Champion Mode Cheat Sheet: Who to Trust When the Ratings Are Hidden
2,500 drafted builds per strategy · Year mode · 331 fighters · seed 404
By Haaris A · Published October 13, 2026 · 8 min read · How we work
The short version
Champion mode costs a good player about 1.1 wins per career and cuts the chance of going 25-0 from 9.91% to 3.81%. We simulated a drafter who knows who the big names are and what each is famous for, but cannot see a single number, and compared them with a drafter who sees everything. The memory drafter finished with a build averaging 90.95 against the full-information 92.94. A drafter with no knowledge at all, picking randomly, averaged 82.47 and never went 25-0 once in 2,500 builds.
The loss is not spread evenly. Memory is nearly as good as the numbers for Fight IQ, cardio and wrestling and badly wrong for strength, kickboxing and BJJ. If you know where reputation misleads you, you can claw some of the gap back. That is what the cheat sheet below is for.
What memory gets right, and what it gets wrong
Our memory drafter takes the best-known fighter on the board (by card Overall) and then drafts one of the attributes that fighter is famous for, using the dataset’s own “signature attributes” list. That is a generous model of a fan who knows the sport: it never picks a fighter’s weakness by accident, which a real player sometimes will. Here is how each slot of its build compares with the full-information drafter’s.
| Attribute | Memory drafter | Ratings visible | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strength | 86.7 | 91.2 | −4.5 |
| BJJ | 90.6 | 93.7 | −3.1 |
| Kickboxing | 89.8 | 92.4 | −2.6 |
| Durability | 88.9 | 90.9 | −2.0 |
| Cardio | 92.9 | 94.6 | −1.7 |
| Fight IQ | 94.4 | 95.7 | −1.3 |
| Wrestling | 93.1 | 93.7 | −0.6 |
| Boxing | 91.2 | 91.3 | −0.1 |
Average value drafted in each slot, sorted from the largest shortfall to the smallest.
The gap is biggest in Strength (4.5 points), then BJJ (3.1) and Kickboxing (2.6). It is smallest in Boxing (0.1), Wrestling (0.6) and Fight IQ (1.3). The reason is simple. Fight IQ tracks fame almost perfectly: in the whole dataset there is not a single fighter with a card of 90 or higher and a Fight IQ at or below 82, and not a single fighter with a card of 84 or lower and a Fight IQ of 90 or more. If the name is famous, the IQ is elite, and if it is obscure, it is not. Cardio and wrestling are close behind. Strength is where fame says nothing, because the strongest fighters in the data are heavyweights and the best-known fighters are not.
The cheat sheet: traps and sleepers by attribute
A trap here is a fighter with a peak card of 90 or higher whose rating in that attribute is 82 or lower: a famous name you would be tempted to take it from and should not. A sleeper is a fighter with a card of 84 or lower and a rating of 90 or higher in that attribute: someone you would skip on reputation and should not. The counts show how much each attribute is worth studying.
| Attribute | Traps | Sleepers | How many exist |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fight IQ | none | none | 0 traps, 0 sleepers |
| Cardio | BJ Penn 80, Conor McGregor 82 | Clay Guida 96, Brandon Royval 94, Anthony Hernandez 94 | 2 traps, 18 sleepers |
| Wrestling | Conor McGregor 72, Anderson Silva 76, Max Holloway 78 | Ben Askren 96, Askar Askarov 94, Chael Sonnen 92 | 9 traps, 12 sleepers |
| BJJ | Justin Gaethje 70, Conor McGregor 74, Francis Ngannou 74 | Demian Maia 97, Tatsuro Taira 94, Jussier Formiga 93 | 18 traps, 11 sleepers |
| Boxing | Merab Dvalishvili 80 | Derrick Lewis 93, Calvin Kattar 92, Carlos Ulberg 91 | 1 traps, 6 sleepers |
| Kickboxing | Khabib Nurmagomedov 74, Merab Dvalishvili 75, Glover Teixeira 76 | Edson Barboza 95, Giga Chikadze 94, Rafael Fiziev 94 | 19 traps, 6 sleepers |
| Durability | none | Mark Hunt 95, Roy Nelson 94, Pedro Munhoz 92 | 0 traps, 5 sleepers |
| Strength | Demetrious Johnson 74, Dominick Cruz 74, Frankie Edgar 76 | Shane Carwin 96, Derrick Lewis 96, Greg Hardy 92 | 18 traps, 9 sleepers |
Ratings are each fighter's peak. Name entries listed once even where a fighter appears in two divisions.
The lopsided counts are the message. Kickboxing, BJJ and strength each have 18 or 19 traps among the 90-plus names, while Fight IQ and durability have none. Reputation is a decent guide to who is good. It is a poor guide to what they are good at.
Rules that survive without the numbers
Take the famous Fight IQ without thinking. This is the single safest pick in Champion mode, and it is also the most valuable attribute in the career simulator. If you see a legend or an elite name on the board, take their IQ before anything else.
Be wary of taking kickboxing from a famous wrestler or grappler. Of the 24 names with a peak card of 90 or higher and wrestling or BJJ among their signature attributes, 18 are below 90 in kickboxing. Khabib Nurmagomedov is rated 74, Merab Dvalishvili 75 and Glover Teixeira 76. The exceptions are Jon Jones (95), Rafael dos Anjos (90), Tony Ferguson (90), Charles Oliveira (90), Magomed Ankalaev (90) and Shavkat Rakhmonov (90), so a grappler’s kickboxing is worth taking only when you know the name is one of them. Junior dos Santos, a famous boxer, is a 78. The reverse is the fix: the kickboxing sleepers are volume strikers whose names do not carry a belt. Edson Barboza’s 95 is the best example, and Edson Barboza is the first name to look for on any lightweight or featherweight board.
Treat BJJ as a short list, not a category. Famous strikers and sluggers are the BJJ traps: Justin Gaethje is a 70, Conor McGregor a 74 and Francis Ngannou a 74. The clearest sleeper is Demian Maia: a 97 in BJJ on a card of 84, and his peak BJJ, on a later card, is 98. If you know a name is a pure submission artist, take it even when the card is low.
Go hunting for strength in the heavyweight division. This is where memory loses the most, and it is also where obscurity helps you. Derrick Lewishas a 96 in strength at a card of 83. Shane Carwin matches it. Greg Hardy, Alexandr Romanov and Tai Tuivasa all sit at 92. Mark Hunt’s 95 durability, at a card of 84, makes Mark Hunt a double-purpose heavyweight. If you see a heavyweight on the board and a strength slot open, take the strength; the heavyweight pool has more 90-plus strength ratings than the other seven divisions combined.
Do not skip a wrestler because the name is old. Ben Askren has a 96 in wrestling at a card of 82. Chael Sonnen is a 92 and Jon Fitch a 91, both at a card of 84 or lower. The famous wrestling traps are the opposite type: Conor McGregor 72, Anderson Silva 76, Max Holloway 78, Dustin Poirier 78. Your instinct for who wrestles will carry you most of the way. See Ben Askren for the extreme case.
Does a smarter memory strategy help?
We also tested a drafter that uses what the cheat sheet teaches in its simplest form: it still picks the best-known fighter, but fills the scarcest of that fighter’s signature attributes first, strength before durability before BJJ and so on. It improved the average build from 90.95 to 91.23 and its strength slot from 86.7 to 89.6, but the chance of going undefeated did not move beyond the noise (3.81% against 3.59%). Slot order is worth a point or two on the average. It does not make up the 1.7-point deficit to the player who can see the numbers.
The honest advice is that Champion mode is a different game. You cannot reroll. So play it for the knowledge test it is, and take the memory edge where it is real: IQ, cardio, wrestling.