UFC Fight Night 289 fan picks: the 10x Fan Ticket vs the odds
UFC Fight Night 289 fan picks vs the odds: the seven bouts our pick'em voters agree on most, stacked into a 10.18x Fan Ticket, and the fights where they split.
Seven people have made a pick for Montel Jackson vs Ricky Simon on our pick'em board. All seven took Jackson. The sportsbooks have him at -224, which works out to about a 66 percent chance once the margin is stripped out. The crowd is sure. The market is only fairly confident.
That gap is the reason the Fan Ticket exists. Starting tonight, the ticket on every UFC event page is no longer built by us. It is built from your picks: we take each bout on the UFC Fight Night 289 card, find the side the fans back by a clear majority, rank the bouts from most united to least, and stack them at the consensus line until the ticket reaches 10x. Then it stops. Nobody here gets to swap a leg for one they like better.
This is a record of what the fans think, priced by the books. It is not betting advice, and it is for readers 18 and over.
The ticket
Seven legs made it, and together they pay 10.18x, or +918 in American odds. A $100 ticket would return $1,018 if every leg lands. The books, adding up their own numbers, give all seven about a 7.3 percent chance.
| Pick | Opponent | Fans | Price | Books |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Montel Jackson | Ricky Simon | 7 of 7 | -224 | 66% |
| Yazmin Jauregui | Vanessa Demopoulos | 6 of 6 | -968 | 87% |
| Mehemmedeli Osmanli | Ilimbek Akylbek Uulu | 8 of 9 | -291 | 71% |
| Raul Rosas Jr. | Raoni Barcelos | 28 of 41 | -155 | 58% |
| Rinya Nakamura | Brady Hiestand | 7 of 10 | -379 | 76% |
| Valesca Machado | Melissa Amaya | 5 of 7 | -214 | 65% |
| Rodolfo Bellato | Christian Edwards | 4 of 6 | -180 | 62% |
The order is the order the fans set. A bout with a thin sample is pulled toward 50-50 before it is ranked, so a 5-0 split does not jump ahead of a 40-5 one on five votes. That is why Raul Rosas Jr., picked by 68 percent of 41 people, sits fourth, above Nakamura's 70 percent of 10.
Every leg is a favorite. Nobody designed it that way. The fans simply agree hardest where the books already lean, and they lean harder than the books almost everywhere, most of all on Jackson: 100 percent against 66. Mehemmedeli Osmanli (12-1) comes closest after him: 8 of 9 fans against a book price that says 71 percent.
Rosas Jr. is where the crowd actually showed up
Photo: Chamatkar Sandhu / CC BY 3.0
Forty-one picks on the main event, more than on any other two bouts combined. Twenty-eight of them went to Rosas Jr. (12-1, ranked 12th at bantamweight), thirteen to Raoni Barcelos (22-5, ranked 13th). The books have Rosas Jr. at -155, about 58 percent, so the fans are roughly ten points more confident than the market in the headliner.
It is also the most honest leg on the ticket, because it is the one with a real sample behind it. Seven for seven on Jackson is a strong signal from a small room. Twenty-eight of forty-one is a crowd, and a crowd that still left almost a third of the room on Barcelos. If you want to know how divided the fan base is on this card, that 68 percent is a better guide than any of the perfect scores above it.
The women's strawweight legs sit at opposite ends of the price range. Yazmin Jauregui (11-2) at -968 barely moves the ticket, and 6 of 6 fans took her over Vanessa Demopoulos. Valesca Machado (15-4) at -214 against the unbeaten Melissa Amaya (8-0) does far more of the lifting, on a thinner 5 of 7.
Where the fans part ways with the books
The ticket stopped at 10x, so four bouts with a clear fan majority never made it on. Two of them are the most interesting results on the whole board, because in both the fans picked the underdog.
On the prelims, 7 of 11 took Robert Bryczek (18-7) over Rodolfo Vieira (11-5), who is -167 with the books. Five of 8 went with Elves Brener (16-6) at +107 over Josiah Harrell (11-1). Had the fans been more united on either, the ticket would have looked very different.
The other two went the books' way, just less firmly. Luis Hernandez (8-0), who took the Sedriques Dumas fight when Mickey Gall came off the card, drew 14 of 24 picks at -245. John Castaneda drew 5 of 8 at -383.
Where the fans split
Norma Dumont vs Ailin Perez is the co-main, a women's bantamweight fight between the fourth- and fifth-ranked contenders, and the pick'em board is tied at 5 each. A tied bout has no fan side, so it cannot be on the ticket. The books lean Perez at -162, about 59 percent. The fans have not decided, and on a fight between two top-five contenders, that seems about right.
The math
- Combined price: 10.18x (+918)
- The books' chance that all seven land: about 7.3 percent
- Fan picks behind the seven legs: 86
One caution you can act on: seven bouts on one card are not seven independent coin flips. Results on the same night tend to move together, so treat the books' 7.3 percent as an estimate rather than a hard number.
The ticket settles on the event page as the results come in, leg by leg. If you disagree with it, the fix is simple: make your own picks. The next Fan Ticket is built from them. Fan picks, not betting advice, 18+.