UFC Paris: full card picks and predictions
Our model's win probability for all 14 UFC Paris fights, the seven favorites it doubts, and a pick with a method for every bout on Hooker vs Parnasse.
Fourteen fights from the Accor Arena on Saturday, prelims at 12:00 pm ET and the main card at 3:00 pm ET, and I want to start with the thing that jumped out of the spreadsheet before I had watched a second of tape.
Our model sits more than five percentage points away from the market's price on nine of the fourteen fights, and on seven of those nine it is the favorite it doubts. Two of the doubts are nearly twenty points wide, and both of them are on the main card, back to back, in the two featherweight fights that open it.
The one fight where model and market are holding hands is the main event, which is the fight everybody has spent the week calling insane.
Dan Hooker vs Salahdine Parnasse, lightweight
Photo: ZACK / CC BY 3.0
Dan Hooker (24-14) is 36, ranked No. 12, and has lost his last two: a second round submission to Arman Tsarukyan in November and a second round knockout to Benoit Saint Denis in January. Six of the ten losses in our database ended inside the distance. He is a City Kickboxing product with a professional kickboxing title behind him and a habit of turning fights into brawls that he narrowly wins, and that habit has aged the way you would expect.
Salahdine Parnasse (23-2) is not a prospect. He won the KSW featherweight title as an interim champion in 2019, then outright, then again in a second reign in 2021, then took the interim lightweight belt in 2022 and unified it in 2023. He has been a champion in that promotion in two divisions for most of the last seven years, his last four wins all ended by knockout or TKO inside two rounds, and the most recent of them was Marcin Held in January. He is a southpaw, he is 28, and he is fighting in France.
Our model gives Parnasse 80.4 percent. The market, once you strip the vig out, has him at 81.9 percent. That is as close to agreement as two independent estimates get, and it is worth noticing that the fight everyone finds absurd is the one place our numbers have nothing to argue about. The disagreements are all further down.
Prediction: Parnasse by TKO, round 2.
Farès Ziam vs Axel Sola, lightweight
The closest fight on the main card by our numbers, and I have written about it separately because it deserves more than a paragraph. Farès Ziam (18-5) lands 2.68 significant strikes a minute and absorbs 1.58, with 63 percent striking defense and a judo base he uses to bank control time. Axel Sola (12-1-1) lands 4.50 a minute and absorbs 4.53, which is the statistical signature of a fighter who wins fights by being willing to be in them.
The model has Ziam at 51.3 percent. The market has him at 57.9. Neither of those is a number you should bet a house on.
Prediction: Ziam by decision.
Michael Page vs Nursulton Ruziboev, middleweight
Michael Page (25-3) has won three straight, including a decision over Jared Cannonier last August, and all three went the distance. Nursulton Ruziboev (36-9-2) has also won three straight, two of them inside the distance, and submitted Andrey Pulyaev in the first round in June. Page has eleven knockouts in our records, Ruziboev four knockouts and a submission in six wins.
I looked at the finish numbers behind this one earlier this week and came away thinking the market's 60 percent on Page is a touch rich for a 39 year old whose recent UFC work has been careful rather than explosive. The model says 52.5. I will take the points and still pick the man throwing them.
Prediction: Page by decision.
Daniil Donchenko vs Punahele Soriano, welterweight
The one fight on the main card where the model likes the favorite more than the market does. Daniil Donchenko (14-2) is 3-0 in the UFC with two knockouts, most recently over Theodor Berggren in June. Punahele Soriano (13-4) has won four in a row and is still a +190 underdog, which tells you what the market thinks of the four names he beat.
Model 71.1 percent, market 67.4. Small edge, same side, and the youngest man in the fight has the better recent tape.
Prediction: Donchenko by TKO, round 2.
Kurtis Campbell vs Trevor Peek, featherweight
Here is gap number one. The market has Kurtis Campbell (8-1) at 76.7 percent. Our model has him at 59.5. That is a 17 point disagreement on a fighter who is 1-1 in the UFC and was knocked out by Danny Silva in London in March.
Trevor Peek (9-3) has lost his last three and none of them by finish, which is the part the price does not reflect. He is a hard man to put away who keeps losing decisions, and at +300 you are being paid as if he is a body. Campbell is the better athlete and probably wins. Probably is doing real work in that sentence.
Prediction: Campbell by decision.
Losene Keita vs Muhammad Naimov, featherweight
And gap number two, the biggest on the card. Market has Losene Keita (16-2) at 75.9 percent, model has him at 56.8, a 19 point spread. Keita's only recent loss is a split decision to Nathaniel Wood in March, which is a good loss, and before it he was finishing people in Oktagon.
Muhammad Naimov (13-4) is coming off a third round knockout loss to Mairon Santos in December, and there is a small piece of poetry in that: Santos is the man who withdrew from the Wood fight on this same card. Naimov beat Bogdan Grad and Kaan Ofli before that. At +310 he is the live underdog our model likes most on the entire card.
Prediction: Keita by decision, and I would not touch the price.
The prelims, quickly
Eight fights starting at noon Eastern, and the interesting thing about them is that all three of the model's outright disagreements with the market live down here.
Nathaniel Wood (23-6), ranked No. 8, faces Pavel Andrusca (7-0), who has never lost and took the fight when Santos pulled out. Market 71.7 on Wood, model 58.6. Wood has no knockouts in our records and eight decisions in twelve wins, so an undefeated short notice opponent is exactly the kind of problem that turns into a long fifteen minutes. Prediction: Wood by decision.
Morgan Charriere (21-12-1) against Felipe Lima (14-2) is the one where the home fighter is the underdog, and both our model (26.8 percent on Charriere) and the market agree on Lima. All five of Charriere's wins in our records are knockouts, so the path exists, it is just narrow. Prediction: Lima by submission.
Mario Pinto (12-0) vs Ryan Spann (24-11) is the cleanest agreement on the card, model 76.3 and market 73.2 on the unbeaten man. Spann has been finished in six of his seven losses in our data. Prediction: Pinto by TKO, round 1.
Oumar Sy (12-2) vs Modestas Bukauskas (20-7): model 70.7, market 66.7, and Sy has an 83 inch reach at light heavyweight. Prediction: Sy by decision.
Now the three flips. Our model picks Fabia Sintes over Michael Aljarouj at 50.8 percent where the market has Aljarouj at 53.4. It picks Luis Felipe Dias over Matthieu Duclos at 58.9 where the market is a coin flip leaning Duclos. And it picks Sofia Montenegro over Delphine Benouaich at 57.2 where the market has Benouaich at 56.8, a 14 point disagreement in a strawweight fight nobody outside France is thinking about. In the last of the eight, Klaudia Sygula over Nora Cornolle, model and market both lean the same way and the market barely does.
Predictions: Sintes by decision, Dias by decision, Montenegro by decision, Sygula by decision.
What I actually think happens
Parnasse gets the finish, because a man who has stopped his last four opponents inside two rounds is fighting a 36 year old who has been stopped six times. The card's money, if you are the sort of person who has it, is on the two big underdogs the model likes on the main card, and I am not brave enough to take either of them straight.
Make your own calls at the UFC Paris pick'em and I will be watching results land on the event page from noon Eastern. Come back Sunday and tell me which of these aged worst.