonton, five rounds at welterweight on top of 13 bouts. The prelims start at 5 p.m. ET and the main card at 8 p.m. ET; every broadcaster is in the viewing guide. The lines below are information only, not betting advice. I am interested in them because they are the only public record of what people who study this for a living think has changed since the fight was booked.

How the ranked man became the underdog

Buckley (21-8) built his ranking with one of the better runs the division has seen recently. He won six straight between May 2023 and December 2024: Andre Fialho by knockout, Alex Morono on the cards, Vicente Luque by knockout in the second round, Nursulton Ruziboev on the cards, Stephen Thompson by knockout at UFC 307 and Colby Covington by doctor's stoppage in the third round of a main event in Tampa. The Covington win took him to No. 6.

Then he ran into two wrestlers, and the numbers from those two fights are the whole reason this line exists.

Against Kamaru Usman in Atlanta in June 2025, Buckley actually landed more significant strikes, 44 to 41. He lost a unanimous decision anyway, because Usman took him down four times in 13 attempts and held him for 12 minutes and 57 seconds of a 25-minute fight. Against Sean Brady at UFC 328 in May, it was worse. Brady landed 4 of 10 takedowns and controlled Buckley for 12:09 of 15 minutes. Buckley landed five significant strikes all night, from 31 attempts. Brady landed 77.

Two losses, two decisions, no damage that a scorecard would call damage. He slid out of the top seven. That is how a ranking ought to treat a man who loses to two of the best control wrestlers at 170 pounds, and it is also why he is still sitting above a fighter who has won four in a row.

Malott's run, and where it happened

Photo: Btcfight / CC BY-SA 4.0

Malott (14-2-1) is 7-1 in the UFC, and the streak is four: Trevin Giles on the cards here at Rogers Place in November 2024, Charles Radtke knocked out 26 seconds into the second round at UFC 315, Kevin Holland on the cards in Vancouver last October, then Gilbert Burns knocked out at 2:08 of the third in his first main event, in Winnipeg in April. Burns tried seven takedowns that night and landed none. Malott dropped him twice.

He entered the rankings at No. 15 after the Holland win and has climbed into the low teens since. His only UFC loss is the one people still bring up, a third-round knockout by Neil Magny at UFC 297 in January 2024 in a fight in which he had out-controlled Magny 6:02 to 1:47.

Every one of those fights, win or lose, was in Canada. Malott's last six UFC appearances have been in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Edmonton and Winnipeg, and he is 5-1 in them. Buckley has not fought in Canada once in the UFC. Saturday is the seventh straight home fight for a man from Niagara Top Team, who shares the card with his teammate Jasmine Jasudavicius in the co-main.

What the line is reading

Put the career numbers next to each other and they mostly favor the Canadian. Malott lands 3.94 significant strikes a minute at 52 percent accuracy and absorbs 2.83. Buckley lands 3.62 at 36 percent and absorbs 3.10. Their defensive numbers are close, 59 percent of strikes avoided for Buckley and 57 for Malott, and both stop roughly three takedowns in four: 70 percent for Buckley, 73 for Malott.

The takedown figures are where the market's week starts to make sense. Usman and Brady are wrestlers who live on top of people. Malott shoots 1.57 takedowns per 15 minutes, a little more than Buckley's 1.43, and he has barely wrestled in his last two fights. He landed 1 of 4 against Holland. He did not try one against Burns. If Malott is not going to hold Buckley down for half the fight, the evidence from Buckley's two losses mostly stops applying, and what is left is a southpaw with a 76-inch reach and three knockouts in his streak against a man with a 73-inch reach whose one UFC loss came by knockout.

That is the honest case for the move. The honest case against it is the five-for-31 night in Newark. It is hard to argue a man is back to his best from a fight in which he barely threw.

The part nobody can price

Five rounds is new ground for one of them. Buckley has gone 25 minutes once in the UFC, against Usman. Malott has been scheduled for five once, against Burns, and finished it in the third. Buckley is 32; Malott turns 35 next month.

I do not know what the line will be on Saturday. What I can say is that a fighter on two straight losses is being bet toward against a fighter on four straight wins, in his own country, and that the official board still says the man on the losing streak is the better fighter. The board says Buckley. The fans say Malott. The money has spent four days walking from one to the other, and it has not stopped yet.

The fight-week coverage, odds history and pick'em are all on the event page, and the welterweight board is at /rankings/welterweight.