Anatomy of a 25-0 Run: Every Fight, Every Close Call
One seeded career · build average 93.25 · 5,000 follow-up careers on the same build
By Haaris A · Published October 13, 2026 · 8 min read · How we work
The short version
A 25-0 is not proof of a great build. It is a good build surviving the six or seven fights where it is genuinely exposed. The build in this guide averages 93.25 across its eight attributes, which is a typical good draft, not a miracle. Run it through the career simulator 5,000 times and it goes undefeated 9.66% of the time, wins 22.62 fights on average and takes 2.14 losses. The median career with this build ends its unbeaten streak at fight 10. We simulated careers with a fixed seed until one finished 25-0, and it took 5 tries. That is what “good build” means in this game.
Below is that career in full: the draft that made the build, the 25 opponents, the win probability the simulator assigned to each fight, and what the run teaches about how to draft for your own. Every probability in the table is the number the simulator actually used, not an estimate. The chance of the build producing exactly this result, the product of all 25 win probabilities, was 9.44%.
The draft: two weak spots hidden by six strong ones
The draft was played in Prime mode with no rerolls, by a bot that takes whichever attribute beats a typical board by the most. These were the eight picks.
| Attribute | Fighter | Rating | Spun from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Boxing | Conor McGregor | 96 | lightweight |
| Strength | Jimi Manuwa | 87 | light heavyweight |
| Durability | Marlon Vera | 95 | bantamweight |
| BJJ | Fabricio Werdum | 98 | heavyweight |
| Wrestling | Henry Cejudo | 98 | flyweight |
| Cardio | Brandon Moreno | 94 | flyweight |
| Kickboxing | Erik Koch | 84 | featherweight |
| Fight IQ | Charles Oliveira | 94 | lightweight |
Three picks carry the build. Henry Cejudo supplied a 98 in wrestling and Fabricio Werdum a 98 in BJJ, both the best number on their respective boards. Conor McGregor added a 96 in boxing in round one. Marlon Vera at 95 durability and Charles Oliveira at 94 Fight IQ are the quieter picks, but they matter more than they look. Fight IQ is the most valuable attribute in the simulator by a wide margin, and a 94 is a strong return for it. Our guide to the best build in every division prices that precisely.
The soft spots are Jimi Manuwa’s 87 in strength and Erik Koch’s 84 in kickboxing. The kickboxing pick was forced: round seven’s board topped out at 84, and with no rerolls and one open slot per round the choice was “take it or waste the round.” The strength pick was the opposite, a considered decision. Round two’s best number was a 92, but in an attribute that is easy to find elsewhere, while a typical board’s best strength number is only about 85. An 87 in the scarcest attribute beats a 92 in an abundant one. Strength is also the slot that greedy drafters, who simply take the biggest number each round, most often get stuck filling last.
Fights 1 to 7: the cap does the damage, not the opponents
The first seven opponents are rated between 71 and 85, and the build is a heavy favourite against all of them. Six of the seven sit at the simulator’s 95% ceiling. That ceiling is the first thing to understand about 25-0: no fight is ever better than 19-to-1, however good your build is. Multiply seven fights at roughly 95% and the product is 65%. Before the run has met anyone dangerous, there was already a 35% chance it was over.
That is why the early game is not “free.” The median first loss for this build lands at fight 10, so half of all careers are already over by then, and the simulator makes no distinction between losing to a 71-rated opponent and a 90-rated one. A loss is a loss. Nothing you can draft removes this tax, which is the argument for not chasing a 97-average build when a 93 is within the same band of outcomes. We run the numbers on that ceiling in the best-builds-by-division guide.
Fights 8 to 14: where the schedule bites
The matchmaking target climbs by about two points a fight for a career that keeps winning, and the opponents follow it. Fight 8 was a title shot against Alexandre Pantoja, rated 87, a 81.1% proposition. The build won by submission in round three and became champion. Fight 10 was Brandon Moreno (86, 85.1%), who happens to be the fighter the build’s cardio came from. Drafted fighters stay in the opponent pool: a flyweight you drafted from is a flyweight you can fight.
Fight 13 was the closest call of the run. Demetrious Johnson, rated 90, was a 69.1% fight, the lowest figure on the card. The build knocked him out in round one. The seven fights from 8 to 14 together carry a survival probability of 38%, almost exactly the 38% of the eleven fights from 15 to 25 combined. The danger is not evenly spread: this single seven-fight stretch is as hard to survive as the whole back half.
Fights 15 to 25: the belt makes the back half easier
The unbeaten target hits its 92 ceiling around fight 14 and stays there, and the cardio penalty starts after fight 15. With a 94 in cardio the penalty here was small, at most about half a rating point at fight 25. You can see how small it is: fight 17 against Joseph Benavidez (92.7%) and fight 19 against Brandon Royval (92.3%) are barely lower than they would have been at fight 10.
The more interesting feature of the back half is the championship. After winning the belt at fight 8, this career defended it at fights 12, 16, 20 and 24, and three of those four defences were against the same opponent, Sergio Pettis, rated 80, at the 95% ceiling every time. That is no accident. A defending champion’s challenger is the career’s designated rival whenever the rival is available, and the rival is drawn from the middle third of the division by rating. Across 5,000 careers with this build, late-career title fights against the rival averaged an opponent rating of 80.5, compared with 83.5 for other title fights and 84 for ordinary fights from fight 16 on.
So winning a title early is real streak protection. It does not change your build, but it converts every fourth fight into a defence against a softer opponent. The flip side is the fight the champion cannot control: Henry Cejudo at fight 21, the same Cejudo whose wrestling carries the build, was the second-lowest probability of the career at 75.9%, and the build won it on the cards.
All 25 fights
| # | Opponent | Rated | Win chance | Result |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yasuhiro Urushitani | 71 | 95% | TKO, round 2 |
| 2 | Ulka Sasaki | 73 | 95% | TKO, round 2 |
| 3 | Raulian Paiva | 75 | 95% | Decision, round 3 |
| 4 | Ben Nguyen | 75 | 95% | TKO, round 2 |
| 5 | Ray Borg | 80 | 95% | KO, round 2 |
| 6 | Tatsuro Taira | 85 | 89.1% | TKO, round 3 |
| 7 | Zach Makovsky | 78 | 95% | Decision, round 3 |
| 8 · title | Alexandre Pantoja | 87 | 81.1% | Submission, round 3 |
| 9 | John Dodson | 80 | 95% | KO, round 2 |
| 10 | Brandon Moreno | 86 | 85.1% | TKO, round 3 |
| 11 | Manel Kape | 83 | 95% | Decision, round 3 |
| 12 · title | Sergio Pettis | 80 | 95% | Decision, round 5 |
| 13 | Demetrious Johnson | 90 | 69.1% | KO, round 1 |
| 14 | Askar Askarov | 84 | 93.1% | KO, round 1 |
| 15 | Amir Albazi | 84 | 93.1% | Submission, round 1 |
| 16 · title | Sergio Pettis | 80 | 95% | Decision, round 5 |
| 17 | Joseph Benavidez | 84 | 92.7% | TKO, round 1 |
| 18 | Deiveson Figueiredo | 85 | 88.5% | TKO, round 1 |
| 19 | Brandon Royval | 84 | 92.3% | Decision, round 3 |
| 20 · title | Sergio Pettis | 80 | 95% | TKO, round 2 |
| 21 | Henry Cejudo | 88 | 75.9% | Decision, round 3 |
| 22 | Tagir Ulanbekov | 82 | 95% | KO, round 1 |
| 23 | Kai Kara-France | 83 | 95% | Submission, round 3 |
| 24 · title | Steve Erceg | 84 | 91.4% | TKO, round 3 |
| 25 | Matheus Nicolau | 81 | 95% | Submission, round 2 |
14 of 25 fights sat at the 95% ceiling and 6 were below 90%: #6 (89.1%), #8 (81.1%), #10 (85.1%), #13 (69.1%), #18 (88.5%), #21 (75.9%). The career finished with 14 KO/TKO wins, 4 submissions and 7 decisions.
Three things the run teaches
First, the random events are decoration. The run shows lines such as “Weight cut crisis — performance penalty this fight” and “Rivalry rematch — same opponent returns.” In the simulator these are labels attached to random non-title fights after the career has already been decided. They do not change a win probability, and the “rematch” labels in this run fell on opponents who never returned. The real rival, Sergio Pettis, appeared three times without any label at all. Do not draft around them.
Second, the build sets the odds and the schedule sets the risk. Six fights below 90% produced most of the danger. Anything you can do to raise those six numbers by even a couple of points, with Fight IQ first, then cardio, is worth more than a marginal gain against the opponents you were already beating at the ceiling. That is also why the career division matters so much: in our test the same style of build went undefeated in 9.4% of flyweight careers and 1.3% of heavyweight ones, which is the subject of our division analysis.
Third, one in ten is the realistic target. Players who go 25-0 once and then fail nine times are not doing anything wrong. The one build this guide follows converts 8.8 to 10.5% of its careers (the 95% range over its 5,000 reruns). That is one build, not a rate for every build in the 93 band. The ceiling for a flawless build is under 28%, because even 25 fights at 95% multiply to about that. Judge a draft by how many wins it averages and how late the first loss tends to arrive, not by whether the one career you happened to simulate was perfect.