The Sheet

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Fight Day Scratches: None

Fighter Notes:

Fight #12

Jessica-Rose Clark

8th UFC Fight (4-3)

After seeing the second round in 14 straight fights, Clark was finished for the first time in her career in a round one armbar against Stephanie Egger. The only other time she’s even had a fight end early since 2014 was in a late third round TKO victory against a terrible Sarah Alpar in 2020, and 13 of her last 14 fights have made it to round three. She followed up the win over Alpar with a grappling heavy decision victory over Joselyne Edwards, that apparently had Clark so hyped up about her wrestling that she severely overestimated her abilities in her next match.

In her last fight, Clark went up against a Judo black belt in Stephanie Egger and foolishly opted to look for a takedown in the opening seconds of the fight. After the two fought for position over the next few minutes, Egger got Clark to the mat and began beating her up before masterfully working her way to an armbar finish. Not much else happened in the fight, but Egger showed she was clearly the superior grappler and it didn’t look close.

Now 11-7 as a pro, Clark has three wins by KO, two by submission, and six decisions. She’s coming off her first early loss in a R1 armbar, with her other six losses all going the distance. Four of her five early wins occurred in her first five pro fights and she only has one finish in her last 13 fights. She’s just 2-3 in her last five matches and could definitely use a win here. Clark started her pro career at 135 lb, but dropped down to 125 lb when she joined the UFC in 2017. However, she had some struggles to make the weight and after starting 2-1 in the UFC at 125 lb, she moved up to 135 lb in 2019, where she’s since gone 2-2.

Overall, Clark has relied much more on her wrestling lately than she had in the past and after landing five takedowns in her first five UFC fights combined, she landed six in her last two matches, despite one of those fights ending in the first round. She’s a decent striker, but hasn’t been any sort of finisher and also doesn’t land a ton of volume. We’ve seen her put on impressive performances against low-level and one-dimensional fighters, but hasn’t shown the ability to defeat higher level opponents. At 34 years old, she still seems in search of her identity as a fighter, and you never really know what you’re going to get from her. She has notably landed at least one takedown in all four of her UFC wins, but failed to land a takedown in two of her three losses. She’s also interestingly been outlanded in significant strikes in four of her last five fights.

Julija Stoliarenko

4th UFC Fight (0-3)

Still in search of her first UFC win, Stoliarenko has lost three straight fights in addition to losing her UFC debut back in 2018 on the The Ultimate Fighter finale. Following that loss, she returned to the regional scene for two years before getting a second shot in the UFC. Three of her four UFC losses have gone the distance, but she was also submitted by Julia Avila, who previously only had one submission win in her career.

In her last fight, Stoliarenko looked really close to locking up an armbar at multiple points in the first round, but the BJJ black belt in Alexis Davis was able to escape danger and hang out in top position. Stoliarenko landed an illegal upkick during a scramble, but the fight resumed and no point was deducted. Stoliarenko had a good second round, outlanding Davis 45-38 in striking in the round. However, Davis secured the fight in round three as she dropped Stoliarenko with a leg kick in the opening minute and then controlled her on the mat for the remainder of the match. The fight ended with Davis ahead 85-56 in significant strikes and 171-93 in total strikes, while landing her only takedown attempt and accruing over nine minutes of control time.

Now 9-6-2 as a pro, eight of Stoliarenko’s nine career wins have come by first round armbar, with her only other victory ending in a 2020 Invicta five-round split decision. She’s been knocked out twice, submitted once, and has three decision losses. She had a strange start to her career, with two late round TKO losses and a pair of draws in her first five pro fights. She’s gone just 1-6-2 in fights that have made it past the first round.

A BJJ brown belt, Stoliarenko is an armbar specialist, with okay striking, but not much variety in her game. She’s predictable both on the feet and the mat and has failed to show much growth as a fighter. She trains out of her home country Lithuania with no other UFC fighters and seemingly lacks high-level training partners, which can explain her lack of growth as a fighter. It seems like she keeps doing the same thing every fight and expecting different results.

Fight Prediction:

Stoliarenko will have a 2” height and reach advantage and is five years younger than the 34-year-old Clark.

It will be really interesting to see how Clark approaches this fight. She just got submitted in a first round armbar and now faces an armbar specialist who has eight first round submission wins. Surely Clark learned her lesson in her last fight and won’t look to take Stoliarenko down early on…right? With that said, we didn’t expect Clark to be looking to take Egger down either, for the exact reason that cost her the fight, so it’s hard to rely on fighters making smart decisions. On the feet this has the potential to turn into somewhat of a brawl, but on the mat Clark will simply be looking for control and ground and pound, while Stoliarenko will do nothing but hunt for armbars. Stoliarenko actually looked decent standing in the only round of her last fight where she wasn’t on her back, so this could be competitive, but the only way we expect it to end early is with a Stoliarenko armbar. While this fight could go a lot of ways, if Clark can avoid getting armbarred we like her to win a decision.

Our favorite bet here is “Stoliarenko R1 Submission” at +1200.

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DFS Implications:

Clark has been a consistent but unspectacular DFS producer, averaging 93 DraftKings points in her four UFC wins. However, the only time she topped 96 points was when a referee was prepared to let Sarah Alpar die in the Octagon, allowing Clark to rack up a ton of extra damage, well after the fight should have been stopped. That was Clark’s only finish since 2014, and she’s generally just a decision grinder. Her combination of grappling and striking general gives her a solid scoring floor, however, now she’ll have to deal with the constant armbar attempts from Stoliarenko if she chooses to go to the mat. Considering that she was just submitted by armbar in the first round of her last fight, she may be less inclined to utilize her wrestling in this fight, which would make it tougher for her to score well without a finish. Who knows though, maybe she’ll throw caution to the wind and jump straight back into the fire and test Stoliarenko’s grappling, which would raise the potential scoring ceiling for each lady. The odds imply she has a 59% chance to win, a 17% chance to get a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.

Stoliarenko has historically been a R1 armbar submission or bust fighter, with eight of her nine career wins coming by R1 armbar. She was nearly able to land one in the first round of her last fight, but wasn’t quite able to complete it. While this matchup looks like a better spot for her, it’s almost too good of a spot after we just witnessed Clark getting armbarred in the first round of her last fight. It’s hard to imagine that Clark hasn’t been using her recent losing experience to prepare for this telegraphed matchup and she would have to be pretty dense to fall into her second straight first round armbar loss. With that said, Clark did at least look vulnerable to getting armbarred, so if Stoliarenko can get this fight to the mat, maybe she can pull it off, who knows. It’s also not impossible that Stoliarenko can win a striking battle, and she was notably able to land 45 significant strikes against Alexis Davis in just the second round alone of her last fight, showing the potential for decent striking volume. At her cheaper price tag, it’s possible she could serve as a value play even with a decision win. Just keep in mind, she’s 1-6-2 in her career in fights that have made it past the first round. The odds imply she has a 41% chance to win, a 21% chance to get a finish, and a 9% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #11

Maycee Barber

8th UFC Fight (5-2)

Fresh off her second straight decision win, Barber’s confidence finally looked to be improving after a pair of shaky performances in her previous two matches after returning from a knee injury. Barber came into the UFC in 2018 following a third round TKO win on DWCS, and proceeded to land three more TKOs against Hanna Cifers, J.J. Aldrich, and Gillian Robertson leading up to a knee injury suffered in a decision loss against Roxanne Modafferi in 2020. While Barber looked rough after returning from the injury, she’s still just 24 years old and finally seems to be getting back on track. In 2021 Barber moved from Roufusport to Team Alpha Male, and the change seems to be doing her some good and putting more of an emphasis on her wrestling.

In her last fight, Barber decided to fight Montana De La Rosa at her own game and came in looking to wrestle from the start. In a fight with nearly 13 minutes of combined control time, Barber was able to outgrapple the grappler, while also finishing ahead in striking. Both fighters were only able to finish with one landed takedown and one reversal, but Barber finished ahead in control time 7:00-5:55, while leading in significant strikes 50-14 and in total strikes 80-41.

Now 10-2 as a pro, Barber has five wins by KO, two by submission, and three decisions. She’s never been finished and both of her losses ended in decisions. The first of those losses was against Roxanne Modafferi when Barber blew out her knee early in the fight. After recovering from knee surgery, Barber looked terrible in her first fight back as she lost a decision to Alexa Grasso. Her depth perception seemed all out of whack as she threw jabs at Grasso from across the Octagon. Following the pair of decision losses, Barber narrowly won a controversial split decision over Miranda Maverick to avoid a three fight skid, and then won a second straight decision in her most recent fight, where she looked far more comfortable. Barber has now gone the distance in four straight matches, after landing six straight finishes prior to her knee injury. Barber’s two submission wins both came in the first round of her first three pro fights. Her last five finishes have all come by TKO, with two ending in round three, two in round two, and one in round one.

Overall, Barber has proven herself to be a dangerous striker and has been rounding out her game with more of an emphasis on wrestling lately. After landing just one takedown in her first four UFC fights combined, Barber has landed five takedowns on 15 attempts in her last three matches. All of those fights were against tougher opponents than she’ll face in her upcoming match, which bodes well for her finding grappling success on Saturday.

Jessica Eye

16th UFC Fight (5-9, NC)

Eye has lost three straight decisions and four of her last five fights. Her last two wins impressively came against tough opponents in Katlyn Chookagian and Viviane Araujo, but she’s since lost three straight decisions to solid, but less talented opponents in Cynthia Calvillo, Joanne Wood, and Jennifer Maia. For context, her decision win over Chookagian was split and Eye showed up 5 lb overweight when she fought Araujo. It’s been three years since that win over Araujo, which was the last time Eye got her hand raised. Eleven of her last 12 fights have gone the distance, with the one exception being a 2019 R2 KO loss to Valentina Shevchenko. The only time Eye has finished an opponent in the UFC came in a second round doctor stoppage in her third UFC fight all the way back in 2014.

In her last fight, Eye lost a close/questionable decision to Jennifer Maia. Eye slightly outlanded Maia in significant strikes 100-98 and in total strikes 104-102. She also landed two takedowns on three attempts, while Maia never attempted a takedown. Eye had her forehead split wide open with an accidental clash of heads, and perhaps all of the blood unfairly swayed the judges in Maia’s favor. Eye also controlled the center of the Octagon for essentially the entire fight, so clearly the judges thought Maia was the one doing more damage as she trailed in every other statistical category. In fairness, it was a close fight and Eye wasn’t able to do much of anything with either of her takedowns, but it seemed like the decisions could have easily gone either way, despite all three judges ruling it in Maia’s favor.

Now 15-10 as a pro, Eye has three wins by KO/TKO, although two of those came in her first three pro fights, one win by submission (2012), and 11 decisions. The only time she’s been knocked out was against Valentina Shevchenko, with her only other early loss ending in a submission in her fourth pro fight. Her other eight losses have all gone the distance. All 15 of her UFC fights have seen the second round, with 13 going the distance. Eye started off fighting at 135 lb in the UFC, but after going 1-5 plus a No Contest, she moved down to 125 lb in 2018. She won three straight decisions following the drop in weight, which was enough to get her a title shot against Shevchenko in 2019, but that’s when things went downhill for her. She got violently knocked out for the first time in her career in that fight and then lost three of her next four, to bring her 125 lb record to 4-4.

Overall, Eye is primarily a boxer, who relies on outlanding her way to decision wins and she doesn’t have a ton of power in her strikes. She’s been taken down 10 times on 21 attempts in her last eight fights since dropping down to 125 lb, while occasionally looking for takedowns of her own. While Eye did a good job of not absorbing a ton of significant strikes early on in her career and has averaged 4.19 SSA/min overall, that number has jumped up to 6.53 SSA/min in her last three fights, and her last three opponents have all landed at least 98 significant strikes against her. She’s also been taken down five times in her last three fights, and overall she’s looked less defensively sound than in the past.

Fight Prediction:

Eye will have a 1” height and reach advantage, while Barber is 11 years younger than the 35-year-old Eye.

This has the potential to turn into a fun striking battle on the feet at times, but we’re expecting Barber to continue to mix in a lot of wrestling. Eye has been taken down at least once by all five of her Flyweight opponents who attempted a takedown. Even if Eye is able to keep the striking numbers close, we expect Barber to be the one inflicting more damage, which when combined with her wrestling should set her apart if this goes the distance. While Barber’s last four fights have all ended in decisions, as have 13 of Eye’s 15 UFC fights, we’re not eliminating the possibility that Barber gets a finish here. If Barber can get Eye in a bad spot either on the mat or covering up against the fence, she’s shown the ability in the past to unload a flurry of strikes to force referees to stop fights. While it’s still far more likely she wins another decision here, there’s not much meat on the bone with her decision line. Regardless, we like Barber to win this fight, most likely in a decision, but with a chance she lands a TKO.

Our favorite bet here is “Barber KO” at +500.

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DFS Implications:

Barber has historically been a KO or bust fighter who has relied on TKO stoppages to return useful scores. Her three finishes in the UFC were good for 111, 93, and 105 DraftKings points, while her two decision wins scored just 54 and 79 points. However, she’s shown a newfound commitment to her wrestling, which presents some theoretical upside moving forward for her, even in fights that go the distance. While we’ve yet to see her put together a completely dominating grappling performance, she faced two solid grapplers in her last two fights after taking on an even tougher Alexa Grasso prior to that. This next matchup looks like her best opportunity since she blew out her knee to put on a complete performance, and she’s going completely overlooked by the field. While Eye has only absorbed an average of 4.19 SS/min over the course of her career, that number has jumped up to 6.53 SSA/min in her last three fights, with all three of those opponents landing at least 98 significant strikes against her. Eye also has a 57% career takedown defense but has been taken down five times on 10 attempts in her last three fights (50%). So overall, she’s showing signs of decline at 35 years old and this could be a spot where we can get ahead of statistical based projections in terms of Barber’s scoring potential. While it’s still more likely than not that Barber fails to outscore the fighters priced around her who have a much higher chance of landing a finish, if she does put on a dominating performance, then she has slate-breaking tournament winning upside as the lowest owned favorite on the card. The odds imply she has a 72% chance to win, a 21% chance to land a finish, and a 10% chance it comes in round one.

Eye has only topped 72 DraftKings points once in 15 UFC fights, which was back in 2014 in her only early win, which resulted from a doctor stoppage. She averages just 3.96 SSL/min and 0.6 takedowns landed per 15 minutes, and has averaged just 68 DraftKings points in her four decision wins. Even at her cheap price tag, she likely needs a finish to end up in tournament winning lineups, and now faces an opponent who’s never been finished in her career. To make matters worse, Eye has lost three straight fights and four of her last five. She lacks the power and submission skills to put opponents away without some sort of freak injury and it’s hard to make any argument for playing her outside of her low ownership. The odds imply she has a 28% chance to win, a 13% chance to get a finish, and a 6% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #10

Andre Muniz

5th UFC Fight (4-0)

This fight had originally been booked back in April, but Hall withdrew and no one wanted to step up and face Muniz on short notice (shocker). Now rebooked two and a half months later, these two have had plenty of time to prepare for one another.

Muniz has landed three straight first round armbar submission wins, with the last two of those coming against grappling legend Jacare Souza, who had previously never been submitted in 35 pro fights, and Eryk Anders, who had previously never been submitted in 19 pro fights. Muniz didn’t just submit Souza, he snapped his arm in two after taking him down twice early on.

In his last fight, Muniz was able to take Anders down a minute into the fight, but Anders was able to survive on the mat and return to his feet. However, Muniz stayed on his back and was soon able to return him to the mat. He then worked his way to a belly down armbar and quickly forced a tap. The fight ended with Muniz landing two of his five takedown attempts with 2:18 of control time in a fight that lasted 3:13. Muniz led in significant strikes 8-3 and in total strikes 12-3.

Now 22-4 as a pro, Muniz has four wins by KO, 15 by submission, and three decisions. While he’s been knocked out in all four of his losses, three of those occurred early on in his career from 2011 to 2013. The only time he’s been knocked out (or lost a fight) since 2013 was 50 seconds into a 2016 match at 205 lb against an undefeated Azamat Murzakanov, who recently landed a third round KO in his UFC debut and has eight first round finishes on his record. Fifteen of Muniz’s 19 finishes have come in round one, three ended in round two, and one occurred in round three. However, 14 of his last 15 early wins have ended in the first round, with the one exception being a 2015 second round arm-triangle choke. Looking at his overall record, 23 of his 26 pro fights have ended early, with 22 of those finishes occurring in the first two rounds and 18 ending in round one. Muniz notably competed up at 205 lb from 2015 to 2017 where he went 3-1 before dropping back down to 185 lb for his first of two DWCS fights. He won a decision in his first appearance on DWCS, but came back a year later in 2019 and landed a first round submission to secure a UFC contract. Now on an eight fight winning streak dating back to his last fight at 205 lb, Muniz has impressively won 16 of his last 17 fights.

Overall, Muniz is one of the most dangerous grapplers on the planet, but doesn’t offer much in terms of striking. He’s only landed 41 significant strikes in his four UFC fights and 22 of those came in his debuting decision victory. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the way you beat him is by forcing him into a striking battle, but that’s easier said than done. He’ll look to get fights to the ground by whatever means necessary, including pulling guard if he has to. He’s landed 7 takedowns on 15 attempts (46.7%) in his four UFC fights, while landing 3 of his 10 attempts (30%) in his two appearances on DWCS. So his takedown accuracy has actually been improving, and he’s landed four of his last eight attempts (50%) in his last two fights. Now he’ll face the 65% takedown defense of Hall, as he goes up against his third straight opponent to enter with no previous submission losses and a 60%+ takedown defense.

Uriah Hall

19th UFC Fight (10-8)

Looking to bounce back from a five-round decision loss to Sean Strickland, Hall had won four in a row prior to that. However, those four wins require some context. His most recent win resulted from an April 2021 freak injury where Chris Weidman snapped his own leg on Hall’s knee on the first landed strike of the match. Hall never even threw a punch in the fight. Prior to that, Hall landed a fourth round TKO win against a 45-year-old Anderson Silva, who was fighting for the final time in the UFC. Looking back one fight further, Hall won a questionable split decision over Antonio Carlos Jr, where Hall was taken down three times and controlled for nearly 11 minutes, while also getting doubled up in total strikes and only finishing ahead 34-22 in significant strikes. The other win during that stretch came against debuting Bevon Lewis, who went 1-3 in the UFC before being released. Overall, all four of those wins came against struggling opponents and Hall caught multiple breaks.

In his recent loss, Hall got dominated for five rounds by Sean Strickland, who finished ahead in significant strikes 186-107 and in total strikes 221-122. After attempting only a single takedown in his previous five fights, Strickland went 4 for 6 on his attempts against Hall and finished with over seven minutes of control time. Strickland’s timing on some of his takedowns seemed misguided as he had Hall hurt at several points on the feet, but instead of looking to finish him with strikes he instead took him down and gave him time to recover. Strickland has shown us at multiple times that he’s far more concerned with securing wins than looking for finishes and his decision making against Hall just reconfirmed that notion.

Now 17-10 as a pro, Hall has 13 wins by KO, one by submission and three decisions. While he’s never been submitted, he’s been knocked out four times and has six decision losses. Five of his nine decisions have interestingly been split or majority (1-4). He’s been knocked out in the first two rounds in three of his last four losses and won by KO/TKO in seven of his last eight wins. Despite so many of his fights ending early, six of his last seven matches have made it out of the first round, with the one exception being the Weidman freak injury.

Overall, Hall is a one-dimensional low-volume striker who averages just 3.47 SSL/min. He hasn’t landed a takedown in his last 11 fights and has just two attempts over that stretch. He’s only won one fight that went the distance since 2014, which came in a questionable split decision. So overall he’s a knockout or bust striker and most of his wins have come against aging vets and low-level opponents. He’s been taken down 17 times on 49 attempts (65% takedown defense) in his 18 UFC fights. However, his last four opponents to try and take him down have landed nine of their 18 attempts (50%), with each of those fighters getting him down at least once and the last two combining for seven takedowns.

Fight Prediction:

Muniz will have a 1” height advantage, while Hall will have a 1” reach advantage. Muniz is five years younger than the 37-year-old Hall.

This sets up as your classic striker versus grappler matchup and the path to victory for both fighters is clear. Muniz needs to get the fight to the ground where he’s as dangerous as anybody on the planet, while Hall needs to keep it standing to hunt for a knockout. While Hall has a decent 65% listed takedown defense, his last four opponents who have tried to take him down have all found success, landing 50% of their attempts. That doesn’t bode well for his chances of remaining upright for very long in this next matchup and will likely leave him reliant on landing an early knockout before Muniz can get the fight to the ground. With that in mind, four of Hall’s last five KO/TKO wins have occurred in the later rounds, with the one exception being his freak injury TKO victory over Weidman, who broke his own leg kicking Hall 17 seconds into the fight. So overall, Hall has not been a fast starter, which isn’t encouraging for his chances of landing a knockout before this fight hits the mat. With that said, all four of Muniz’s career losses have come by KO and all it takes is one perfect shot for Hall to pull off the upset. He’s also never been submitted in his career (just like Muniz’s last two victims), so there’s always a chance Hall survives the first round even if he does get taken down and gets a second chance to land a knockout at the start of round two. That’s really the only way we see Hall winning this fight, and it’s far more likely we see Muniz work his way to another early submission. Even if Hall is able to somehow survive on the mat, if this fight miraculously goes the distance we still like Muniz to get his hand raised. While it feels like he’s due for a let down spot eventually, it’s still probably more likely than not that he finds his way to another quick submission win here.

Our favorite bet here is “Muniz R1 Submission” at +220.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.

DFS Implications:

Muniz is an extremely dangerous submission specialist who’s only required the judges in 3 of his 26 pro fights. He’s won 16 of his last 17 matches and has landed first round submissions in three straight fights. His DFS ceiling is somewhat capped by how efficient he is, and he scored 108, 107, and 95 DraftKings points in his recent three finishes. At his high price tag, it’s entirely possible he lands another first round submission and still ends up getting priced out of the winning lineup if this ends up being a higher scoring slate. He actually tends to score better on FanDuel than DraftKings where his submission attempts will help boost his scoring. With all that said, he looks like a solid play on both sites as he’s one of the most dangerous submission threats on the planet. The odds imply he has a 74% chance to win, a slate-leading 59% chance to land a finish, and a 33% chance it comes in the first round.

Hall is a low-volume KO or bust DFS play who has never scored more than 91 DraftKings points in fights that have made it out of the first round. And with that in mind, his only first round KO/TKO win since 2015 came when Chris Weidman broke his own leg kicking Hall 17 seconds into the fight. Working in Hall's favor, Muniz has been knocked out in all four of his career losses, however, three of those came from 2011 to 2013, while the other was back in 2016 when Muniz was competing at 205 lb. We still give Hall a puncher’s chance to land a finish, but we’re not overly excited about him and there’s a really good chance he gets submitted early and scores almost no points. The odds imply Hall has a 26% chance to win, a 20% chance to get a finish and a 10% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #9

Brad Tavares

21st UFC Fight (14-6)

Coming off a pair of decision wins, Tavares has won six of his last eight fights, with his two losses during that stretch coming against Edmen Shahbazyan and Israel Adesanya. Tavares was notably able to go five rounds with Adesanya, but then got knocked out midway through the first round in his next fight against Shahbazyan. Following that KO loss, Tavares took all of 2020 off as he underwent ACL surgery, before returning to win decisions over Antonio Carlos Jr. and Omari Akhmedov.

In his last fight, Tavares got taken down twice in the first two rounds, but did a good job of returning to his feet and finished ahead in striking in all three rounds to end the fight up 84-48 in significant strikes and 88-50 in total strikes. Akhmedov landed two takedowns on nine attempts, which apparently was enough to convince one judge he had won the fight, but Tavares went on to win a split decision.

Now 19-6 as a pro, Tavares has five wins by KO, two by submission, and 12 decisions. He’s been knocked out three times and has three decision losses. He only has one early win since 2011, which was a 2018 third round TKO against Krzysztof Jotko. His other six finishes all occurred in his first seven pro fights from 2007 to 2011. Ten of his last 14 fights have gone the distance, but he’s been knocked out three times in the first two rounds over that stretch as well. Two of those knockouts came against tough opponents in Edmen Shahbazyan and Robert Whittaker.

Overall, Tavares is a low-volume striker who has decent power but rarely finishes anybody. He only averages 3.18 SSL/min and has only landed more than 84 significant strikes once in 20 UFC fights. He’s also only landed three takedowns in his last 12 fights and doesn't add much in terms of offensive grappling.

Dricus Du Plessis

3rd UFC Fight (2-0)

A year removed from his second straight knockout victory in as many UFC fights, Du Plessis has struggled to make it back inside the Octagon following a July 2021 R2 KO win over Trevin Giles. He had been scheduled to face Andre Muniz in December 2021, but ended up withdrawing. Then he was booked against Chris Curtis in April 2022, but Curtis withdrew. Curtis was replaced by Anthony Hernandez, but then a spot on the card opened up against Kelvin Gastelum and Du Plessis attempted to trade up and bailed on the Hernandez matchup. However, then Gastelum dropped out due to an injury and Hernandez had already found a new opponent, so Du Plessis was the odd man out and was pulled from the card. Prior to knocking out Giles, Du Plessis handed Markus Perez the first early loss of his career in a first round knockout.

In his last fight, Du Plessis took on veteran Trevin Giles, who had previously never been knocked out, but has now suffered back-to-back KO losses. Giles dropped down to 170 lb after Du Plessis knocked him out late in the first round for what it’s worth. Du Plessis outlanded Giles 25-10 in significant strikes, while tacking on two takedowns and a reversal, all before dropping Giles with a clean right hand and then quickly finishing him with ground and pound.

Now 16-2 as a pro, Du Plessis has still never required the judges in a fight and has only even seen the third round four times. The first three of those all resulted in third round submissions (2-1), while he was knocked out by Roberto Soldic in a 2018 KSW Welterweight Championship fight the last time he made it to the third round. That was a rematch after Du Plessis knocked out Soldic just six months earlier in the second round when those two first fought for the KSW Welterweight belt. Du Plessis has moved between 170 lb and 185 lb throughout his career, but has exclusively fought at 185 lb since suffering that 2018 KO loss at 170 lb. Du Plessis has seven wins by KO and nine by submission. He’s been knocked out once and submitted once as well. He has eight first round finishes, six in round two, and two in round three. Both of his losses occurred in the third round. He’s won 12 of his last 13 fights, with four of his last five wins coming by knockout, including three in the second round.

Overall, Du Plessis is an explosive fighter with the ability to finish fights at any moment. He’s a powerful striker but also has the ability to grapple. His chin hasn’t really been tested yet in the UFC and he hasn’t had to deal with much adversity, so we don’t fully know what to expect out of him moving forward. This next fight should be a good test for him as he faces a longtime UFC veteran.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 6’1” but Du Plessis will have a 2” reach advantage and is six years younger than the 34-year-old Tavares.

This is an interesting matchup between two powerful strikers. Du Plessis should have the grappling advantage if the fight hits the mat, but Tavares has a solid 79% takedown defense, which should help him to keep it standing. Both guys have been knocked out in the past, but Tavares has primarily fought to low-volume decisions, while Du Plessis has never required the judges, so something will have to give here. We expect to see a lower-volume tactical striking battle, but still like this to end in a knockout. It should simply come down to who’s chin holds up. We could see either guy knocking out the other, but we like Du Plessis’ chances to land his third straight knockout victory in the first two rounds.

Our favorite bet here is “Fight Ends in KO” at +120.

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DFS Implications:

Tavares has failed to top 81 DraftKings points in 15 straight fights going back to 2012. He’s a low-volume striker with just two takedowns in his last nine fights, and even in a 2018 third round KO, he still scored just 81 points. So overall he looks like a KO or bust play who needs a finish in the first two rounds to score well. He has two things going for him in this spot. First, Du Plessis has seen a big line move in his favor and is mispriced on DraftKings, which will result in Du Plessis being incredibly popular and Tavares going almost completely overlooked, making him a great leverage play in tournaments. And second, Du Plessis has never been to the judges and has been finished in both of his losses. We also haven’t really seen Du Plessis’ chin tested yet in the UFC, and it’s possible he’s less durable than he looks. While Tavares has gone the distance in the majority of his UFC fights, he does have solid power in his hands and he has a puncher’s chance to get a finish her. The odds imply Tavares has a 42% chance to win, a 16% chance to get a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.

Du Plessis has never been to the judges in 18 pro fights, so obviously there’s a ton of finishing upside every time he steps inside the Octagon. After opening as a slight dog, he’s seen a massive line move in his favor, which has resulted in him being priced drastically different between FanDuel ($18) and DraftKings ($8,000), due to the fact that DraftKings released salaries a week out, while FanDuel waited until Thursday. That will result in him being massively owned on DraftKings and probably still fairly popular on FanDuel. He scored 108 and 110 DraftKings points in his first two UFC fights, which both ended in knockouts in the first two rounds. Tavares is a low-volume striker (3.18 SSL/min and 2.76 SSA/min) with solid 79% takedown defense, so this isn’t a good matchup for Du Plessis to fill up the stat sheet, however Tavares has been knocked out three times in his career. Not that Du Plessis has ever been to a decision, but it looks like he’ll need a finish here to be useful. The fact that he’ll be so highly owned makes it hard to get excited about playing him in tournaments, but he should be a staple in low-risk lineups. The odds imply he has a 58% chance to win, a 37% chance to get a finish, and a 18% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #8

Ian Garry

3rd UFC Fight (2-0)

Extending his undefeated record to nine with a decision win over Darian Weeks, Garry has landed finishes in two-thirds of his wins, but has now gone the distance in two of his last three fights. He was able to land a knockout in the final second of the first round in his UFC debut against Jordan Williams, but actually finished behind in significant strikes 22-18 in a lower volume fighter. Prior to making his UFC debut, Garry went 7-0 with Cage Warriors and won the vacant Welterweight title in a 25 minute decision in June 2021 just before joining the UFC.

In his last fight, Garry went up against a tough young opponent in Darian Weeks and the fight played out as a slower paced tactical battle. Weeks was able to control the center of the Octagon while Garry circled the outside and picked his spot, but Weeks wasn’t able to land many strikes of his own. It was overall an uneventful fight, with Garry finishing ahead 74-40 in significant strikes and 80-60 in total strikes. Weeks was able to land one takedown on three attempts and finished with nearly three minutes of control time, while Garry never looked to get the fight to the ground.

Now 9-0 as a pro, Garry has five wins by KO, one by submission, and three decisions. After going the distance in his 2019 pro debut, Garry landed five straight finishes in the first two rounds before winning the Cage Warriors Welterweight title in a five-round decision. His last four finishes have all come by KO, and his only submission victory occurred in the first round of his third pro fight. He has two first round knockouts on his record and three in round two.

Overall, Garry is still just 24 years old and should be improving every time he steps inside the Octagon. His recent uneventful decision should drive him to put on a better performance here, so it will be interesting to see what adjustments he makes to his game, and specifically to how aggressive he fights. Garry has been hyping himself up as the next Conor McGregor, so he can’t be content with churning out boring decisions, and we expect him to come out more aggressive in this next fight. The UFC seems to be buying into the hype, as Garry has exclusively fought on PPV cards, even making his debut at Madison Square Garden. Garry joined Sanford MMA leading up to his UFC debut and trains with a bunch of high-level UFC fighters.

Gabe Green

4th UFC Fight (2-1)

Fresh off a second round KO win, Green has now won eight of his last nine fights, with his only loss during that stretch coming by decision in his short notice UFC debut against Daniel Rodriguez. He knocked out UFC newcomer Yohan Lainesse in his last fight, after winning the first decision of his career against Phil Rowe just before that. He lost a super high-volume decision to Daniel Rodriguez in his short notice UFC debut prior to those two victories.

In his last fight, Green went up against a powerful striker in Yohan Lainesse, who was making his UFC debut. The fight was dicey at times, with Green getting violently dropped a minute into the second round, but he was able to recover and outlast Lainesse before finishing him along the fence late in round two. The fight ended with Green ahead 48-41 in significant strikes and 54-42 in total strikes. Lainesse landed two takedowns on four attempts, while Green never attempted a takedown.

Now 11-3 as a pro, Green has four wins by KO, six by submission and just one decision victory. He’s been knocked out in the first round in two of his three career losses, and has one decision defeat. His two KO losses occurred in 2016 and 2017 in his fourth and fifth pro fights. One of those notably came against UFC fighter Jalin Turner, who Green will share this card with. Green’s first nine pro fights all ended in the first two rounds, with seven ending in round one. However, his last five fights have all made it to the second round, with three seeing round three, and two going the distance. Three of his four career KO wins occurred in the second round, while four of his last five submission victories have come in round one. He bounced between 155 lb and 170 lb early in his career, but all of his UFC fights have been at 170 lb. He hasn’t been the most active fighter in recent years, and after taking all of 2019 off, he fought just once in 2020 and once in 2021. However, he’s already fought once this year and will now step back into the Octagon just over two months later so he’s trying to be more active as he’s gotten past some medical issues, including a “bruised heart” that kept him out of an October 2021 fight.

Overall, Green has no problem taking part in a brawl and has mostly proven himself to be durable as he’s gone up against multiple hard hitting opponents so far in the UFC and has survived against all three, defeating two of them. With that said, he’s been knocked out in two of his three career losses and got dropped in his last fight, so he has been vulnerable at times. We saw him absorb a ridiculous 175 significant strikes in his debut, but has only absorbed 41 and 42 in his last two fights. Nevertheless, he averages the highest number of significant strikes absorbed on the slate at 6.61/min, just keep in mind that’s skewed by the crazy total landed on him in his debut. He also lands a ton of volume himself averaging 6.28 SSL/min, so overall he tends to push the pace in fights.

Fight Prediction:

Garry will have a 5” height advantage and 1” reach advantage, while Green is five years older than the 24-year-old Garry.

This should be a good test for both of these two fighters as it looks like a step up in competition for each guy. Both guys are solid strikers, but Green is the more aggressive of the two, while Garry is more defensively sound and doesn’t land nearly as much volume. It’s a good matchup to force Garry to be more active, opposed to his last fight that played out as a slower paced snoozer. We expect Green to push forward and force the action, while Garry generally tries to control the distance and use his length and movement to counter strike from the outside. We are expecting Garry to be more aggressive following his disappointing decision, and we should see both fighters’ chins tested in this one. Green has looked more hittable, but we’ve yet to see Garry absorb many big shots so his chin remains somewhat of a mystery. Because of that, we don’t really know how he’ll respond if Green is able to land something clean, leaving the outcome of this fight a little more wide open. With that said, Garry has good size and speed for the division, and Green has been pretty hittable in the past. While Green has looked good and has been fairly durable in his first three UFC fights, he can’t continue to absorb the shots he’s been taking without eventually suffering any consequences. We like Garry’s chances of capitalizing on that with a knockout in the first two rounds, most likely in round two.

Our favorite bet here is “Garry R1 or R2 KO” at +460.

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DFS Implications:

From a DFS scoring perspective, Garry got bailed out in his UFC debut with a last second first round knockout, after failing to do much in the round. He was on a 15 minute pace to land just 54 significant strikes with no takedowns prior to the finish, as he finished behind in significant strikes 22-18. That win came against Jordan Williams, who has been finished in the first round in back-to-back fights since moving down to 170 lb, is 0-3 in the UFC and has lost four of his last five fights overall. The lack of activity caught up with Garry in his second UFC fight, where he scored just 62 points in a low-volume decision win. He’s yet to attempt a takedown in his first two UFC fights and averages just 4.60 SSL/min, which is nowhere close to enough to score well without an early finish. In fairness to him, he’s just 24 years old and should be improving a good amount between every fight, but so far he’s looked like an early KO or bust DFS option. He’s been far too passive with his approach as he’s looked content with circling away from action and picking his spots from the outside. We did see him mix in more grappling prior to making his UFC debut, but he hasn’t shown any sort of desire to grapple so far in his first two UFC fights. Until something changes, he remains a KO or bust play and likely needs a finish to come either in the first round or late in round two to be useful. With all that said, this is a pace up spot for him and a much better matchup than his last one to score well. He should also be more motivated to push for a finish following the disappointing decision in his last outing. The odds imply he has a 61% chance to win, a 30% chance to land a finish, and a 15% chance it comes in round one.

Green is a high-volume brawler who is typically a guy we’re looking to target in DFS, although this looks like a tougher matchup for him as he faces an undefeated prospect who only averages 3.10 SSA/min and has shown a willingness to evade contact and strike from the outside. With that said, Green’s history of finishes and uptempo striking make him impossible to ignore at his cheap price tag, and if he’s able to pull off the upset here then there’s a really good chance he ends up in tournament winning lineups. His first 11 pro fights all ended early (9-2), and he still managed to score 105 DraftKings points in a decision in his first UFC win. He somehow wasn’t awarded a knockdown in his last fight as he finished his opponent along the cage, or else he would have topped 100 DraftKings points in that recent victory as well. We expect him to be somewhat popular after scoring 92 and 105 points in his last two matches, which is something to keep in mind when building lineups. The odds imply Green has a 39% chance to win, a 20% chance to land a finish, and a 9% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #7

Jim Miller

40th UFC Fight (23-15, NC)

Miller had been scheduled to face Bobby Green at 155 lb here, but Green dropped out and Cerrone was announced as the replacement nine days before the event, with the fight being moved up to 170 lb. This will now be a rematch of a 2014 fight between Miller and Cerrone that took place at 155 lb. That fight was eight years ago and at a different weight class, so the results don’t carry a ton of importance, but Cerrone was able to knock Miller out in the second round. The striking was pretty close in that fight, with Cerrone finishing ahead in significant strikes 37-30 and in total strikes 41-34. Miller was only able to land one of his six takedown attempts with just 34 seconds of control time, while Cerrone failed to land either of his takedown attempts. Cerrone knocked Miller out with a head kick midway through the second round. Since that fight, Cerrone has gone 12-10 plus a No Contest, while Miller has gone 10-11.

While he’s known for his submission skills, Miller has knocked out two straight debuting fighters as part of the organization’s newest initiative, “Welcome to the UFC, have you tried getting knocked out by Jim Miller yet?” The first of those was against a sloppy Erick Gonzalez, who has given us zero indication that he belongs in the UFC. Next, Miller faced a more promising prospect in Nikolas Motta, but the results were the same.

In his recent win over UFC newcomer Nikolas Motta, Miller again relied on his striking and actually finished the fight with no official takedown attempts. Following a slower paced first round, Miller was able to drop Motta in round two and put him away with prolonged ground and pound as referee Keith Peterson finished his popcorn. In the end, Miller outlanded Motta 48-21 in significant strikes. For the record, Motta has been finished in all four of his career losses, with three of those ending in knockouts.

Now 34-16 as a pro, Miller has six wins by KO, 18 by submission, and 10 decisions. He’s been knocked out twice, submitted three times, and has 11 decision losses. His last three losses have all gone the distance, and he’s lost the last six decisions he’s been to. The last time he was finished was in a 2018 first round submission against Charles Oliveira. The only two fighters to ever knock Miller out are Dan Hooker (2018) and Donald Cerrone (2014). His four victories prior to his recent pair of second round KO wins all came by first round submission and his last six wins have all come in the first two rounds. The last time he won a decision was 2016. Impressively, 15 of his 23 UFC victories have come early, including 10 in the first round, three in round two, and two in round three. While this will be his 51st pro fight—or 52nd if you count his No Contest—it will be the first time he’s ever competed up at 170 lb.

Overall, Miller is a high level grappler and BJJ black belt, who surprisingly landed two straight knockouts after only landing four in his first 48 pro fights. Just keep in mind both of those came against guys making their UFC debuts. Miller doesn’t land a ton of striking volume, averaging just 2.78 SSL/min in his career, while tacking on 1.6 takedowns landed per 15 minutes. He’s been pretty durable, and hasn’t been finished in any of his last eight fights since getting submitted by Oliveira back in 2018. This will be the first time in a while that Miller has been the younger fighter in one of his matchups, as he now prepares to avenge his earlier career loss and set the record for the most wins in UFC history, which he’s currently tied with Cerrone and Arlovski. He can also tie Cerrone for the 2nd most finishes in UFC history, behind only Charles Oliveira.

Donald Cerrone

38th UFC Fight (23-13, NC)

While it feels like Cerrone is on every other card lately, he hasn’t actually fought in 14 months and we’ve just been stuck in this Groundhog Day meets Butch Cassidy cycle of insanity. Cerrone was originally booked to face Joe Lauzon at 155 lb on May 7th, but the fight was canceled after the slate started when Cerrone dropped out due to being sick, allegedly from food poisoning. That matchup was rescheduled for June 18th (again at 155 lb), and again both fighters successfully made weight. However, Joe Lauzon then got TKO’d by a sock after weigh-ins and the fight was again canceled. At that point everyone agreed the matchup was doomed and Dana White announced it would not be rebooked. Instead, Cerrone stayed on call for a short notice 170 lb fight and didn’t have to wait long as Bobby Green dropped out of a fight just five days later and Cerrone stepped in on 9 day’s notice on the condition it be moved up to 170 lb, as he had no desire to cut down to 155 lb for the third time in eight weeks.

Continuing to drag out a flatlined career, the 39-year-old Cerrone doesn’t have a win in his last six fights, so it’s not surprising he considered moving back down to 155 lb. However, after making the 155 lb mark twice just to see the fights get canceled, he’s now reverting back to 170 lb where his last four fights have been (0-3, NC). He started his MMA career at 155 lb before initially moving up to 170 lb in 2016. However, after 10 fights at 170 lb (6-4), he dropped back down to 155 lb in 2019 for four fights (2-2), before moving back up to 170 lb in 2020 following a pair of early losses against Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje. He’s since fought four times at 170 lb (0-3, NC) extending his 170 lb record to 6-7-NC. The last time Cerrone won a fight was a 2019 five-round decision over Al Iaquinta, who’s lost three straight and four of his last five. In his last six fights, Cerrone has four TKO losses in the first two rounds, with the most recent three of those ending in round one. He’s also fought to decisions in two of his last three fights, one of which he lost and another that initially went down as a draw after Niko Price was deducted a point for a pair of eye pokes. However, that was later overturned to a No Contest when Price tested positive for THC.

In his last fight, Cerrone got knocked out in the first round by Alex Morono, who took the fight on less than week’s notice and who’s other four most recent wins have all gone the distance. Morono outlanded Cerrone 35-17 in significant strikes, while both fighters went 0 for 2 on takedowns. Morono was able to land multiple heavy shots before forcing a stoppage along the fence with just 20 seconds remaining in the first round.

Now 36-16 as a pro, Cerrone has 10 wins by KO, 17 by submission, and nine decisions. He’s been knocked out eight times, submitted once, and has seven decision losses. While he has 17 submission wins on his record, Cerrone has only landed one submission in his last 17 fights, which came in a 2018 first round armbar against Mike Perry. His other 16 most recent fights have all either ended in knockouts (5-6) or gone the distance (1-3, NC)

Cerrone has a background in kickboxing and Muay Thai, and is also a BJJ black belt. He’s a legend in the sport, which can make it awkward when it’s time to show him the door, especially if he refuses to leave. This will be his 55th pro fight if you include his two that were later overturned to No Contests. After starting his career all the way back in 2006, he clearly doesn’t have much left in the tank.

Fight Prediction:

Cerrone will have a 5” height advantage and 2” reach advantage. Miller is one year younger than the 39-year-old Cerrone.

These two are currently tied for the most wins in UFC history, so the winner of this fight will take the lead in that race, although it seems like just a matter of time before Miller has the honors all to himself. There’s a lot to unpack here with this being the third time Cerrone has had to make weight in two months, albeit now back up at 170 lb, and Miller fighting at 170 lb for the first time in his career. Add in the fact that Cerrone knocked Miller out back in 2014 and there’s at least a lot of noise to wade through. However, in the end, Cerrone looked completely washed when he fought 14 months ago and since then he’s been filming movies and seems to be more focussed on what comes after fighting than anything else. It’s been over three years since he last won a fight and now he’ll face a veteran who’s coming off back-to-back second round knockout wins. We fully expect Miller to win this fight, and like him to finish the half retired Cowboy, the only question is how and when? Historically, Miller has landed most of his finishes by first round submission, but Cerrone has only been submitted once in his career, which was all the way back in 2010. Also, Miller has looked comfortable taking part in striking battles recently, and his last two wins both ended in second round knockouts, while Cerrone has been knocked out in four of his last five losses. So it would make sense to see Miller knock Cerrone out here, but you can’t completely ignore that 18 of Miller’s 34 pro wins have come by submission. With that said, we like Miller to knock Cerrone out in the first two rounds.

Our favorite bet here is “Miller ITD” at +120.

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DFS Implications:

Miller is coming off a pair of second round knockout wins that were good for 100 and 103 DraftKings points. His four wins prior to that all ended in first round submissions, scoring 95, 116, 104, and 102 points. You have to go all the way back to 2016 to find his last decision victory, but it scored just 76 points, and his one prior to that scored just 66. He’s since lost the last six decisions he’s been to so overall he relies on finishes to both win and score well in DFS. He only averages 2.78 SSL/min and hasn’t landed more than two takedowns in a fight since 2016, which makes it tougher for him to really put up big scores even when he does get a finish. The only time he’s topped 108 DraftKings points in his 23 UFC wins was when he submitted Clay Guida in 58 seconds in 2019 and was awarded the Quick Win Bonus. The only fighter to ever finish Cerrone in under a minute was Conor McGregor, although he has been finished in the first round seven times in his career. While we like Miller’s chances of landing an early finish, there’s a decent chance he gets priced out of the winning lineup if we see a higher scoring slate. The odds imply he has a 63% chance to win, a 44% chance to land a finish, and a 22% chance it comes in round one.

Now 39 years old, Cerrone is winless in his last six outings and appears to have very little left to give. He’s been knocked out in four of those six fights, with his last three early losses coming in the first round. The last time he won a fight was 2019 and he’s already said he’ll be retiring soon. It’s extremely rare to see fighters plan out their retirement and then still find success afterwards and he clearly already has one foot out the door. Then you add in the fact that he took this fight on nine day’s notice and previously had to cut down to 155 lb twice in the last eight weeks in addition to making weight here at 170 lb, and there are all sorts of red flags. He’ll likely need a finish to score well even if he can somehow pull off the upset, as Miller is never involved in high volume brawls and isn’t really the guy you want to be taking down. The last time Cerrone won a three-round decision was all the way back in 2015, but he scored just 59 points in that victory. The last time Miller was finished was in 2018, when he got submitted by Charles Oliveira. Overall, we don’t have much interest in playing Cerrone here. The odds imply he has a 37% chance to win, a 21% chance to land a finish, and a 10% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #6

Jalin Turner

8th UFC Fight (5-2)

Fresh off the most impressive win of his career, Turner landed a second round TKO against a really tough Jamie Mullarkey this past March. That was Turner’s fourth straight finish and he’s won five of his last six fights. Prior to that TKO finish, Turner submitted questionable talents in Uros Medic in the first round and Brok Weaver in round two. Before that, Turner landed another second round TKO finish against a debuting Joshua Culibao, who was fighting up a weight class. Both Weaver and Culibao stepped into those fights on short notice. Prior to the four fight winning streak, Turner started 1-2 in the UFC. He made his debut in one of the tougher spots you could ask for, fighting up a weight class against a really tough Vicente Luque, and Turner got knocked out cold late in the first round. He bounced back with a 53 second R1 KO against a questionable Callan Potter, before losing a decision to Matt Frevola.

In his last fight, Turner looked better than ever as he finished a previously very durable Jamie Mullarkey in under six minutes. The two exchanged strikes in an action packed first round, with Turner the one doing more damage. Late in the round Mullarkey was able to take Turner down, but he ran out of time on the mat as the round ended and wasn’t able to really do anything in the time he did have. Early in round three Turner was able to crumple Mullarkey along the fence and finish him with a flurry of punches.

Now 12-5 as a pro, Turner has only seen the third round three times in his career, losing all three of those fights. All 12 of his wins have come in the first two rounds, with nine KOs, and three submissions. He’s been knocked out three times and has lost both of the decisions he’s been to. Nine of his finishes have occurred in the first round, with the other three ending in round two. He’s won four straight now, with three of those ending in the second round. While Turner has been knocked out three times in his career, two of those came very early in his career before he joined the UFC. The other was against Vicente Luque in Turner’s 2018 UFC debut, which he took up a weight class when he was just 23 years old. That’s the only time Turner has competed up at 170 lb in his career, and he moved back down to 155 lb immediately after. Since then, Turner’s gone 5-1 with the only loss coming in a 2019 decision to Matt Frevola.

At 6’3” Turner is huge for the 155 lb division and as a BJJ brown belt he’s a dangerous finisher both on the feet and the mat. He has crisp striking and a massive reach, making him a tough guy to deal with. Still just 27 years old, he seems to be improving every time we see him and is now facing tougher and tougher competition. He’s still never won a fight that’s made it past the second round, which will be his next hurdle to cross. Now he’ll face a really tough Brad Riddell, who’s coming off the first KO loss of his career.

Brad Riddell

6th UFC Fight (4-1)

Looking to bounce back from the first KO loss of his career, Riddell had a seven fight winning streak snapped by a really dangerous Rafael Fiziev. Riddell actually used to coach at Tiger Muay Thai and when he left Fiziev replaced him, so the two already worked together in the past. Prior to that loss, Riddell had won his first four UFC fights, all by decision, against Jamie Mullarkey, Magomed Mustafaev, Alex da Silva Coelho, and Drew Dober. He had also won a five round decision just before joining the UFC for the Wollongong Welterweight belt. Two of Riddell’s four UFC wins have come when he entered as a slight underdog, as he will in this next matchup. Prior to making the switch to MMA, Riddell was a world champion kickboxer where he went 59-10.

In his last fight, Riddell took on an extremely explosive Muay Thai striker in Rafael Fiziev and the two traded bombs for two and a half rounds before Fiziev caught Riddell with a perfectly place spinning wheel kick midway through round three that seemed to put Riddell out on his feet and the fight was immediately stopped. While we didn’t see a ton of volume being landed, every strike that did connect was of the extremely significant type as the current and former Tiger Muay Thai coaches put on a striking clinic. Fiziec finished ahead in significant strikes 66-59 and had Riddell cut open pretty badly in a couple of spots before landing the finish.

Now 10-2 as a pro, Riddell has five wins by KO and five by decision. Both of his losses have come early, with his recent third round KO loss and a 2018 first round armbar submission in his fourth pro fight. His first six pro fights all ended in the first two rounds (5-1), while his last six all made it to the third round with five going the distance. Leading up to his recent late KO loss he had won five straight decisions, including a five-round championship fight at 170 lb just before making his UFC debut. Prior to joining the UFC, Riddell had competed at both 155 lb and 170 lb, but has exclusively fought at 155 lb since joining the UFC.

Overall, Riddell is a dangerous kickboxer who has shown an increased willingness to look for takedowns in his last few fights. While he only attempted two takedowns in his first two UFC fights, landing both, he’s landed 7 takedowns on 21 attempts in his last three matches. He’s not a guy that will put up huge striking totals, and has never landed more than 91 significant strikes in a UFC fight, but he makes his shots count and it’s only a matter of time until he starts landing knockouts. Riddell has trained with Mullarkey, who just lost to Turner, so maybe Mulalrkey can offer him some advice going into this next fight.

Fight Prediction:

Turner will have a massive 8” height advantage and 6” reach advantage.

After seeing the show that Riddell put on in his UFC debut against Jamie Mullarkey, the UFC continues to put Riddell into absolute bangers. In his last two fights he took on Drew Dober and Rafael Fiziev, and now he’ll face another exciting fighter here in Jalin Turner. This is the toughest test that Turner has faced since his UFC debut, while it’s a slight step down in competition for Riddell. Both of these two can crack, but Turner is the more experienced grappler. While that makes Turner the more likely of the two to look for submissions, his defensive wrestling hasn’t been amazing, and if Riddell opts to look for takedowns there’s a good chance he’ll be able to find some success despite Turner’s 76% career takedown defense. While that number looks great, it’s inflated by terrible performance from guys like Brok Weaver (1 for 6, 10% career takedown accuracy) and Josh Culibao (0 for 3, 0% career takedown accuracy). We saw Turner get taken down with relative ease in his last fight by Mulalrkey and four times by Matt Frevola prior to that. It’s also possible this fight remains on the feet, where both guys have looked really dangerous. We generally see Turner start fast and begin to fade in the second round, while Riddell is just the opposite as he often starts slow and picks it up late. Riddell has lost the first round on all three judges' score cards in his last four fights, but came back to win all but one of those matches. That makes this an interesting live betting opportunity for Riddell if Turner wins the first round. While Turner’s massive height and reach advantage should make things challenging for Riddell, if he can successfully close the distance he should be the more powerful striker from the inside and also looks to have the better cardio. Turner has still never won a fight that lasted longer than 10 minutes and Riddell has seen the third round in six straight bouts. We like Riddell to survive the initial attacks of Turner and take over the longer the fight goes. He’s certainly capable of knocking Turner out early, but we like him to either land a late knockout or more likely win a decision. We’re taking Riddell to pull off the upset here.

Our favorite bet here is “Riddell R3 or Decision” at +320.

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DFS Implications:

Turner has been a DFS gold mine when he wins, averaging 116 DraftKings points in his five UFC victories, with at least 106 points in all of those and topping 125 twice. All 12 of his career wins have come in the first two rounds and he’s 0-3 in fights that last longer than 10 minutes. In his two losses, he scored just 22 and 12 points, so he’s been a boom or bust commodity who relies on finishes to score well. Keep in mind most of his wins have come against pretty questionable competition, but to his credit he finished a really tough Jamie Mullarkey in his last fight with relative ease. Now he’ll face an even tougher opponent in Brad Riddell and this is the toughest matchup Turner has had since he got knocked out in the first round of his UFC debut by Vicente Luque. The fact that Turner has finished four straight opponents, scoring 106 or more DraftKings points in each of those wins, and is now priced at just $8,400, he’ll be a popular play, despite the tougher matchup. The odds imply he has a 55% chance to win, a 36% chance to land a finish, and a 17% chance it comes in round one.

Riddell has only put up one usable DFS score in his four UFC victories, which all went the distance. That 100 point DraftKings score required him to land five takedowns in addition to putting up a high striking total, and he only averaged 73 DraftKings points in his first three UFC decision wins. He has been more willing to shoot for takedowns in his recent UFC fights, which adds to his scoring upside, and now he’ll also face an opponent who’s been knocked out in three of his five career losses and is 0-2 in decisions. That should provide Riddell with both a higher potential ceiling in a knockout win and a greater chance to get his hand raised if this does go the distance. While he did get knocked out for the first time in his career in his last fight, Riddell has been extremely durable outside of that and is built like a tank. Turner is always a threat to end fights early, but we like Riddell’s chances to survive the initial assault and take over the longer the fight goes. Due to his patient striking style, he’s still not a guy that will typically score well without a finish, but he has shown the ability to return value in a decision when he can land a decent number of takedowns. The odds imply Riddell has a 45% chance to win, a 24% chance to get a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #5

Sean O'Malley

9th UFC Fight (7-1)

Coming off his third straight knockout win, O'Malley finished Raulian Paiva late in the first round of his last match after landing a pair of third round KO/TKOs before that. Prior to the three early wins, O’Malley suffered a leg injury in the first round of a 2020 fight against Marlon Vera which resulted in his first career loss in a late R1 TKO. His last six fights have all ended in KO/TKOs, with four ending in the first round and two in round three. Prior to the string of finishes, O'Malley won a pair of decisions in his first two UFC fights, after landing a first round KO on DWCS in 2017 to punch his ticket to the UFC. In his second most recent fight, O'Malley landed the most significant strikes of all time in a UFC Bantamweight fight (230) against UFC newcomer Kris Moutinho who took the fight on just 11 day’s notice.

In his last fight, Paiva was clearly no match for O'Malley and quickly found himself well behind in the striking. Late in the first round O'Malley forced a stoppage along the fence as he teed off on Paiva and O'Malley finished ahead 39-11 in significant strikes, while Paiva failed to come close to landing either of his takedown attempts.

Now 15-1 as a pro, O'Malley has 11 wins by KO, one by submission, and three decisions. His only loss was the R1 TKO to Vera. Nine of his 12 finishes have come in round one, one ended in round two, and two finished in round three.

Overall, O'Malley is an exciting striker who averages the highest number of significant strikes landed on the slate at 8.26/min. He has yet to spend much time on the mat in the UFC, as he hasn’t landed a takedown since his UFC debut. While he was taken down four times in his second UFC fight, largely due to getting injured, we’ve seen one total takedown landed in his last six fights, which was landed by Thomas Almeida. We don’t expect to see any takedowns in this next fight either for what it’s worth. In his eight UFC fights, O'Malley has suffered two injuries to the same leg, which is concerning as he will now go against an opponent known for his leg strikes.

Pedro Munhoz

18th UFC Fight (9-7, NC)

Really struggling to find wins these days, the 35-year-old Munhoz has lost two straight and four of his last five fights. In fairness to him, we thought he beat Frankie Edgar in a 2020 split decision that didn’t go his way. In his last three fights, Munhoz has continued to attack the lead leg of his opponents, landing 40 leg kicks against Jimmie Rivera, 37 against Jose Aldo, and 19 most recently against Dominick Cruz. However, he’s also absorbed a ton of damage, with his opponents in his last four losses all landing 103 or more significant strikes.

In his last fight, Munhoz knocked Dominick Cruz down in the first round and then nearly dropped him a second time just after, but Cruz was able to grab a leg on his way down and buy time to recover on the mat. Once he returned to his feet, Cruz looked to be fine, and after a rocky start Cruz bounced back in the later rounds to finish ahead of Munhoz 103-74 in significant strikes and 105-79 in total strikes in the fight, although he was only able to land one of his nine takedown attempts. All three judges ruled it 29-28 in Cruz’s favor.

Now 19-7 as a pro, Munhoz has five wins by KO, eight by submission, and six decisions. He’s never been finished and all seven of his career losses have gone the distance. He’s fought to five straight decisions, and seven of his last nine fights have ended with the judges, with the two exceptions being a pair of first round TKO wins in 2018 and 2019. All but one of Munhoz’s 17 UFC fights have either ended in the first round (5-0, NC) or gone the distance (3-7), with the one exception being a 2016 R2 guillotine submission win.

Overall, Munhoz is a durable but aging vet who throws a ton of leg kicks and has a mean guillotine choke. He relies on his striking to win fights and hasn’t landed a takedown in his last eight matches. He’s been in several high-volume brawls lately and in his last five fights he’s averaged 6.05 SSL/min and 6.95 SSA/min.

Fight Prediction:

O'Malley will have a 5” height advantage and 7” reach advantage.

Munhoz does a great job of attacking with leg kicks so it’s interesting that the UFC matched their fragile-legged golden boy against him. In his last three fights, Munhoz has landed 96 total leg strikes and we’ve seen O’Malley suffer multiple leg injuries in his career. With that said, O'Malley is three fights removed from his last leg injury and the UFC can’t protect him forever. This should be a good test for the durability of O'Malley’s leg and as long as it holds up we expect him to outland his way to victory. It will be interesting to see if he can hand Munhoz the first early loss of his career, but this step up in competition combined with the threat of leg strikes has us thinking O'Malley sees his first decision since 2018 here. We like him to put up a big striking total and still get his hand raised as long as his leg holds up.

Our favorite bet here is “O'Malley Decision” at +200.

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DFS Implications:

O’Malley is always ridiculously highly owned with his ownership checking in at 44%, 71%, 58%, and 48% in his last four outings. We don’t expect that to change here, as he again projects to be one of if not the most popular fighter on the slate. He has averaged 113 DraftKings points in his last five wins, which all ended in knockouts, but he did fight to two decisions to start his UFC career. In those two fights, he scored 64 and 102 points. The 64 point performance came in a fight where O’Malley was injured and limping to the finish line, so it should be taken with a grain of salt, and he’s shown the ability to score well even in decisions. That makes him a tricky guy to fade based on his sheer striking volume and history of knockouts, but at his high price tag it’s still entirely possible we see him get priced out of the winning lineup if he doesn’t go full nuclear. He’ll now face a tougher opponent who has never been finished in his career, but who does average the second highest number of significant strikes absorbed on the slate at 6.09/min. So while this looks like a tougher spot for O’Malley to land another knockout, he should have a solid floor through sheer striking volume. The main concern with O’Malley is how his leg will hold up to the calf kicks from Munhoz, which is hard to know going in, but adds a sliver of uncertainty in this matchup. The odds imply O’Malley has a 72% chance to win, a 37% chance to land a finish, and a 19% chance it comes in round one.

Munhoz has been a KO or bust play in DFS for almost his entire career and now steps into a really tough matchup. O’Malley will have a massive 5” height and 7” reach advantage that will likely leave Munhoz reliant on calf kicking his way to victory and hoping he can be the third fighter to shut down O’Malleys leg. That’s a tough thing to rely on, but also not at all impossible. Munhoz has landed 96 leg strikes across his last three fights, and if anyone could test O’Malley’s leg, it would be Munhoz. We’ve seen Munhoz absorb a ton of damage in the past and keep on ticking, and he’s never been finished in his career, so he should get plenty of time to try and chop O’Malley down as long as his chin continues to hold up. However, if Munhoz can’t quickly compromise the leg of O’Malley, we expect him to struggle in the boxing exchanges and it’s hard to see him winning a decision unless O’Malley is no longer able to walk by the end of the fight. The odds imply Munhoz has a 28% chance to win, a 16% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in the first round.

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Fight #4

Robbie Lawler

24th UFC Fight (14-9)

Coming off his first “win” in his last five fights, Lawler “defeated” an incoherent Nick Diaz in a third round “TKO.” The two aging fighters threw everything they had at each other for just over 10 minutes before Diaz decided he didn’t feel like fighting anymore and sat down and quit. It was definitely one of the more bizarre endings to a fight, but in fairness Diaz absorbed a ton of strikes and didn’t look to be in great shape so maybe he simply had nothing left to give. Prior to winning the second round against Diaz, Lawler had lost 15 straight rounds of fighting dating back to 2017. He dropped the first round to Diaz, lost a unanimous 30-27 decision to Neil Magny, was defeated in a unanimous (50-44, 50-45, 50-45) decision to Colby Covington, got submitted in the first round by Ben Askren, and lost a unanimous 50-45 decision to Rafael Dos Anjos. While he’s been facing tough competition, Lawler has really been struggling since losing the Welterweight belt in a 2016 R1 KO loss to Tyron Woodley. Prior to defeating Diaz, his only other win in his last seven fights came in a 2017 three-round decision over Donald Cerrone.

Prior to Diaz quitting in Lawler’s last fight, Diaz was leading Lawler 150-131 in striking in a fight that lasted less than 11 minutes. Diaz landed 13.98 SS/min, while Lawler landed 12.20 SS/min. The fight remained entirely on the feet with the two peppering away at each other from start to finish. They split the first two rounds on the scorecards for what it’s worth.

Now 29-15 as a pro, the 40-year-old Lawler has 21 wins by KO, one by submission, and seven decisions. He’s been knocked out three times, submitted five more, and has seven decision losses. Thirteen of his last 15 fights have seen a second round, with 12 of those making it to round three, and seven going to round five. Nine of those 15 fights went the distance. The two fights to end in the first round over that stretch were a 2019 submission loss to Ben Askren and a 2016 KO loss to Woodley. Prior to getting credit for finishing Nick Diaz, Lawler hadn’t landed a finish since 2015 in a 5th round TKO against Rory MacDonald. And on the other side of things, prior to getting submitted by Askren and knocked out by Woodley, Lawler hadn’t been put away since his Strikeforce days when Jacare Souza submitted him in the third round of a 2011 match. So to his Credit, Lawler has been durable and he’s only been finished twice in his last 19 fights.

Overall, Lawler is an aging veteran who turned pro all the way back in 2001 and has really struggled to find wins over the last half decade. His struggles in his last few fights have largely come on the mat as he was taken down 17 times in his last four losses, but he has a better chance to remain competitive in striking battles. In his last 10 fights, he’s landed just one takedown of his own, while getting taken down 23 times by his opponents. He showed in his last fight that he can still land a ton of strikes and seemed to be in good shape. Obviously the fact that he was going against an overweight and undermotivated Nick Diaz helped him to look his best, so it’s always possible that it was somewhat of a mirage. Nevertheless, now he’ll face another washed up UFC vet who’s been known to take part in high-volume brawls and this looks like one of the best matchups Lawler could ask for at this stage in his career.

Bryan Barberena

15th UFC Fight (8-6)

Fresh off a split-decision win over Matt Brown, Barberena has fought to four straight decisions, winning three of those. While he’s won two decisions in a row, both of those were very close and could have gone either way. He’s still just 3-3 in his last six fights, as he was finished in the third round in back-to-back fights prior to his recent string of decisions.

In his last fight, Barberena continued to struggle with getting taken down and controlled as Matt Brown landed five takedowns on seven attempts with just over five minutes of control time. Despite getting controlled for a third of the fight, Barberena was able to outland Brown 111-81 in significant strikes and 186-95 in total strikes. The first round was dead even in terms of significant strikes landed, but Barberena pulled away in the later rounds on the stat sheet. Both guys left it all out there and the fight seemed closer than the numbers indicated, but Barberena finished strong and ended up winning a split decision.

Now 17-8 as a pro, Barberena has 10 wins by KO, two by submission, and five decisions. He’s been knocked out twice, submitted once and has five decision losses. While he’s won three of the last four decisions he’s been to, he’s consistently involved in close score cards and two of his last four have been split or majority. So it’s not surprising that he’s gone 5-5 in decisions in his career, as those things tend to average out over time if all your fights are close. Twelve of his 14 UFC fights have seen the second round, with 11 making it to round three and eight going the distance. He has two UFC first round TKO wins, which came in 2017 and 2018, one second round submission win back in 2016, and in his 2014 UFC debut he landed a third round knockout. The only two times Barberena has been finished in the UFC were both by third round TKO in back-to-back 2019 fights against Vicente Luque and Randy Brown. He’s gone 4-4 in his eight UFC decisions. All three of Barberena’s UFC knockouts came against opponents in their final professional fight for what it’s worth. Barberena started out in the UFC at 155 lb before moving up to 170 lb in his third UFC fight.

Overall, Barberena has a brawling fighting style and hasn’t landed a takedown in his last 11 fights. He’s put up big striking totals at times, but has been inconsistent throughout his career in terms of stringing together wins. In Barberena’s last four fights, he’s been taken down 22 times on 57 attempts and controlled for 19 minutes and 47 seconds of the 60 minutes (33%) in those four decisions. He still managed to average 5.53 SSL/min in those fights, despite being controlled for a third of the time and constantly defending takedowns. Now he’ll finally face an opponent in Robbie Lawler, who similarly likes to keep fights standing and has only landed one takedown in his last 10 fights.

Fight Prediction:

Barberena will have a 1” height advantage, but Lawler will have a 2” reach advantage. Barberena is also seven years younger than the 40-year-old Lawler.

Both of these guys have been slowed by grapplers in the majority of their recent fights, but as we saw in their most recent fights, they’re both down to brawl when given the opportunity. While both of them are super dusty, this was the perfect matchup to make if they each insist on continuing their careers. Neither guy has any desire to grapple and they should put on an entertaining brawl in a pure striking battle. They’ve each been fairly durable and we expect this fight to end in a high-volume decision unless one of them runs out of gas before making it to the finish line in the third round, which we’re not really expecting. While Barberena has historically landed more striking volume (5.61 SSL/min vs. 3.73 SSL/min), Lawler landed 131 significant strikes in just under 11 minutes in his last fight (12.20 SSL/min) and showed he can maintain a blistering striking pace. We expect both guys to land over 100 significant strikes and for this to end in a close, likely split, decision that could go either way. We’ll give the ever so slight advantage to Lawler to get his hand raised, but this one’s too close to feel good about whoever you take.

Our favorite bet here is “Fight Goes the Distance” at -156.

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DFS Implications:

Lawler is coming off his first win in his last five fights, in a high-volume brawling third round TKO win over a washed up and out of shape Nick Diaz. The two fighters just stood and traded for ten and a half minutes until Diaz decided he could no longer continue and quit. The early third round finish was good for 98 DraftKings and 129 points on FanDuel. Despite the bizarre ending, Lawler landed 131 significant strikes and was on pace to land 183 over the course of three rounds—and keep in mind the fight had been scheduled to go five rounds. With no other stats factored in, 183 significant strikes would be good for 103 DraftKings points and 130 points on FanDuel in a decision win. So while Lawler has historically struggled to score well in decisions, he did show some upside recently. In fairness, that came in a dream matchup and Lawler is 40 years old with just the one win since 2017. However, now he gets another favorable matchup against a brawler in Bryan Barberena and we expect to see Lawler’s recent pace carry over into this fight. Both of these two are well past their prime, despite Barberena being seven years younger, and we expect them to throw down in a pure striking battle with a ton of volume being landed on each side. At Lawler’s higher price tag, he’ll have a little bit of a tougher time finding his way into winning lineups, but he should have a pretty solid floor and a decent chance to hit a ceiling performance. Each guy will score better on FanDuel than DraftKings, but they’re in play on both sites. The odds imply Lawler has a 53% chance to win, a 20% chance to get a finish, and a 10% chance it comes in round one.

The UFC continues to put Barberena in favorable matchups later in his career after matching him up with guys like Colby Covington, Leon Edwards, and Vicente Luque earlier on. This may be his most favorable matchup yet as he’ll finally get to go against an opponent who shouldn’t be looking to take him down. In Barberena’s last four fights, he’s been taken down 22 times on 57 attempts and controlled for a third of the time. He still managed to average 5.53 SSL/min in those fights, but we should see that number rise here as we don’t expect either guy to be looking to grapple. Despite getting taken down five times and controlled for five minutes, Barberena was still able to score 96 DraftKings points and 87 points on FanDuel in his recent win. That’s the most points he’s scored since 2018, and he scored just 79 and 81 DraftKings points in his previous two decisions. We expect to see his striking total increase in this next fight and if he can pull off the upset he should be able to put up a solid score. With all that said, these two have combined for a single takedown in their last 20 combined fights and we don’t expect either to boost their scoring with grappling. That leaves each of them reliant on pure striking volume and/or landing a knockout to score well. So if this ends up being slower paced than we expect, it will be tough for either guy to put up a big score without a finish. The odds imply Barberena has a 47% chance to win, a 22% chance to land a finish and a 10% chance it occurs in the first round.

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Fight #3

Alex Pereira

3rd UFC Fight (2-0)

Pereira finally saw the judges for the first time in his short MMA career in his last fight, as he defeated Bruno Silva in a decision. Prior to that, he had landed four straight knockouts in the first two rounds since getting submitted in the third round of his 2015 pro debut. He was fed a terrible Andreas Michailidis in his 2021 UFC debut, and then took on a brawler in Bruno Silva in his last fight. Prior to his UFC debut, Pereira’s only MMA fight since 2016 occurred in the LFA in November 2020 and Pereira landed a R1 KO with a violent left hook that left his opponent unconscious for several minutes. Following that fight, he competed in two more kickboxing bouts, winning the Glory Kickboxing Light Heavyweight Belt in a January 2021 split-decision and then losing the title in a rematch via decision in September 2021. After competing at 209 lb as a kickboxer, Pereira dropped back down to 185 lb for his UFC debut, where all of his MMA fights have been.

In his last fight, Pereira showed the ability to go three rounds and was still pushing for a finish until the final horn. While Pereira did get taken down twice, he was able to defend Silva’s other six attempts and did a good job of returning to his feet when he was taken down. Clearly working with Glover has been helping his defensive wrestling, but that’s also still obviously where he’s the most vulnerable. Pereira was able to hurt Silva late in the fight but couldn’t put him away and the fight ended in a unanimous 30-27 decision win for Pereira, who finished ahead in significant strikes 108-59 and in total strikes 165-72.

Still just 5-1 as a pro, the UFC is trying their best to make sure Pereira doesn’t have to face any legitimate grapplers before they can market a rematch of Adesanya and Pereira from their Glory kickboxing days. Any serious wrestler would pants Pereira and the UFC has tiptoed around giving him such a matchup. Pereira will hilariously be fighting for the top contender spot despite the fact that he’s not even ranked, nor has he ever defeated a ranked fighter. He’s only fought in MMA three times since 2016, as he returned to kickboxing following a 2016 R2 TKO win.

Overall, Pereira is a very dangerous kickboxer, but doesn’t offer anything in terms of grappling. While his MMA experience is still very limited, he has 40 kickboxing fights to his name (33-7) including noteworthy knockouts over Israel Adesanya (2017) and Dustin Jacoby (2014), along with another decision win over Adesanya in 2016. Pereira has also been knocked out twice himself in kickboxing matches. He has a dangerous left hook and throws violent kicks and knees to maximize his massive frame.

Sean Strickland

16th UFC Fight (12-3)

Entering this matchup on a six fight winning streak, Strickland has gone the distance in three straight and four of his last five fights. His last two wins both came in five-round decisions, with the first of those coming over Uriah Hall and the more recent against Jack Hermansson. The only finish Strickland has landed since 2018 was a 2020 R2 TKO win against Brendan Allen.

In his last fight, Strickland easily cruised to a five-round decision win over Jack Hermansson, although of course Sal D’amato hilariously scored it in favor of Hermansson, so the results were split. Strickland finished ahead in significant strikes 153-137 and in total strikes 161-137, while landing the more impactful blows and stuffing all eight of Hermansson’s takedown attempts. Strickland did what he always does, methodically outlanding his way to a decision win while never really pushing for a finish. Strickland unsurprisingly didn’t attempt any takedowns against Hermansson, who wanted nothing more than for the fight to be on the ground.

Now 25-3 as a pro, Strickland has 10 wins by KO, four by submission, and 11 decisions. The only time he’s been finished was in a 2018 R1 KO loss to Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos, which came at 170 lb before Strickland moved back up to 185 lb when he returned to the UFC in 2020 following an extended layoff. That’s also Strickland’s only fight in his last 14 to end in the first round, while he has two second round knockouts, and one in round three over that stretch. Ten of his last 14 fights have gone the distance, but he’s only lost two decisions in his career, which were against Kamaru Usman and Santiago Ponzinibbio, both at 170 lb. Strickland has still never lost a fight at 185 lb. Strickland started at 185 lb in the UFC, but moved down to 170 lb for a three year stretch from 2015 to 2018 where he went 5-3. Following a 2018 R2 TKO win at 170 lb, Strickland was forced into a 2-year layoff following a motorcycle accident and a career-threatening knee injury. Upon his return, he moved back up to 185 lb where he has since had great success.

Overall, Strickland’s cautious approach to fighting makes him a tough fighter to defeat as he stays defensively sound while constantly inching forward and pumping out his jab to point his way to victory. He’s shown us at multiple points that he’s far more concerned with securing wins than looking for finishes. We often see situations where fighters lose fights despite leading in striking, and win fights despite trailing. However, Strickland has gone 12-0 in the UFC when he leads in striking, and 0-3 when he trails. He seems fully aware that his best path to victory is to fight his way to decisions. Since returning from an extended layoff due to a knee injury in 2020, Strickland has outlanded his way to victory in five straight fights, with four of those going the distance. He failed to attempt a takedown in three of those five fights, but landed five on seven attempts in the other two, showing he can still wrestle when he chooses to.

Fight Prediction:

Pereira will have a 3” height and reach advantage, while Strickland is three years younger than the 34-year-old Pereira.

This is an interesting matchup because everyone knows what Strickland should do (wrestle), but no one knows if this psychopath will actually take the path of least resistance. It’s not like he’s a dominant wrestler, but he’s fully capable of getting the fight to the ground and he has four wins by rear-naked choke on his record. Just keep in mind, he only has one submission victory since 2010, which was in the first round of his 2014 UFC debut. There’s a good chance Strickland’s ego will get the better of him and he’ll look to test Pereira on the feet and only resort to wrestling after he’s already taken some damage. That will likely reduce the success he finds on the mat, and we could be looking at more of a lay and pray situation at that point. The UFC unquestionably wants to see Pereira win this fight so they can market the rematch against Adesanya, so whatever sway they have with the judges will favor Pereira. Both of these two have been very durable, with just one career KO loss between them, and while the oddsmakers like it to end early, we actually think there’s a pretty good chance both fighter’s chins hold up and we see this end in a close decision. We like Pereira to outland his way to a close, potentially controversial/split decision, as his kicking game should make it tough for Strickland to out jab his way to victory as he has in the past.

Our favorite bet here is “Pereira Decision” at +500.

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DFS Implications:

Pereira coincidentally put up identical DraftKings scores of 87 in his first two UFC fights, despite one of those ending in an early second round knockout and the other going the distance. He proved to us that he’s improved his cardio and defensive wrestling to some extent in his last fight, as he defended six of eight takedowns and went three hard rounds, still pushing for a finish until the end. Just keep in mind that came against a striker in Bruno Silva, and we still haven’t seen Pereira face a decent wrestler. If the UFC has anything to say about it, we likely never will, but Strickland certainly isn’t a terrible grappler even if he doesn’t show it very often. Predicting what a headcase like Strickland will do in this fight is a tougher question to answer, but it would be surprising if he didn’t look to wrestle at times. That should slow down the pace and make it harder for Pereira to score well without an early knockout and Strickland has only been finished once in 28 pro fights. So overall this looks like a tough spot for Pereira to put up a big score, but he certainly has the power to land a knockout at any moment. Pereira has been highly owned in each of his first two UFC fights, and despite the line actually moving in Strickland’s favor as the week went on, we expect Pereira to remain popular. That lowers his tournament appeal despite his cheaper price tag, and he looks like a KO or bust play in a tough matchup. The odds imply he has a 47% chance to win, a 36% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.

Strickland’s recent scoring is inflated based on the fact that he’s been in two straight five round fights, which will surely go overlooked by a portion of the field. He now steps into a three round bout and scored just 64 and 72 DraftKings points in his last two three-round decisions. While it’s possible we see him put on a dominant wrestling performance, we certainly can’t rely on Sean Strickland to make rational life decisions. Pereira has never been knocked out in his short six fight MMA career, and Strickland hasn’t looked like any sort of finishing threat anyways. That likely leaves Strickland reliant on either landing his first submission win since 2014 or completely controlling this fight on the mat. Both of those are possible, albeit unlikely. After seeing the line move in his favor, we expect Strickland to be popular at his cheap price tag, despite his seemingly narrow paths to scoring well. That leaves us not very interested in playing him in tournaments. The odds imply Strickland has a 53% chance to win, a 25% chance to get a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #2

Alexander Volkanovski

12th UFC Fight (11-0)

Riding into this trilogy bout on a 21 fight winning streak, Volkanovski looked unstoppable in his recent fourth round TKO win over The Korean Zombie. This trilogy match was originally booked back in March, but Holloway was forced to withdraw in January due to an injury and Volkanovski was rebooked against The Korean Zombie in April. In his second most recent fight, Volkanovski won a wild decision over Brian Ortega, where Volkanovski dominated the striking but did get caught in a deep mounted guillotine and looked moments away from being finished before reminding everyone that he’s not human and air is for mere mortals. Volkanovski nearly finished Ortega in the third and fourth rounds after escaping submission attempts, but Ortega was narrowly able to survive to lose a decision. Those two recent wins came after Volkanovski defeated Holloway in back-to-back five round decisions.

In their first fight, Volkanovski was able to tear up the legs of Holloway as he executed a perfect game plan and led in significant strikes 157-134, although he went 0 for 4 on takedown attempts. The second fight was much closer and many will argue that Holloway won, but Volkanovski finished ahead in the rematch 137-102 in significant strikes, while going 3 for 9 on takedowns. Holloway didn’t attempt a takedown in either fight.

The rematch ended in a razor close split decision ( 47-48, 47-48, 48-47). All three judges scored the first two rounds for Holloway and rounds three and four for Volkanovski. Interestingly it was round five and not round three where the judges were split. In round five, Volkanovski led in significant strikes 37-23 and also landed two takedowns. In round three, Volkanovski led just 25-15 in significant strikes with no takedowns. Despite the optics of the fight in live time, Volkanovski was able to dig deep and outland his way back into the fight as he won the last three rounds after losing the first two. The live striking totals and broadcast commentary appeared to play a large part in driving the narrative that Holloway won all of the first three rounds, thus leaving Volkanovski reliant on a finish. While the official total striking numbers ended up at 27-18 in favor of Volkanovski in the third round, the live striking totals had Holloway ahead 28-24. That just goes to show that the live striking totals should always be taken with a grain of salt, as they had Holloway finishing ahead 161-148 in total strikes, while the official numbers showed that Volkanovski led 139-111. Nevertheless, the second fight was much closer than their first matchup and seemingly could have gone either way.

In his recent win over The Korean Zombie, Volkanovski put on a masterclass, outlanding The Zombie, 138-48 in significant strikes and 152-51 in total strikes, while also landing four of his eight takedown attempts with just under three minutes of control time. Volkanovski dropped The Zombie late in round three and beat him up until the round ended on the mat. The fight was mercifully stopped 45 seconds into the fourth round.

Now 24-1 as a pro, Volkanovski has 12 wins by KO, three by submission, and nine decisions. His only career loss came in a 2013 R3 TKO in his fourth pro fight, which took place up at 170 lb before Volkanovski first dropped down to 155 lb in 2014, and then eventually down to 145 lb. All 11 of his UFC fights have made it to the second round, with eight seeing the third round, and his last four all making it to the championship rounds. Seven of his UFC wins have gone the distance, including three five-round decisions in his last four fights. He also has four TKO wins inside the Octagon, with the first three of those ending in round two, while the most recent came early in round four. Prior to his recent fourth round finish, he hadn’t knocked anybody out since 2018.

Overall, Volkanovski is a well-rounded nightmare for the Featherweight division. He’s a BJJ black belt and started training in Greco-Roman Wrestling as a kid before switching to rugby for a while before fully committing to MMA. He’s been taken down 8 times on 27 attempts in his 11 UFC fights and owns a 70% career takedown defense. He’s also a tough guy to control on the mat and no opponent has ever controlled him for more than 99 seconds in a fight, which came in his debut. Since then, no one has accrued more than 59 seconds of control time against him in his last 10 fights, and he’s been controlled for a total of just 234 seconds (2.53% of the time) in those 10 matches.

This will be Volkanovski’s 5th straight title fight, with the first three of those all ending in decision wins and the most recent ending in a 4th round TKO win. He also had six fights scheduled to go five rounds prior to joining the UFC, but he finished all six of those opponents early. So overall, he’s 10-0 in five-round fights in his career and 4-0 in the UFC.

Max Holloway

14th UFC Fight (8-5)

After losing a pair of title fight decisions to Volkanovski, Holloway bounced back and set the all time UFC record for the most significant strikes ever landed in a fight (445), soaring past his own previous record of 290 that he landed on Brian Ortega. That record setting performance came in a five-round decision win over Calvin Kattar, and Holloway landed more significant strikes in the fourth round alone (141) than Kattar landed in the entire match (133). Holloway followed that up with another high-volume five-round decision win, this time over Yair Rodriguez. Holloway landed the 5th most significant strikes in that fight at 230, and now holds three of the top five spots for the most significant strikes ever landed in a fight.

In his recent decision win over Rodriguez, Holloway came out ahead in significant strikes in all five rounds, finishing ahead 230-159 in significant strikes and 251-186 in total strikes. After landing just five total takedowns in his first 24 UFC fights combined, Holloway landed three against Rodriguez on five attempts, while Rodriguez landed one takedown of his own, also on five attempts. The fight played out as a high-volume brawl, with both guys inflicting damage, but Holloway winning a unanimous decision.

Now 23-6 as a pro, Holloway has 10 wins by KO, two by submission, and 11 decisions. He’s never been knocked out, with his only early loss coming in a first round submission in his 2012 UFC debut against Dustin Poirier in what was just Holloway’s 5th pro fight. Holloway’s other five losses have all gone the distance, with the last three going five rounds. Two of Holloway’s career losses have come against Volkanovski, two more were against Dustin Poirier, one came at the hands of Conor McGregor, and the other was against Dennis Bermudez in a 2013 split decision. His last 12 fights have all seen the third round, and the only time he hasn’t made a third round appearance in his last 15 matches was due to an esophagus injury that Charles Oliveira suffered in the first round of a 2015 match that forced the fight to be stopped.

Overall, Holloway is a high-volume brawler who tends to wear on his opponents and win the war of attrition, opposed to knocking them out early. His last four KO wins all came in the third round or later and he only has two R1 wins in his UFC career—one of those was from a doctor stoppage and the other came against an opponent who was knocked out in the first two rounds in his last three UFC fights before hanging it up.

Prior to Holloway’s recent two non-title fight decision wins, he had fought for a belt in eight straight appearances. He originally won the interim Featherweight belt in 2016 against Anthony Pettis and then proved himself to be the undisputed Featherweight champion with a pair of third round knockouts against Jose Aldo in his next two fights. He then defended the belt in a fourth round TKO win over Brian Ortega, before attempting to move up to Lightweight to capture a second belt in a rematch against Dustin Poirier. That didn’t work out for him as Poirier won a decision and Holloway returned to 145 lb to defend his belt in a decision win over Frankie Edgar. In his 7th UFC title fight, Holloway lost the belt to Volkanovski and then failed to win it back in his 8th UFC title fight. Overall, Holloway has gone 5-3 in UFC five-round title fights and also has three more non title fight five-round victories (two decision wins and one R1 TKO by injury against Charles Oliveira). He landed mid-to-late round KO/TKO wins in his first four UFC title fight victories, but has now fought to six straight five round decisions (3-3), with all of his five round losses going the distance. He also had one five round fight prior to joining the UFC, which ended in a 2011 split decision win. So looking at his entire career, Holloway has gone 9-3 in five-round fights, with five ending early (5-0) and seven going the distance (4-3).

Fight Prediction:

Holloway will have a 5” height advantage, but Volkanovski will have a 2” reach advantage.

Volkanovski somehow still appears to be improving every time he steps inside the Octagon, while Holloways continues to set significant striking records. Against most opponents, Holloway is able to rely on his chin and striking volume to outland his way to decision wins and late finishes. However, that style of fighting is less effective against defensively sound tacticians like Volkanovski, as we saw the first two times these two fought. So what changes here? Well for one, if the fight is as close as last time, the results could hinge on a single round on any given scorecard. These two have also now gone 10 hard rounds against each other, so we would expect to see some sort of adjustments made by each guy. Both guys have been so durable that we’d be really surprised if this fight ended early and we really like it to end in another close decision. While we still like Volkanovski to get his hand raised, based on how close the last match was, the value appears to be on Holloway’s side of things.

Our favorite bet here is “Fight Goes the Distance” at -190.

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DFS Implications:

Volkanovski has been absolutely smashing lately, putting up DraftKings scores of 133 and 136 in his last two outings. However, in his two prior wins over Holloway he put up far less impressive totals of 103 and 94 points, so it’s fair to pump the breaks some despite his more recent two slate-breaking performances. In his two fights against Holloway, Volkanovski averaged 5.42 SSL/min, while in his more recent two fights he averaged 8.64 SSL/min. He landed 62.71% of the significant strikes he threw in those last two fights, but just 47.30% of the strikes he threw against Holloway. Whether Volkanovski is improving his striking accuracy or just faced easier matchups in his last two fights remains to be seen, but the height and length of Holloways does make it tougher for Volkanovski to close the distance, despite the fact that Volkanovski actually has the reach advantage. Obviously Holloway can cover more distance with his kicks as he’s 5” taller than Volkanovski. Perhaps Volkanovski has made sizable improvements, and he looked better than ever in his last fight, but if their first two meetings are any indication, Volkanovski has a lower scoring ceiling against Holloway than he’s shown against other opponents. Volkanovski has only landed one finish since 2018 and the only early loss of Holloway’s career was all the way back in his 2012 UFC debut, so it’s unlikely we see a finish here. While Volkanovski has the highest floor of any fighter on the slate, he’ll need to do more than he did in his first two meetings with Holloway to end up in tournament winning lineups at his high price tag. The odds imply he has an 63% chance to win, a 23% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.

Holloway has gone full scorched earth since losing a pair of title fights to Volkanovski in 2019 and 2020. He set the record for the most significant strikes ever landed in a UFC fight at 445 against Calvin Kattar and followed it up with the 5th most significant strikes ever landed in a fight against Yair Rodriguez at 230. Holloway landed 675 combined significant strikes in those last two matches, the most any fighter has ever totaled over a two fight stretch. He put up face-melting totals of 209 and 153 DraftKings points in those two decision wins, and has averaged 129 DraftKings points in his eight UFC victories in five-round fights. Just keep in mind, he scored just 43 and 54 points in his two five-round decision losses to Volkanovski, and just 82 points in a five-round decision win to Frankie Edgar just before that. So Holloway has shown a massively wide scoring range, with the ability to go nuclear or bust in any given fight. Volkanovski is a much more defensively sound fighter than the guys Holloway has been going off against, and presents a much more difficult puzzle for Holloway to try and crack. Volkanovski will use a combination of feints, leg kicks, counter punching, and wrestling to slow Holloway down and Volkanovski averages just 3.32 SSA/min. Holloway scored an insane 362 combined DraftKings points in his last two fights and is now priced at just $7,200, so we expect the field to look past his previous struggles against Volkanovski and jam him into as many non-Volkanovski lines as they can. That should result in this fight as a whole carrying a ridiculous amount of overall ownership. The odds imply Holloway has a 37% chance to win, a 14% chance to get a finish, and a 4% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #1

Israel Adesanya

13th UFC Fight (11-1)

Since suffering the only defeat of his MMA career in a failed attempt to capture the Light Heavyweight belt, Adesanya has won a pair of five-round decisions in rematches against Marvin Vettori and Robert Whittaker. Adesanya’s last three fights and five of his last seven have all gone the full 25 minutes and he’s yet to taste defeat at 185 lb.

In his last fight, Adesanya took on Robert Whittaker in a rematch of a 2019 title fight, where Adesanya had previously knocked Whittaker out in the second round. Just like their first fight, Adesanya was once again able to land a knockdown in the first round, but once again Whittaker survived to see a second round. After doubling up Whittaker in significant strikes landed in round one, Adesanya continued to lead in striking in three of the four later rounds. Whittaker narrowly finished ahead in striking in round four, but found more success through his grappling, as he was able to land a takedown in each of the later rounds to finish 4 for 10 on his attempts. However, Whittaker never inflicted any damage on the mat and only finished the fight with 3:40 of control time. Adesanya finished ahead in significant strikes 79-59 and in total strikes 98-74, while quickly returning to his feet when he was taken down. Whittaker found more success in the last couple of rounds, but Adesanya went on to win a unanimous decision.

Now 22-1 as a pro, Adesanya has 15 wins by KO and seven decisions. His only loss came in a 2021 five-round decision against Jan Blachowicz, in an attempt at capturing a second belt up at Light Heavyweight. All 15 of Adesanya’s knockouts have occurred in the first two rounds, with seven coming in round one and eight ending in round two. His last two, and three out of his four UFC knockouts have occurred in the second round. His other eight UFC fights have all gone the distance, including six five rounders.

Overall, Adesanya is a calculated counter striker with a celebrated kickboxing career prior to transitioning to MMA. While he’s not a guy that’s ever looking to instigate grappling, he’s great at defending takedowns (77.8% career defense) and returning to his feet when he does get taken down. Considering he’s one of the best strikers on the planet, his opponents are generally looking to get him to the ground, but they have only been able to land 18 takedowns on 81 attempts (22.2%) against him in his 12 UFC fights. Only three opponents have failed to attempt a takedown against him, with his other nine opponents averaging 6.75 attempts each. His last two opponents to not attempt a takedown against him were Paulo Costa and Robert Whittaker (in their first fight), and Adesanya knocked out both of those opponents in the second round. The only other opponent not to try and get Adesanya down was Anderson Silva, who Adesanya defeated in a 2019 three-round decision. Adesanya has faced 29 takedown attempts in his last three fights alone, with 11 of those being successful. Obviously that’s slowed down those fights, but now he’ll get to face another pure striker.

This will be Adesanya’s eighth straight title fight and ninth five-round fight since joining the UFC in 2018. Five of those previous seven UFC title fights have gone the distance, while the other two both ended in round two knockouts. He also fought to a five-round decision victory against Brad Tavares in 2018, in his one other UFC five-round fight. Prior to joining the UFC, Adesanya had two fights scheduled to go five rounds, but he knocked out both opponents in the first round.

Jared Cannonier

14th UFC Fight (8-5)

Stepping into the first title fight of his UFC career at 38 years old, Cannonier is coming off a second round knockout of Derek Brunson following a five-round decision win over Kelvin Gastelum. Prior to the pair of wins, Cannonier suffered his only loss in his last six fights in a three-round decision against Robert Whittaker. Cannonier nearly got finished in the third round of that fight, but was narrowly able to survive to see the judges. Cannonier could have gotten a title shot earlier had he won that fight, but instead suffered a minor setback.

In his last fight, Cannonier’s takedown defense was really tested as he faced a relentless wrestler in Derek Brunson. While Brunson was able to land more takedowns than Cannonier’s previous four opponents combined, Cannonier was still able to defend 10 of Brunson’s 13 attempts and did a good job of returning to his feet when he was taken down. Brunson was able to drop Cannonier late in round one and then take his back and look for a choke, but ran out of time as the round ended. Brunson landed a takedown in the center of the Octagon to start the second round, but when Jared Cannonier decides he wants get up, he gets up. At that point Cannonier began to take over as Brunson quickly faded. Cannonier landed a massive elbow followed by a back fist to really hurt Brunson and then he shoved him to the mat and finished him with elbows. The fight ended with Cannonier ahead 55-43 in significant strikes and 61-48 in total strikes.

Now 15-5 as a pro, Cannonier has 10 wins by KO, two by submission, and three decisions. He’s been knocked out twice, and has three decision defeats. In one of the more incredible body transformations you’ll see, Cannonier went from losing his 2015 UFC debut at Heavyweight to contending for a Middleweight title now. Cannonier came into the UFC at 235 lb and got knocked out in the first round of his debut by southpaw fighter Shawn Jordan. Undeterred, Cannonier tried adding on 6 lb to be more competitive at Heavyweight and it appeared to work as he won his second UFC fight with a R1 KO of his own. Nevertheless, he decided that Light Heavyweight would be a better weight for him and cut down to 204 lb over the next several months. Eight months after his first win in the UFC at Heavyweight, Cannonier won a decision at Light Heavyweight against a tough Ion Cutelaba.

Cannonier was then thrown into the Light Heavyweight gauntlet with fights against Glover Teixeira, Jan Blachowicz, and Dominick Reyes in three of his next four fights. He survived to lose decisions against Teixeira and Blachowicz but was knocked out by the southpaw Reyes in the first round. In between his losses to Teixeira and Blachowicz, Cannonier did get a third round KO against a debuting Nick Roehrick, who took the fight on just 3 days notice and never fought with the organization again. Following consecutive losses to Blachowicz and Reyes, Cannonier dropped another 20 lb to move down to Middleweight in 2018. At 34 years old and testing his third UFC weight class, the late bloomer appeared to have finally found his home. Cannonier seemed to hang on to much of his Heavyweight power, while gaining some speed and quickness as he got leaner. Rattling off three straight KO wins, each in under six minutes, Cannonier shot up the Middleweight rankings and soon found himself one win away from a potential title shot before suffering the loss to Whittaker.

If we break down Cannonier’s UFC career by weight class, he went 1-1 at Heavyweight, with both fights ending in knockouts. He then went 2-3 at Light Heavyweight, with three fights going the distance (1-2) and two ending in knockouts (1-1). Since dropping down to Middleweight, he’s gone 5-1, with two fights going the distance (1-1) and four wins by KO in the first two rounds. So while he’s been knocked out twice in his career, he’s never been finished at 185 lb. Six of his eight UFC wins have come by KO, with all but one of those coming in the first two rounds.

Overall, Cannonier is a powerful but patient striker, who throws violent leg kicks and has demonstrated a really good takedown defense since dropping down to 185 lb, as he’s successfully defended 32 of the 39 attempts from his opponents at Middleweight (82%). He only averages 3.76 SSL/min and has never landed more than 84 significant strikes in a UFC fight. He notably landed just 81 significant strikes in his five-round decision win over Kelvin Gastleum. Cannonier tends to throw less leg kicks against grapplers, but will really let loose against pure strikers. It’s rare to see Cannonier look for takedowns and he’s only attempted four in 13 UFC fights, landing two of those. Three of those four attempts came in 2016 and 2017 when he was fighting at Light Heavyweight, and his only attempt in his last eight matches came in the finishing sequence of his last fight as he took down a borderline unconscious Derek Brunson to finish him on the mat with elbows. Cannonier did spend a lot of time working on his wrestling in preparation for the wrestling-heavy attack of Brunson, so there’s always a slight chance he carries some of that over into this next fight, but we’re not expecting that to be the case.

This will be the 3rd five-round fight of Cannonier’s UFC career. His first was in 2019 against Jack Hermansson and he won in an early second round KO. Then in 2021 he defeated Kelvin Gastelum by decision in his only other UFC five-round fight. He did have a five-round split decision win prior to joining the UFC, but it came in Alaska so it doesn’t really count.

Fight Prediction:

Adesanya will have a 5” height advantage and 3” reach advantage, in addition to being six years younger than the 38-year-old Cannonier.

Adesanya has faced three straight opponents who came in looking to grapple. Now he’ll finally face another pure striker for the first time since he knocked out Paulo Costa in September 2020. The last two opponents who didn’t try to take Adesanya down both got knocked out in the second round, so it will be interesting to see if Adesanya opens up more in this spot without the threat of defending takedowns. With that said, both of these two are patient strikers, who rarely land or absorb a high number of significant strikes. Look for both guys to respect the other’s striking and we expect this to play out as more of a tactical kickboxing battle opposed to an uptempo brawl. Adesanya lands an average of 3.84 SS/min, while absorbing just 2.56/min. And on the other side of things, Cannonier lands 3.76 SS/min, while absorbing 3.29 SS/min. While Cannonier packs a ton of power in his shots and has yet to be knocked out at 185 lb, he’s been knocked down in two of his last three fights and is far from indestructible. So despite the fact that Adesanya has gone the distance in four of his last five and six of his last eight five-round fights, he’s got a pretty good shot at landing a knockout here. It certainly won’t be surprising to see Adesanya outland his way to another decision win, and while that’s his most likely path to victory according to the odds, we actually like his chances to land a knockout, most likely in the second round. Regardless of how it ends, we’re confidently picking Adesanya to win this fight and Cannonier will be reliant on landing a miracle knockout to pull off the upset.

Our favorite bet here is “Adesanya R2 KO” at +1100.

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DFS Implications:

Adesanya’s patient striking and non-existant offensive grappling leave him entirely reliant on knockdowns and knockouts to score well in DFS. While he went through a four-fight stretch in 2018 and 2019 where he landed 11 knockdowns in less than 11 rounds of action, he’s since cooled off, landing just two knockdowns in his last 22 rounds in the Octagon. In fairness to him, he’s been facing a series of tanks and grapplers, and he’s probably due for some regression to swing back his way. Four of his last five fights have ended in five-round decisions, and he failed to top 85 DraftKings points in any of those. His only decent score over that stretch was when he knocked out Paulo Costa in the second round of a 2020 fight and scored 102 points. The only two times he’s scored above 106 DraftKings points in his 11 UFC wins were when he landed three or more knockdowns in a fight. One of those came in a best case scenario late first round finish against Derek Brunson where Adesanya landed three knockdowns in under five minutes and scored a career best 126 points. The other was in a five-round decision over Kelvin Gastelum, where Adesanya amazingly landed a career best four knockdowns in addition to the second highest striking total of his career. In his other four five-round decision wins, he averaged just 73 points, and in his other three UFC knockout victories he averaged 104. So it’s not surprising that the field has recently waned on Adesanya, and we’ve seen his ownership dwindle from 51% against Costa, to 38% in his next two matches, all the way down to 30% in his last fight. His last three appearances were all on larger slates, but nevertheless, the field isn’t blind to his recent scoring struggles. It will be interesting to see where his ownership checks in on this card, but look for him to be the odd man out when it comes to the big three at the top. That makes him more interesting in tournaments, but as the most expensive fighter on the card, he’ll need to have a multi knockdown performance capped by a well timed knockout just to even have a chance to end up in tournament winning lineups. The odds imply he has a 76% chance to win, a 36% chance to land a finish, and a 12% chance it comes in round one.

Cannonier is a patient low volume striker, who averages just 3.76 SSL/min and now faces the elite striking defense of Israel Adesanya, who averages just 2.56 SSA/min. Cannonier has landed just two takedowns in 13 UFC fights and isn’t a guy that adds anything in terms of offensive grappling. He’ll be reliant on handing Adesanya the first early loss of his MMA career and the first defeat of any kind at 185 lb. While Cannonier is a powerful fighter who started his career all the way up at Heavyweight, we don’t see him getting the finish here without some sort of miracle or freak injury. Even if Cannonier somehow won a head-scratching decision, he scored just 74 DraftKings in a 2021 five-round decision victory over Kelvin Gastelum. He’s nothing more than a cheap KO or bust play in the toughest matchup you could ask for at 185 lb. Even if Cannonier does pull off the unthinkable and land a knockout upset, if it comes beyond the first round it’s still unlikely to really score well. His previous knockouts to come in the second round or later have scored 98, 92, 93, and 85 DraftKings points. While at his cheap price tag that could still be enough for him to serve as a value play, there would still be lots of ways for him to get left out of tournament winning lineups. The odds imply he has a 24% chance to win, a 15% chance to land a finish, and a 4% chance it comes in round one.

Good luck to everyone this week, we hope you win big! Tag us on Twitter @dfs_mma with your winnings so we can see how you did!

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