UFC 329 Elo stakes: Bautista, Pimblett and a McGregor upset could reshuffle three top 15s

Conor McGregor gets the marquee at UFC 329 on Saturday. The Combat Edge Elo model gives him a 37% chance of taking it. The bigger ranking damage sits two and three fights down the card.

Three bouts at T-Mobile Arena pit ranked fighters against each other inside brutally compressed Elo ladders. In two of them, the winner climbs into a top-10 or top-five, and the loser slides most of a division. That's where a UFC card actually rewires the Combat Edge Elo rankings.

The main event is loud. The undercard is heavier.

Start with the fight everyone bought the card for. Max Holloway carries a 1817 Elo into his welterweight debut against Conor McGregor at 1792. Combat Edge tags both "Great," and the model reads it 63/37 for Holloway. Strip out the stylistic inputs and the Elo-alone line tightens to 54/46.

Holloway ranks sixth at lightweight, the division his rating was built in. A clean win pushes him to about 1832 and up to third at 155, past Ilia Topuria and Mateusz Gamrot on the lightweight ladder. A loss is the interesting outcome. McGregor, a 22-6 fighter who finishes 86% of his wins, would bank roughly a +26 Elo swing as the underdog on a stoppage — his biggest single move in years — and land near 1818. Holloway would shed most of 20 points and fall to about ninth at lightweight, under Charles Oliveira and Dustin Poirier.

Big number, real name, genuine swing. It just doesn't move a ranked fighter past another ranked fighter the way the next two fights do.

Bautista vs Sandhagen: the card's biggest possible jump

The bantamweight co-headliner is the one to watch if you care about the 135-pound rankings. Mario Bautista sits 10th at 1774. Cory Sandhagen sits 14th at 1765. Between fifth and 15th, the entire division is stacked inside 23 Elo points — the tightest traffic jam on the card.

That compression is what makes this fight dangerous to a ranking. Combat Edge favors Bautista at 70%, and a Bautista win of about +16 (more on a finish) lifts him to roughly 1790 and into the top five, leapfrogging Bryce Mitchell, Raoni Barcelos, José Aldo and Patchy Mix in one night.

Sandhagen is the model underdog, and an upset is the single most violent ranking move available this weekend. A Sandhagen finish would be worth close to +25 as the lower-rated man, dragging him from 14th to around fifth. Nine spots. The loser doesn't get off easy either: drop this fight and you're looking at a fall to 15th or below, out of the picture in a division this deep.

Saint-Denis vs Pimblett: a top-15 lightweight collision

The lightweight fight is the same trap in a different weight class. Benoit Saint-Denis is 11th at 1787. Paddy Pimblett is 13th at 1780. The names between ninth and 14th — Grant Dawson, Alexander Shabliy, Saint-Denis, Salahdine Parnasse, Pimblett, Abdul-Aziz Abdulvakhabov — sit inside nine points.

Saint-Denis is the 66% model favorite and riding a +17 last move. Win, and he's around 1805 and up to ninth, cracking the top 10 for the first time. Pimblett has the louder upside. He's trending the wrong way (-10 on his last outing), but an upset finish worth roughly +25 would rocket him from 13th to around ninth and, more to the point, over Saint-Denis. Two ranked lightweights walk in; one walks out three or four spots higher and the other drops to the edge of the top 15.

One more to log quickly: Farid Basharat opens the card at fifth in the bantamweight rankings at 1787, unbeaten at 15-0, against unranked John Garza. A win barely nudges his number. A loss to a 1612-rated opponent would be a −28 landslide that guts him to 15th. High risk, almost no reward — the classic ranked-favorite tax.

Combat Edge take

The McGregor circus will pull the headlines and most of the money, and if he actually beats Holloway it's the biggest Elo swing of the night — a former two-division champ vaulting back into the elite tier after five years mostly away. We're not talking anyone out of watching the main event.

But the rankings math points down the card. Bautista–Sandhagen and Saint-Denis–Pimblett are the fights where a single result moves a fighter four to nine spots, because both divisions are welded together so tightly at the top that a normal 16-to-25-point Elo swing skips a fighter over half a dozen names. That's rare. Most cards spread their ranked fights across divisions where a win nets one or two places. UFC 329 stacked four ranked-versus-relevant bouts into two ladders that can't absorb the shock.

Our pick for the fight that reshapes the most: Bautista–Sandhagen. A Sandhagen upset is the only outcome all weekend that jumps a fighter nine spots and lands him in a top five. If you're tracking where the Elo rankings actually break Saturday night, watch the co-main, not the walkout.

Keep in mind that we are aiming for our CE Elo rankings to represent the best fighters in the whole world. Not only the UFC roster — even though most of them are already obviously on that roster.