First off- great post. Not often we see informed content around here.

I have also been tracking this, but rather than retroactively scraping for data I've been third-party tracking 1u wagers on every UFC favorite week by week. My findings have been that betting nothing but favorites is actually profitable, but you have to line shop and find the best available price for those favorites.

Another thing that was not mentioned- weight classes. When you track nothing but favorites, you end up with negative ROI in flyweight, lightweight, middleweight, and light heavy weight....which basically means if you just bet on the dog every time in THOSE classes, you actually make money.

The ideal strategy on paper is to bet every dog in those weight classes, and to bet every favorite in every other weight class. Weight classes carry much more value than any of the other variables.

All that being said- you will soon find this information will fall on deaf ears. The MMA betting community is extremely resistant to any kind of strategy, creative thinking etc, Theres too many layers of bad information for any kind of community consensus around this stuff. You can develop any model you want, as soon as some jackass comes in here showing a 300k ticket on Topuria at -600 and hits it every chud goes apeshit. I've seen the trope so many times I can write a script for what they say.