Making money betting on boxing comes down to a keen consideration of four fundamentals. First, you have to have to be knowledgeable about the boxing event you intend to wager on. Second, an astute knowledge of boxing betting types required. Third, there are a number of boxing betting tips and strategies that must be followed and inculcated in your wagers. Fourth, and very notably, your unbridled focus should be on placing value boxing bets rather than just wagering on the boxing lines for the hell of it. In this boxing betting guide, we will be expounding on these four elements and how to use them to encourage long-term profitability in the sport.
4 Things You Must Consider Before Betting on Boxing
1. Boxing Events
Boxing fights generally come in three classes–lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight– and each of these boxing classes has a championship belt that is contested by all boxers in that group throughout the year. These championship title fights constitute the majority of the year-long events that we have in every boxing calendar year. There are, however, other boxing events besides the championship fights. These include, but aren’t limited to Olympic boxing during Olympic events, feature fights involving big-name fights and promotional boxing events for special causes.
How fighters approach title fights is usually different to how they approach other events like Olympic fights. For example, most championship events are scheduled such that some fighters participate in two or three bouts in a year, which means plenty of time for preparation for the contestants as well as the boxing bettors. In contrast, the Olympic events are usually held for a short duration (roughly in a two-month span), so the fighters and bettors have little time to prepare for the event. And with that short time to rest between one Olympic fight and another, you need to be very good at comparing the two fighters and finding who is likely to have the edge, especially with the Olympic boxing events often involving many unknown fighters.
2. Boxing Betting Types
Knowing how to choose a given type of boxing bet or wagering on the odds of a given fighter is just as important to winning as knowing the event to bet on. And as you probably know already, there are several types of boxing bets, including:
Who will win fight outright
What will be the fight outcome
What will be the method of victory
How many rounds will the fight go
Will there be odd/even number of rounds in the fight
What will be the judges scorecard totals,/
On top of these common types of boxing bets, we also have special boxing wagers, commonly known as prop bets, where you can bet on virtually anything from who will land the first punch to the total number of knockdowns in the bout. These special bets, just like the regular bets, vary from one sportsbook to another. As a bettor, it is important that you find an area (or areas) that you are most comfortable betting on, and then find a boxing sportsbook that will be able to care to your betting needs.
3. Boxing Betting Strategies and Tips
There are so many dynamics involved in boxing betting, but you can wade through them all and encourage profitability in boxing betting by arming yourself with solid boxing betting strategies and tips. Examples of the tips that can come in handy here include doing research on the fighters regarding key fighting aspects such as boxing styles, form from previous fights, injuries and physical condition of the fighters, and motivation for winning, among others. A key consideration of other miscellaneous factors such as location of the fighter, tale of the tape (standard listing for things like age, height, weight, reach, experience and record) is also crucial when handicapping boxing fights. By learning about such factors and considering them in your bets, you are more likely to find a useful edge that will often lead you to more wins than losses in your boxing bets.
4. Value Betting in Boxing Odds
While elements like the nature of the boxing event or boxing betting strategies are fundamental to success in boxing betting, it’s hard to guarantee profitability—especially over a long term—if you do not consider the importance of value betting.
As a pivotal rule, you should only bet when there is an angle for value in that wager. Searching for value in boxing betting simply means that you need to find instances where you believe that the outcome of your bets are more likely to occur than what is suggested by the odds. For example, if you feel that OVER/UNDER bet of a 12-round fight is more likely to be on less than 10 rounds as opposed to going more than 10 rounds, then the value betting rule advises you to look for the best UNDER 10 rounds odds and bank on that.
Still on placing value boxing bets, you should always ensure that you compare the lines from one site to another to find which book offers the best odds for what you are interested in betting on. Alternatively, you can source such information from the many boxing odds comparison sites that are abundantly available on the internet. And above everything, avoid laying too much juice on the betting lines by wagering on heavy favorites. Doing so comes with plenty of risk and little reward, so you’d rather wait to bet on those instances where the odds look profitable, be it when you bet on a favorite or an underdog.
