UFC 332 Prelims: Why the Model Picks Coria and Doubts Wint

The four fights that run straight into the UFC 332 main card start at 6pm Eastern on Saturday, 3pm Pacific, 4pm in Salt Lake City and 11pm in the UK. On paper it is the quiet block of the night. Its one ranked fighter is moving up a division to meet a debutant, and after Wednesday's late change the eight men in it have 17 UFC fights between them. On Wednesday, when I counted the early prelims, that number was 20.

It is also where our prediction model and the betting market disagree the most. I lined up the current numbers for all 14 bouts. The widest gap on the whole card sits in this block, and so does one of only two bouts on the card where the model takes the underdog.

Here is the block. The first line is the earliest consensus we logged, the market number is the implied chance once the bookmaker margin is stripped out, and the fans column is the pick'em split. All of it is for the fighter listed first. This is information only, not betting advice.

The market has moved toward the favorite in all four bouts since its first line. The model agrees with the market on three of the four favorites. On Pinas and McGhee it lands about six points short of the market, and on Wint it stops at 57.1 percent. It publishes its reasons next to every number, so the doubt can be checked.

Wint vs Armand: the widest gap on the card

Anthony Wint opened at -245 against Lucas Armand on September 25. By Tuesday he was -463, a move I covered in the card-wide odds piece. It kept going, and it is -563 now, 18 sportsbooks deep, an 81.1 percent favorite. Eleven of the 15 fans who have picked the fight took Wint. Our model has him at 57.1 percent. The 24 points between the two are the widest gap of any fight on UFC 332.

The market's case is easy to read. Wint is 8-0 and has finished seven of them. His last four fights all ended in the first round: knockouts of Miles Banks in 31 seconds and Jamahl Tatum in 37 on the regional circuit, a 34-second knockout of Matt Adams on the Contender Series on August 11, and 11 days later, in his UFC debut, a submission of Terrance Chatman at 4:29. Across those last two fights under the UFC banner he landed 18 significant strikes and absorbed one.

Armand is 6-0 with five finishes, all on regional cards, mostly a promotion called War at the Wex. His last recorded fight was a fourth-round TKO of Cameron Graham in March. He has never fought in the UFC, and he is the bigger man: 6'2" to Wint's 5'11", with the same 78-inch reach.

The model sees the same record and stops at 57.1, and its reasons say why. Its biggest pull toward Wint, by a distance, is the level of his opposition, followed by his 2-0 record under the UFC banner and his unbeaten career, and it flags all three as small-sample corrections: pulls that exist because Wint has fewer than three prior fights in its count, not claims that his numbers are better. The one physical factor it lists, size, goes Armand's way. And it has no layoff figure for Armand at all, which is a gap in our data rather than anything about him.

Put plainly, the model leans Wint and refuses to be sure of it on five minutes and three seconds of evidence. The market looked at the same five minutes, plus seven regional finishes, and decided it was sure enough.

Pinas: 48 landed, 48 absorbed

Damian Pinas is 24, from Aruba, 10-1, and has never seen a second round under the UFC banner. He stopped Vitor Costa in 1:45 on the Contender Series, Wes Schultz in 2:30 in his UFC debut on February 28, and Cesar Almeida in 4:44 at UFC 329 in July. Four knockdowns scored, none against him. The market has him at -568, which is 81.2 percent, and nine of 11 fans agree. The model has him at 74.8, about six points short of the market.

Add up those 8 minutes 59 seconds and the significant strike count is 48 landed, 48 absorbed. Almeida landed 37 of his 50 attempts and outlanded Pinas 37 to 25 before he was stopped. That is where the model's hesitation lives, and it is the one reason on its list that goes against him. Pinas absorbs 5.3 significant strikes a minute and avoids 45 percent of what comes at him. Andrey Pulyaev absorbs 2.9 and avoids 55.

Everything else the model lists favors Pinas, and the biggest reason by a distance is the level of the men he has beaten. After that come age (24 against 29), takedown defense (opponents have landed one of seven attempts on him) and Pulyaev's habit of getting controlled, 5.1 minutes for every 15 he fights. Together they put Pinas at 74.8 percent. The striking is what keeps him short of the market's 81.

Pulyaev is 10-5, 1-3 in the UFC, and has lost his last two. In January at UFC 324 he outlanded Ateba Gautier 59 to 34, was knocked down twice, and lost a unanimous decision. In June, Nursulton Ruziboev submitted him in the first round.

McGhee vs Romero: new opponent, new weight

On September 30, Benardo Sopaj came off the card. Marcus McGhee stayed on it, moved up to featherweight, and now meets Anthony Romero, who is 7-2 with one no contest and making his UFC debut.

When this was McGhee against Sopaj, the obvious argument against him was age. McGhee was born on May 7, 1990, and he is 36. Sopaj is 26. The market had been drifting toward Sopaj: McGhee went from -175 to -136, or 55.1 percent, by the last line we logged before the switch.

The first line we logged against Romero, a few hours later, was -365. It is -497 now, 17 sportsbooks deep, which is 79.6 percent. Our model has McGhee at 73.4 percent, a 6.2-point gap. Its reasons, biggest first, are the level of the opposition McGhee has faced, a deeper pro record (13 fights to Romero's nine), a pre-UFC record in which all six of McGhee's wins were finishes, six UFC fights to none, and three inches of height and reach: McGhee is 5'8" with a 69-inch reach, Romero 5'5" with 66.

What the model does not have is Romero's age. There is no date of birth for him in our database, so age, the obvious argument against McGhee before the switch, is simply not in this calculation. That is a hole in our data, not a fact about Romero, and I would rather say so than dress up 73.4 as more than it is.

Romero goes by "The Bully" and fights southpaw, and all seven of his wins came in one regional promotion, UNF. He finished six of them, four by KO or TKO and two by submission. He lost his pro debut by TKO in 2021 and a decision to Johnny Robles in March 2025, and has since won twice, the last a 25-second knockout of Yuma Horiuchi in May.

Both men are bantamweights. McGhee is 15th in the UFC's bantamweight rankings as of the September 29 update, and five of his six UFC fights were at bantamweight, the other at a catchweight. Romero's last seven fights, the no contest included, were all at bantamweight; his first two wins, in 2023, came at featherweight. McGhee turned pro at 29 and fought his way onto that list. Saturday he puts it in front of a debutant, a weight class up, and Romero has no number to lose. The fans are close to split: three picks for McGhee, two for Romero.

Rodríguez vs Coria: the one the model flips

Imanol Rodríguez is 7-0 and has finished all seven. Five came on the regional circuit, then a first-round TKO of Roque Conceição on the Contender Series in October 2025 and a second-round TKO of Kevin Borjas in his UFC debut on February 28, on the same card as Pinas. He is 26. Across those two fights he lands 5.70 significant strikes a minute at 56 percent accuracy.

Alden Coria is 13-3 with one no contest and 3-0 in the UFC: a third-round TKO of Alessandro Costa in September 2025, then unanimous decisions over Luis Gurule in February and Stewart Nicoll in July. He is 28. He lands 4.05 a minute at 42 percent.

The market has Rodríguez at -144, nine of the 12 fans on our pick'em have him too, and there is a receipt behind them. Both men have fought Alberto Trujillo. Trujillo beat Coria by unanimous decision at Fury FC 85 in January 2024. Eight months later, at Fury FC 96, Rodríguez stopped Trujillo at 4:27 of the first round.

Our model gives Coria 54.7 percent anyway. Its single biggest reason is striking, and the part of striking it leans on is defense, not offense. Coria avoids 70 percent of the significant strikes thrown at him. Rodríguez avoids 58.

That 58 has one fight behind it. In the first round against Borjas, Rodríguez was knocked down twice. He came back in the second to land 34 of 62 significant strikes, drop Borjas and finish him at 4:21. It is a comeback that sells a fighter, and it is also the only one of his two fights under the UFC banner in which the other man landed anything: Conceição did not land a significant strike before the stoppage at 2:14.

The rest of the model's case is depth and size. Rodríguez has spent 11 minutes 35 seconds in the cage across the Contender Series and the UFC. Coria has spent 40 minutes 47 seconds in UFC fights alone, and has not been knocked down once. Coria is 5'8" with a 67-inch reach. Rodríguez is 5'4" with a 64-inch reach.

What the model gives Rodríguez is the level of the opposition he has been beating, which carries the same small-sample flag as Wint's, and the unbeaten record he brought into the UFC. It is not enough to outweigh the rest. One fact it does not list: Rodríguez's June booking against Matt Schnell was cancelled, so Saturday comes 217 days after Borjas. Coria last fought 77 days before Saturday.

What a short record is worth

To be sure, the model is not the wiser party by default. It knows the record and nothing about camps or cuts, and on this block the records are short. Five of the eight men have less than 12 minutes in the cage under the UFC banner, Contender Series included, and two of those five have none.

That is the whole disagreement. The market reads Wint's five minutes and Pinas's nine as proof of finishers and makes both of them 81 percent favorites. The model goes most of the way with Pinas, whose wins it rates, and holds back only on the strikes he absorbs. With Wint it sees five minutes and three seconds and stops at 57. The market reads Rodríguez's comeback against Borjas as a reason to back him. The model reads the two knockdowns before it.

The lines, the model numbers and the UFC 332 pick'em stay live until the first bell.

Rodríguez has been knocked down twice in 11 minutes 35 seconds under the UFC banner and won both fights. Coria has not been knocked down in 40 minutes 47 seconds, and the market still has him losing.

Correction, October 2: an earlier version of this article quoted model probabilities affected by a data issue that has since been fixed. The model figures above are the corrected ones, and the betting lines and pick'em counts have been updated to October 2.