The Sheet

Looking to skip the reading and get straight to the best plays and top bets? We're now offering premium DFS and betting content at patreon.com/mmadfs that includes our new DFS Cheat Sheet, with our top DraftKings, FanDuel and PrizePicks plays along with our DraftKings ownership projections, as well as our top early bets and our complete betting chart for every UFC fight.

None

Fighter Notes:

Fight #12

Emily Ducote

5th UFC Fight (2-2)

Ducote recently snapped a two-fight skid with a decision win over Ashley Yoder, who was coming off a 27 month layoff and is now 1-5 in her last six fights. Ducote outlanded Yoder 117-102 in significant strikes, while stuffing all three of her takedowns attempts and landing one takedown of her own. Prior to that win, Ducote lost a pair of high-volume striking battles against Angela Hill and Lupita Godinez. Hill outlanded Ducote 182-71 in significant strikes, while Godinez outlanded her 132-112. Leading up to those two losses, Ducote easily won a decision in her UFC debut against a one-dimensional grappler in Jessica Penne, where Ducote landed a ridiculous 51 leg strikes and finished ahead 116-63 in significant strikes. All four of Ducote’s UFC fights have ended in high-volume decisions, after she landed back-to-back KO/TKO wins in Invicta title fights just before joining the organization.

Now 13-8 as a pro, Ducote has three wins by KO/TKO, four submissions, and six decision victories. All three of her KO/TKO wins occurred in the first two rounds over her last nine fights. Three of her four submission wins occurred in rounds two and three, with her only first round submission ending in a 2017 rear-naked choke. She’s never been knocked out, but was submitted once in the 5th round of a 2017 Bellator Flyweight title fight and has seven decision losses. Ducote followed that Bellator submission loss up with two more losses in Bellator at 125 lb, before leaving the organization and dropping back down to 115 lb in 2019, where she’s since gone 7-3. She started her career at 115 lb in 2015, but moved up to 125 lb in 2016 and four of her eight career losses came at 125 lb.

Overall, Ducote is a Taekwondo black belt and also a BJJ black belt who wrestled in both high-school and college. While she’ll look for armbars off her back, she hasn’t mixed in much offensive wrestling lately and has only taken down two of her last nine opponents. In her four UFC fights, she attempted seven takedowns, but only landed one of them (14.3% accuracy), while her opponents only got her down once on 14 attempts (92.9% defense). While we haven’t seen much grappling in her UFC fights, the striking numbers have been consistently high. The winner in all four of her UFC fights has landed 116 or more significant strikes and she averages 6.93 SSL/min and 7.98 SSA/min. Now she’s facing an opponent who absorbed 139 significant strikes in her last loss.

Vanessa Demopoulos

7th UFC Fight (4-2)

Demopoulos is coming off a head-scratching decision “win” over Kanako Murata, where Murata took Demopoulos down five times on six attempts and controlled her for over 10 minutes, while also finishing slightly ahead in significant strikes 34-31. Amazingly, all three judges scored the fights 29-28 in Demopoulos’ favor and even Demopoulos was shocked by the results. Murata closed as a -4000 favorite on the live line, so clearly the betting market was shocked as well. Prior to that robbery, Demopoulos had a three-fight winning streak snapped in a unanimous 30-27 decision loss to Karolina Kowalkiewicz, where Demopoulos failed to land any of her four takedown attempts and got outlanded 139-68 in significant strikes. That came after Demopoulos won a pair of decisions over Maria Oliveira and Jinh Yu Frey, after locking up a first round armbar against Silvana Gomez Juarez, who nearly knocked Demopoulos out. Demopoulos also arguably lost the fight against Frey, so she’s had several close calls and could very easily be 1-5 in the UFC instead of 4-2. Leading up to that stretch of wins, Demopoulos made her UFC debut in August 2021 up a weight class in a terrible matchup against JJ Aldrich and lost a decision. Demopoulos originally attempted to punch her ticket to the UFC through DWCS in August 2020, but lost a smothering decision to Cory McKenna and was forced to return to the LFA. She then lost a decision to Loopy Godinez, but bounced back with a R1 TKO win that was good enough for the UFC to give her a shot.

Now 10-5 as a pro, Demopoulos has one TKO win (R1 2021), four submissions, and five decision victories. Three of her four submission wins ended in first round armbars, with the other ending in a R4 inverted triangle choke. She’s never been finished, with all five of her career losses going the distance. Five of her six UFC fights went the distance.

Overall, Demopoulos is a BJJ black belt and relies largely on her grappling to win fights. While she doesn’t mind mixing it up on the feet, she’s a sloppy striker and tends to be pretty hittable, averaging 5.06 SSA/min and owning just a 43% striking defense. While her grappling is adequate, her wrestling is bad and between her six UFC fights and her DWCS appearance, she only landed 3 of her 23 takedown attempts (13% accuracy). On the other side of things, her opponents got her down on 7 of their 10 attempts (30% defense). Her first five UFC fights were all against strikers and Demopoulos still largely struggled to land takedowns in those fights. And when she has gone up against wrestlers, she’s been easily controlled on the mat for extended periods of time. Demopoulos had been training at Fight Ready in Arizona, but moved to Colorado and joined Factory X in January 2023. She said the team at Fight Ready had some sort of disagreement with her manager and told her to either find a new manager or find a new gym. She chose the latter. However, after losing her first match with Factory X, she then decided to move again, and is now in Las Vegas training at the UFC PI with more of a personalized team around her. Her striking looked somewhat improved in her last fight so maybe the change in scenery has helped her, but she was also facing a wrestler there so we’ll see how she looks here.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 5’2”, but Ducote will have a 4” reach advantage and is five years younger than the 35-year-old Demopoulos.

This looks like a great matchup for Ducote and she arguably has Demopoulos beat everywhere. While she hasn’t been looking to grapple much offensively, she’s a BJJ black belt and uses her wrestling background to keep fights standing, as she has an elite 92% takedown defense. She also lands twice as much striking volume as Demopoulos (6.93 vs. 3.44 SSL/min) and also has the power advantage. So it’s hard to see many paths to victory for Demopoulos, unless she once again steals a decision she has no business winning. The only question we have is whether or not Ducote can become the first fighter to ever finish Demopoulos. Ducote showed knockout power on the regional scene and the one time Demopoulos faced a powerful striker was when she took on Silvana Gomez Juarez, who dropped Demopoulos in the first round. So it’s definitely possible that Ducote finds a finish, but as the odds suggest, it’s far more likely that she wins a decision. Either way, we like Ducote to get her hand raised.

Our favorite bet here is “Emily Ducote ITD” at +450.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Ducote has landed a combined 416 significant strikes in her four UFC fights and averages a blistering 6.93 SSL/min and 7.98 SSA/min, but has yet to put up a meaningful score. All four of her UFC fights went the distance (2-2), and she only averaged 80 DraftKings points in her two wins. She’s only landed one takedown in the UFC and zero knockdowns. She also has just 14 total seconds of control time in those four fights, so she’s not occurring any stats outside of her gaudy striking numbers. However, she did land a pair of knockouts just before joining the UFC and is also a BJJ black belt with a wrestling background. So she’s capable of doing more, we just haven’t seen it yet. Demopoulos has never been finished, but she has been dropped and nearly knocked out before and also averages 5.06 SSA/min. She’s willing to throw down in a wild brawl and Karolina Kowalkiewicz was able to land 139 significant strikes against her last year. That leaves Ducote with a solid scoring floor, but she’ll still need a finish to return value at her high price tag. While her -200 decision line isn’t overly encouraging for her chances of ending this early, she’ll be low owned and if she does find a finish she’ll offer tournament winning upside. The odds imply Ducote has a 75% chance to win, a 16% chance to land a finish, and an 8% chance it comes in round one.

Demopoulos’ aggressive fighting style typically results in uptempo fights and she averages 5.06 SSA/min. While she comes from a grappling background, her wrestling is terrible and she only has a 13% takedown accuracy and 30% defense. That often forces her into striking battles, where she can get pretty wild with her striking and has been outlanded in six of her seven UFC fights and on DWCS. She generally relies on terrible decisions to win fights and has a knack for swaying the judges in her favor. However, those decision robberies tend to not score well, as not doing enough to legitimately win a fight has a pretty strong correlation with not doing enough to score well in DFS. She only put up 60 DraftKings points in her most recent hijacking,where she got taken down five times and controlled for over 10 minutes, while finishing behind 31-34 in significant strikes and failed to land her only takedown attempt. She also scored just 70 points in a decision “win” over Jinh Yu Frey back in 2022. The only two times Demopoulos scored remotely well were when she won a dominant decision over one of the worst fighters formerly on the roster in Maria Oliveira and scored 100 points, and when she locked up her only finish in the UFC in a 2022 first round submission over the highly submittable Silvana Gomez Juarez, and scored 92 points. It would be pretty shocking to see Demopoulos find a finish or even any wrestling success against Ducote, so her only path to victory appears to be by robbery. While Ducote does amazingly average 7.98 SSA/min, Demopoulos has never landed more than 70 significant strikes in a fight and it’s hard to see her scoring enough from striking volume alone to return an impressive score. However, if we get a slate where only one or two underdogs win, then she would still have a shot at sneaking into winning lineups even without a big score. The odds imply Demopoulos has a 25% chance to win, an 11% chance to land a finish, and a 5% chance it comes in round one.

---

Fight #11

Kleidison Rodrigues

4th UFC Fight (1-2)

After back-to-back weight misses, Rodrigues moved up from 125 lb to 135 lb for his last fight and proceeded to get submitted by a really tough Farid Basharat in the first round. Prior to that, Rodrigues missed weight so badly (3 lb) for his last 125 lb fight that Tatsuro Taira declined to move forward with the match and it was canceled after weigh-ins. That came after Rodrigues missed weight by a pound against a fragile Shannon Ross and then went on to knock Ross out in just 59 seconds. Just before that, Rodrigues lost a split-decision in his UFC debut against C.J. Vergara, who controlled Rodrigues on the mat for essentially the entire second round. Rodrigues then gassed in the third round, but never stopped fighting to at least make the decision close. Leading up to that loss, Rodrigues won six straight fights and punched his ticket to the UFC with a decision win on DWCS in September 2021. Rodrigues won the vacant Jungle Fight Flyweight belt with a 2019 second round rear-naked choke in his last fight before going on DWCS.

Now 8-3 as a pro, Rodrigues has four wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and two decision victories. Five of his six finishes occurred in the first round, with the other ending midway through round two. Two of his career losses ended in split-decisions, while he’s coming off the first early loss of his career in a first round submission.

Overall, Rodrigues is a dangerous and aggressive Brazilian striker, who’s also shown the ability to finish fights on the mat. He’s most dangerous on the feet as he throws a plethora of different attacks at his opponents, including a high number of spinning attacks. He’s incredibly explosive both in his striking and on the ground, as he’s shown the ability to explode out of bottom position. However, that explosiveness comes at a price and we’ve seen him slow down later in fights. And when he can’t explode back up, he’s struggled with being controlled on the mat. Between his three UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, Rodrigues landed 2 of his 8 takedown attempts (25% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 4 of their 11 attempts (63.6% defense). He’s still a relatively young prospect at just 28 years old, so he should be continuing to improve, but he may be improving back on the Brazilian regional scene if he doesn’t get a win here. It will be interesting to see how he looks on the scale here in his second fight up at 135 lb.

Heili Alatengheili

8th UFC Fight (4-2-1)

Coming off a unanimous 30-27 decision loss to Chris Gutierrez, Alatengheili has gone the distance in all but one of his seven UFC fights, with the one exception being a 2020 first round knockout against a terrible Kevin Croom, who was dropping down a weight class. Gutierrez put on a striking clinic against Alatengheili, outlanding him 110-38 in significant strikes. Alatengheili curiously didn’t even attempt a takedown until the third round, where he then took Gutierrez down twice on four attempts. Prior to that, Alatengheili won a low-volume unanimous 30-27 decision win over Chad Anheliger. Alatengheili showcased his striking early in that match and had Anheliger hurt in the first round, but was unable to get him out of there and instead cruised to a decision.

Now 16-9-2 as a pro, Alatengheili has five KO/TKOs, three submissions, and eight decision wins. He’s been knocked out three times, submitted once, and has four decision defeats. Two of his knockout losses occurred very early in his career back in 2014, in his 4th and 6th fights, with the other coming in 2017. His lone submission loss came in a first round armbar in 2015. Alatengheili’s last 16 fights all ended in either knockouts (4-1) or decisions (7-2-2). Alatengheili has competed anywhere from 125 lb to 145 lb in his career, but most of his fights have been at 135 lb.

Overall, Alatengheili is a well-rounded fighter with a wrestling background, but is often content with keeping things on the feet, especially early on in fights. He’s not a high-volume striker by any means and only averages 2.88 SSL/min. He typically throws one, sometimes two punches at a time and rarely strings together long combinations. He does have decent power, but he’s far from an elite striker and absorbs more strikes than he lands, as he averages 5.03 SSA/min. After going 7 for 20 on takedowns in his first two UFC matches, he only landed four takedowns on just seven attempts in his last five matches. So looking at his entire seven-fight UFC career, he landed 11 of his 27 takedown attempts (40.7% accuracy).

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 5’5”, but Rodrigues will have a 1” reach advantage and is four years younger than the 32-year-old Alatengheili.

This looks like do or die for Rodrigues, who’s sitting on a 1-2 UFC record with multiple weight misses under his belt. While Rodrigues has shown explosive athleticism and dangerous striking, he gets pretty wild and tends to slow down later in fights, while he’s also struggled with being put on his back. It would make all the sense in the world for Alatengheili to lean on his wrestling here, but that was just as true in his last fight and he waited until the third round to even attempt a takedown there. He did the same thing in his previous fight against a one-dimensional striker in Chad Anheliger as well as against Gustavo Lopez just before that. In fact, Alatengheili has only attempted one total takedown in the first two rounds in his entire seven-fight UFC career, which he failed to land against Ryan Benoit back in 2019. So at this point it has to be part of his game plan to strike early and look to wrestle late, as he landed 11 of his 26 takedown attempts in the third round of fights. That seems like a weird strategy, but maybe the team at Fight Ready knows something that we don’t when it comes to how his cardio holds up in longer wrestling matches. In a pure striking battle, it’s tougher to pick Alatengheili here, as he lands way less striking volume than Rodrigues (5.48 vs. 2.88 SSL/min), while absorbing significantly more (2.75 vs. 5.03 SSA/min). And if Alatengheili isn’t going to wrestle in the first two rounds, Rodrigues will be less likely to gas out. Rodrigues is also the more dangerous of the two, at least when he’s fresh, and Alatengheili has been finished four times in his career—even if most of those were early in his career. So Rodrigues is a justified favorite here, even if he’s yet to ever win a fight at 135 lb. However, Alatengheili is tough and won’t be an easy guy to put away early, and with his job on the line Rodrigues could come in with a more measured approach, lowering his chances for a finish. So Rodrigues by decision will be the pick, but we have no problem live betting Alatengheili after round one if Rodrigues appears to be fatiguing. Unfortunately, the books are also expecting Rodrigues to win by decision and there’s no value in that line, so we’re forced to look at some long shot props when it comes to betting.

Our favorite bet here is “Kleidison Rodrigues R1 KO” at +1200.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Rodrigues has struggled with consistency and making weight so far in the UFC, which forced him to move up a weight class for his last fight. We’d already seen him struggle with being controlled on the mat at 125 lb and moving up in weight and facing larger opponents definitely didn’t help in that regard, as he proceeded to suffer the first early loss of his career in a round one submission. And while he was able to land a first round knockout in his prior win that scored 131 DraftKings points, that came against an absolutely terrible Shannon Ross, who gets finished by everybody. So we can’t put much stock in that result and Rodrigues lost a decision to an average talent in CJ Vergara just before that. Rodrigues will now be fighting for his job against a well-rounded opponent in Alatengheili and it will be interesting to see if he comes in just as wild as in past fights or if he dials things back some to focus more on winning than being exciting. Rodrigues averages 5.48 SSL/min and will also mix in some wrestling, while six of his eight career wins have come in the first two rounds. So he has clear upside, we just worry about him potentially gassing out and/or getting controlled on the mat. That leaves him as a volatile DFS play and the books are expecting this fight to go the distance. The odds imply Rodrigues has a 57% chance to win, a 19% chance to land a finish, and a 10% chance it comes in round one.

Alatengheili has averaged 86 DraftKings points in his four UFC wins and only really scored well in his lone UFC finish, when he knocked out a terrible Kevin Croom in just 47 seconds and was awarded the Quick Win Bonus to score 129 points. He failed to top 80 points in any of his three decision wins, and only scored 64 points in his last decision victory. And while he has a wrestling background, he refuses to look for takedowns until the third round of fights, which really caps his scoring ceiling in decisions, especially when you combine that with his 2.88 SSL/min. However, we have seen Rodrigues struggle with being controlled and also gas out in the past, which are both encouraging for Alatengheili’s scoring potential. And at his cheap price tag, he could potentially serve as a value play even without a huge score here. However, to assure himself a spot in tournament winning lineups he’ll need a finish. The odds imply Alatengheili has a 43% chance to win, a 19% chance to land a finish, and a 10% chance it comes in round one.

---

Fight #10

Piera Rodriguez

4th UFC Fight (2-1)

Rodriguez had been scheduled to face Cynthia Calvillo six weeks ago on April 6th, but Calvillo predictably missed weight by 3 lb trying to cut back down to 115 lb and the fight was canceled. Rodriguez had already weighed in and made weight and will now be cutting again for the second time in six weeks.

Thirteen months removed from the first loss of her career, Rodriguez was submitted by Gillian Robertson in the second round of an April 2023 match, where Robertson was dropping down from 125 lb to 115 lb. Robertson was able to dominate Rodriguez on the mat for most of the fight, as she took her down twice and controlled her for six and half minutes before locking up an armbar late in round two. Prior to that, Rodriguez won a decision over Sam Hughes, who Rodriguez was able to take down five times, but only finished with 116 seconds of control time. Just before that, Rodriguez won a decision in her UFC debut against Kay Hansen, who Rodriguez took down three times and controlled for five minutes. We saw a similar result in her DWCS fight, where she also landed three takedowns and finished with over four minutes of control time in another decision win. All 10 of her pro fights have seen the second round, with five of her last six making it to round three, and four of those going the distance. She started her career off with four straight KO/TKO wins, but her only finish in her last six fights was a 2021 R5 TKO in the LFA.

Now 9-1 as a pro, Rodriguez has five wins by KO/TKO and four decisions. Four of those five finishes came in her first four pro fights and only one of those four was against an opponent with a winning record. Three of her five finishes came in round two, one ended in round three, and the other was stopped in round five. Her only career loss ended in a second round submission.

Overall, Rodriguez has more power than your typical Strawweight, but she’s been pretty patient in the UFC and hasn’t been pushing for finishes. She only averages 3.46 SSL/min and 2.98 SSA/min and only topped 50 significant strikes landed in one of her UFC fights, which was when she connected on 83 against Sam Hughes. Similarly, she’s only absorbed more than 36 significant strikes once, which was when Sam Hughes landed 69 against her. Rodriguez frequently looks for takedowns, although she doesn’t always have the best accuracy when it comes to landing them. She also hasn’t done the best job of controlling positions on the ground and has been prone to getting taken down herself. Between her three UFC fights and her DWCS appearance, she landed 12 of her 29 takedown attempts (41.4% accuracy), while her opponents got her down four times on 12 attempts (66.7% defense). Rodriguez trains at Black House MMA with Mackenzie Dern, but Rodriguez is only a BJJ blue belt and hasn’t looked like much of a submission threat. Now she gets an opponent who’s struggled with being taken down.

Ariane Carnelossi

5th UFC Fight (2-2)

It’s been two years since Carnelossi last competed, when she got absolutely dominated on the ground in a decision loss against Loopy Godinez, who landed all eight of her takedown attempts and finished with thirteen and a half minutes of control time, while also leading 46-9 in significant strikes and 130-23 in total strikes. That came just after Carnelossi found some rare grappling success of her own against a one-dimensional striker and notorious gasser in Istela Nunes. Carnelossi landed five takedowns with seven minutes of control time, before locking up a rear-naked choke in the third round. That came after Carnelossi finished another gasbag in Liang Na, who was so tired after the first round she had to be illegally carried to her corner after Song Yadong peeled her off the mat just as the ref was considering stopping the fight following the first round. Leading up to those two wins, Carnelossi took all of 2020 off after becoming one of the few fighters to get finished by Angela Hill, in a R3 doctor stoppage TKO in Carnelossi’s 2019 UFC debut. While all four of Carnelossi’s UFC fights made it out of the first round and three saw round three, only one required the judges.

Now 14-3 as a pro, Carnelossi has nine wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and three decision victories. Her last three and five of her last six finishes occurred in the later rounds and only one of her last 11 fights ended in round one, which was a 2018 first round knockout win before she joined the UFC. She has one TKO loss, one submission defeat, and one loss by decision. Her lone TKO loss came in the third round of her UFC debut against Angela Hill, while her only submission loss occurred in the first round of her 2014 pro debut against Amanda Ribas. Carnelossi has won 14 of her last 16 fights, with 11 of those wins coming early.

Overall, Carnelossi is primarily a striker, but showed us in her last win that she can grapple some when given the right matchup. As you could guess by looking at her, Carnelossi is powerful, but she’s not especially quick and doesn’t have a great striking defense. She averages 3.04 SSL/min and 4.72 SSA/min and has been outlanded in three of her four UFC fights. In those four fights, she landed 5 of her 9 takedown attempts (55.6% accuracy), while her opponents got her down on 11 of their 12 attempts (8.3% defense). So she’s shown no ability to wrestle defensively and looks like a liability off her back. After two years away, Carnelossi is someone we’ll want to monitor closely on the scale.

Fight Prediction:

Rodriguez will have a 1” height advantage and 2” reach advantage.

Carnelossi has struggled with being taken down and controlled, while Rodriguez has taken everyone she’s faced down and landed three or more takedowns in each of her last three wins. We fully expect Rodriguez to come in with a wrestling-heavy game plan and nothing Carnelossi has shown us indicates she’ll be able to remain upright. However, Rodriguez also hasn’t looked like much of a finishing threat, and we’d be surprised to see her end this early. So give us Rodriguez in a wrestling-heavy decision win.

Our favorite bet here is “Piera Rodriguez DEC” at +110.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Rodriguez has yet to put up any huge DFS totals but was able to score decently through a combination of takedowns and striking in her first two UFC wins, where she returned DK/FD totals of 93/100 and 80/68. She then got submitted in the second round of her last fight, showing that she’s still a work in progress on the mat and is pretty helpless off her back. Now she gets a dream matchup for wrestling success against the 8.3% takedown defense of Carnelossi, who hasn’t fought in two years after getting dominated on the ground by Loopy Godinez and giving up eight takedowns in that fight. Rodriguez landed five takedowns in her last win, but didn’t do much with them and will need to be much busier on the mat to return value at her expensive price tag here. She can be far too content with operating at a slow, methodical pace, which makes her a frustrating fighter to play in DFS, especially when she has teed up matchups in front of her. Maybe she’ll pick up the pace some here, but the most likely outcome is another 90-95 point decision victory that doesn’t score quite enough for her to crack tournament winning lineups. However, she has shown a solid floor and she’s close enough to putting up a big score that you have to have some tournament exposure in this great matchup and she also makes for a solid low-risk play. The odds imply Rodriguez has a 66% chance to win, a 22% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

Carnelossi has been a boom or bust DFS option who averaged 109 DraftKings points in her two UFC wins, both of which came early, but just 19 points in her two losses. One of her wins was against Liang Na, which barely even counts since Na finishes herself in the second round of all her fights. The other win came against a one-dimensional striker in Istela Nunes, who’s even worse than Carnelossi on the mat and also has terrible cardio. Carnelossi was able to take Nunes down five times and submit her in the third round, but that had far more to do with her opponent than anything else. So Carnelossi’s scoring success is somewhat of a mirage and we have low expectations for her moving forward. She’s shown no ability to defend a takedown and will now be facing an opponent who comes into every fight looking to wrestle. That appears to leave Carnelossi reliant on landing a hail mary finish to pull off the upset. To her credit, she’s built like a tank and has decent power, so she’ll have a puncher’s chance. The odds imply Carnelossi has a 34% chance to win, a 13% chance to land a finish, and a 6% chance it comes in round one.

---

Fight #9

Abus Magomedov

4th UFC Fight (1-2)

Coming off two straight losses, Magomedov is likely fighting for his job now as he sits on a 1-2 UFC record. His last fight ended in a low-volume decision defeat to Caio Borralho, who finished ahead 51-38 in significant strikes and knocked Magomedov down in the third round. Four months prior to that, Magomedov was thrust into a main event spot in just his second UFC fight, where he was sent to slaughter against Sean Strickland, who finished Magomedov with strikes in round two. Magomedov gassed out after a fast start in round one and had no hope after his cardio failed him. That came after Magomedov landed a 19 second first round knockout in his UFC debut against a struggling Dustin Stoltzfus. Leading up to his debut, Magomedov took all of 2021 off after locking up a second round guillotine in December 2020 with KSW. Just before that, he secured a quick 47 second first round submission win after he was notably knocked out by a 39-year-old Louis Taylor in just 33 seconds in the 2018 PFL finals with a million dollars on the line. Fourteen of his last 16 fights ended in the first two rounds, with nine of those ending in round one.

Now 25-6-1 as a pro, Magomedov has 14 wins by KO/TKO, six submissions, and five decision victories. Fifteen of his 20 finishes occurred in round one, with the other five ending in round two. He’s been knocked out twice, submitted twice, and has two decision losses. Both of his submission losses were back in 2013 and all four of his early losses also occurred in the first two rounds. He’s only been in two fights that lasted longer than 10 minutes since 2015, which was a 2018 decision win and the decision loss in his last fight. Magomedov fought at 170 lb early in his career, before moving up to 185 lb in 2016.

Overall, Magomedov is a dangerous finisher with powerful striking and decent grappling. Most of his submission wins have come via guillotine, but he will also look for other chokes and kimuras as well. His one glaring weakness has been his cardio, and he tends to slow down after the first round when he’s forced to work. In fairness to him, he has gone 5-2-1 in the eight decisions he’s been to, although several of those were only two round fights. He grew up wrestling in Dagestan, before moving to Germany when he was 15 years old, where he then began focussing more on striking. He’s shown both patience and explosiveness in the past, and after pushing a high pace and gassing out against Strickland, we saw him dial the tempo way back in his last fight, honestly too far back. In his three UFC fights he landed one of his two takedown attempts (50% accuracy), while his opponents failed to get him down on just one attempt. While we haven’t seen much wrestling in his fights at the UFC level, he did show a pretty decent takedown defense on the regional scene.

Warlley Alves

16th UFC Fight (8-7)

Alves has now dropped three straight and was knocked out early in two of those fights. He stepped into his last matchup on just two weeks’ notice against a really tough opponent in Ikram Aliskerov. To make matters worse, Alves was also moving back up to 185 lb for the first time since his 2014 UFC debut. The fight only lasted 127 seconds before Aliskerov overwhelmed Alves with strikes along the fence and forced a TKO stoppage. Aliskerov finished ahead 26-12 in significant strikes, while neither fighter attempted a takedown. Just before that, Alves lost a decision in front of his home Brazilian crowd to Nicolas Dalby, after getting knocked out in the second round by Jeremiah Wells, who was making his short notice UFC debut. Alves’ only win in his last five outings came in a quick first round TKO from body kicks against Mounir Lazzez. Leading up to that win, Alves took all of 2020 off, after getting submitted in the second round by Randy Brown in 2019. Seven of his last eight fights ended early (3-4), with all but one of those finishes ending by KO/TKO. However, only two of those finishes ended in round one (1-1), while four ended in round two (1-3), and one ended in round three (1-0).

Now 14-7 as a pro, Alves has four wins by KO/TKO, six submissions, and four decision victories. He’s been knocked out three times, submitted once, and has three decision losses. He’s been finished in under a round and a half in four of his last seven fights and it’s been three and a half years since his last win and five years since his second most recent victory. Alves started his career at 170 lb, before moving up to 185 lb when he went on The Ultimate Fighter Brazil in 2014, which he won. He then dropped back down to 170 lb for the next decade, before returning to 185 lb for his last fight.

Overall, Alves is a BJJ black belt and a pretty well rounded fighter, but tends to fade down the stretch in fights. He notably has a first round guillotine win over Colby Covington on his record, which is one of the moves Alves is known for and how he finished three of his first four UFC opponents. He only averages 3.25 SSL/min and 4.21 SSA/min, while tacking on 1.4 TDL/15 min. In his 15 UFC fights, he landed 13 of his 26 takedown attempts (50% accuracy), while his opponents only got him down on 4 of their 20 attempts (80% defense). No one has ever gotten him down more than once in a fight, which is especially impressive when you consider he’s gone up against Kamaru Usman and Colby Covington in the past. And only once has he ever landed more than two takedowns in a UFC fight, which was when he landed three in a 2019 submission loss to Randy Brown. Despite joining the UFC all the way back in 2014, Alves is still only 33 years old, but will be desperate for a win here if he wants to hang around in the organization much longer. He was definitely carrying some extra weight in his midsection for his last fight where he moved up to 185 lb on short notice, so we’ll see if he’s in better shape here or if he just doesn’t feel like cutting weight anymore. He’ll be a guy to monitor closely on the scale.

Fight Prediction:

Magomedov will have a 3” height advantage and 6” reach advantage.

Queue up the Spiderman meme on these two notorious gassers, but we do believe that Alves has the less terrible cardio of the two. Magomedov’s cardio is hilariously horrible and he turns into a pumpkin after the first round when he’s forced to work. So the question becomes whether or not he can get Alves out of there early, which hasn’t been hard to do lately, as Alves has been finished in under a round and a half in four of his last seven matches. Also important to point out, Alves is a 170 lb fighter who moved up to 185 lb to take a short notice matchup in his last outing and then got hit so hard he forgot to move back down. He looked overweight in that fight and the only part of him that looked bulked up was his gut. Maybe he’ll convert some of that fat to muscle for this matchup, but nothing that occurred in that fight was encouraging for his chances moving forward at 185 lb. He’s only 5’11”, so he’s pretty short and will be at a huge reach disadvantage here. While neither of these two can be trusted, it looks like a good bounce back spot for Magomedov to find a finish in the opening round and a half, most likely by knockout, but he will look for submissions as well. However, if he can’t get Alves out of there early, then we fully expect him to gas out once again. That could open up an opportunity for Alves to find a late finish, unless he’s also completely gassed at that point, which is very possible. If both guys empty their tanks but are unable to find a finish, things could get really sloppy late, which could make it harder to score a decision. We slightly lean towards Magomedov finishing Alves in the first round and a half, but it’s impossible to be confident in either of these two.

Our favorite bet here is “Magomedov/Alves Fight Ends in R2” at +330.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Magomedov has shown explosive finishing ability, but also an explosive gas tank that can blow at any second. After landing a quick knockout in the opening seconds of his UFC debut where he scored 128 DraftKings points, he completely gassed out in the second round against Sean Strickland and was easily finished. Then we saw an overcorrection in his last fight where he was terrified to do anything early in the fight, due to the risk of him gassing out. Even with practically no output, he still gassed out in round three and was nearly finished, but instead hung on to lose a decision. Now he’s likely fighting for his job at 1-2 and it will be interesting to see if that drives him to be more aggressive and leave it all out there or if he’ll once again try to preserve his cardio early on. We lean towards the former but you never know how fighters will react in situations like these. More often than not it seems like these explosive gassers are never able to rekindle their past success and instead second guess themselves into oblivion. Some of the comparisons we can think of are Terrance McKinney, Randy Costa, and Yohan Lainesse. Maybe Magomedov will be the exception. This does look like a decent matchup for him to find an early finish if he’s willing to push for one, as Alves recently moved up from 170 lb to 185 lb and has been finished in under a round and a half in four of his last seven fights. So if Magomedov is willing to push for a finish early on at the risk of gassing out, he’ll have a good shot at ending this in the opening five minutes. However, if he comes out the way he did in his last fight, then he might as well just start looking for a new job now. Ultimately, it’s a volatile spot where he could put up a huge score in an early finish or completely lay an egg. The odds imply Magomedov has a 70% chance to win, a 56% chance to land a finish, and a 33% chance it comes in round one.

Alves has lost three straight fights and is 1-4 in his last five. He recently moved up from 170 lb to 185 lb on short notice and proceeded to get knocked out in the first round, which is the first time in his career he’s been finished in the opening five minutes. That’s concerning for his durability moving forward and he already had suspect cardio, which is a rough combination, especially as he faces bigger, stronger opponents at 185 lb. It’s been three and a half years since he won a fight, but he’s proven himself to be dangerous in the past, both with his striking and his infamous guillotine. And working in his favor, he’s taking on an opponent who has terrible cardio and looks extremely prone to being finished in the later rounds. So if Alves can simply survive early on and not completely gas out, he could be looking at a golden opportunity for a late finish. And while that scenario likely wouldn’t result in him putting up a huge score, at his cheap price tag it could still be enough for him to be useful. So he has a wide range of scoring outcomes, but he makes sense as a cheap tournament option. The odds imply Alves has a 30% chance to win, a 21% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

---

Fight #8

Melissa Gatto

5th UFC Fight (2-2)

Gatto was set to face Victoria Dudakova seven weeks ago on March 30th, but just before the fight was about to start Dudakova mysteriously dropped out. That fight was set to take place at 125 lb, while Gatto stepped into this 135 lb matchup on a few weeks’ notice.

Gatto has lost two straight and is coming off a split-decision loss to Ariane Lipski that we thought Gatto won. Gatto finished ahead in significant strikes 85-66, in total strikes 100-81, and on control time 2:57-0:47, but failed to land any of her seven takedown attempts, while Lipski landed her only attempt. Gatto nearly doubled Lipski up in significant strikes landed in round one (28-16), yet Sal D'amato somehow still scored that round (and the other two) for Lipski, so you truly never know what the judges are watching—or if they even are. Fourteen months prior to that, Gatto suffered the first loss of her career in a close decision against a tough wrestler in Tracy Cortez. Cortez landed two of her three takedown attempts with almost eight minutes of control time, while Gatto landed three of her six takedown attempts with three minutes of control time. Leading up to those two losses, Gatto finished three straight opponents, including a pair of late round TKO wins in her first two UFC fights. The most recent of those wins came in an early third round TKO against Sijara Eubanks, which is the only time Eubanks has ever been finished. Just before that, Gatto notched a post R2 TKO in her UFC debut against Victoria Leonardo, who suffered a broken arm that stopped the fight after round two. Gatto took nearly three years off prior to making her UFC debut, after submitting Karol Rosa in the first round of a 2018 match on the Brazilian regional scene.

Now 8-2-2 as a pro, Gatto has two wins by TKO, four submissions, and two decision victories. All four of her submissions came in the first round, two by armbar, one by kimura, and another by rear-naked choke. Both of her TKO wins occurred in the later rounds, with one ending in round three and the other ending just before round three started. Gatto started her career at 135 lb, before dropping down to 125 lb when she made her UFC debut. She’ll now be returning to 135 lb as she steps into a fight on a relatively short notice.

Overall, Gatto is a slick grappler and dangerous submission threat who has shown improvements to her striking since joining the UFC. Don’t get confused by her two TKO wins, she’s typically looking to submit opponents, and isn’t much of an actual knockout threat. One of those TKOs came from an ongoing arm injury and the other was a TKO by body shot. Gatto has looked good since dropping down to 125 lb, and physically she’s all muscle. The fight with Eubanks was extremely close before the flukey finish, and the outcome likely would have come down to who could control the other on the mat in the third round had it not been for the finish. In her four UFC fights, Gatto landed 4 of her 19 takedown attempts (21.1% accuracy), while her opponents got her down on 4 of their 11 attempts (63.6% defense). One issue for Gatto has been her inactivity, as she’s only fought four times since 2018. It will be important to see how she looks on the scale as she moves up a weight class on short notice here.

Tamires Vidal

3rd UFC Fight (1-1)

Vidal was originally scheduled to face Hailey Cowan here (again), but Cowan dropped out and Gatto was announced as the replacement a few weeks out.

Vidal is Coming off a split decision loss to Montserrat Rendon, who finished ahead 69-60 in significant strikes and 112-78 in total strikes, while also taking Vidal down three times and controlling her for almost five minutes. Prior to that, Vidal landed a first round TKO win in her UFC debut against a terrible Ramona Pascual. Somehow Vidal had won six straight fights leading up to her recent loss, but that stat should come with an asterisk, as she was getting mauled by Ailin Perez in the infamous warehouse fight, before Perez was DQ’d for landing an illegal knee. Vidal then landed a second round heel hook in the LFA against a one-dimensional striker, which was enough for the UFC to bring her on.

Now 7-2 as a pro, Vidal has one TKO win, two submissions, three decision victories, and one DQ win. Both of those submission wins ended in the second round, while her lone TKO came in the first round of her last fight. Her only loss was a 2019 R3 submission against UFC fighter Karol Rosa in Vidal’s second pro fight. Vidal started her career at 145 lb, where she went 4-0, before dropping down to 135 lb in 2021, where she’s gone 3-2, but would be 2-3 had it not been for her DQ win.

Overall, Vidal is a low-level fighter who doesn’t land a ton of striking volume but has okay power. She throws wild looping right hands but doesn’t connect on many of them. She’s a BJJ brown belt who will look for occasional takedowns, and she has no problem forfeiting top position to lean back into guillotine or heel hook attempts. The two times Vidal faced legitimate competition were when she got submitted by Karol Rosa and won via DQ against Ailin Perez in a fight Vidal was losing badly. In her two UFF fights, Vidal failed to land any of her four takedown attempts, while her opponents took her down three times on five attempts (40% defense). Vidal is still only 25 years old, so she should be improving if she’s putting the work in, but she’s got a long way to go.

Fight Prediction:

Vidal will have a 1” height advantage, but Gatto will have a 1” reach advantage. Gatto is three years older than the 25-year-old Vidal.

Gatto is a dangerous grappler, although has struggled at times to get opponents to the mat and only has a 21% takedown accuracy. However, Vidal only has a 40% takedown defense and has struggled to remain upright. That’s encouraging for Gatto’s chances of getting this fight to the ground, where she’ll have a good shot at locking up a submission. The fact that Gatto only had a few weeks to prepare and is taking the fight up a weight class does add some additional volatility to the mix, but we’re not at all sold on Vidal being a UFC-level talent and think the mismatch in skill will outweigh any potential size difference. And Gatto had been competing at 135 lb before she joined the UFC, so it’s not like the weight class is foreign to her. Shea actually submitted Karol Rosa at 135 lb in her last fight before joining the UFC, and Rosa notably has a submission win over Vidal. All four of Gatto’s submission wins came in the first round, with the last three of those ending in armbars or kimuras. It’s much easier to hang onto an arm early in a fight when everyone is still dry and we’ll say Gatto locks up another first round submission here.

Our favorite bet here is “Melissa Gatto SUB” at +220.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Gatto was able to score 117 DraftKings in a post R2 TKO win in her UFC debut, but then only scored 82 points in a R3 TKO in her one other UFC win. She also scored exactly 42 DraftKings points in each of her two UFC decision losses, so she’s given us no indication to this point that she can score well in fights that make it past the second round. However, six of her eight career wins ended early, with five of those finishes coming in 10 minutes or less. Now she’s facing a low-level opponent in Vidal and this looks like a good spot for Gatto to find another finish. Just keep in mind, Gatto did take this fight up a weight class and on relatively short notice (about 3 weeks), which adds some level of uncertainty into the mix. Gatto also hasn’t shown the best offensive wrestling and only has a 21% takedown accuracy. However, Vidal has struggled to defend takedowns and only has a 40% takedown defense. We’ve seen Vidal get dominated on the ground in the past and this looks like a good bounce back spot for Gatto, with a high chance that she finds a finish. However, as the third most expensive fighter on the card, Gatto will not only need a finish, but to also outscore the other expensive options and there are plenty of ways for her to get priced out of the optimal lineup even if she does end this early. With that said, she’ll also be lower owned than many of the other expensive options, which adds to her tournament appeal. The odds imply Gatto has a 74% chance to win, a 39% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.

Vidal scored 109 DraftKings points in a R1 TKO in her UFC debut against a terrible Ramona Pascual, but then lost a split decision to a low-level opponent in Montserrat Rendon most recently. Vidal only scored 29 DraftKings points in that loss and nothing she’s shown on tape would lead us to believe that she can score well without a finish. Now she’s facing a dangerous grappler and there’s a high chance that Vidal is the one who gets finished here, leaving her with a non-existent scoring floor. Gatto is stepping in on just a few weeks’ notice and moving up a weight class, but that’s not enough for us to get excited about Vidal’s chances. She’s the third cheapest fighter on the card for a reason and will need a hail mary finish to put up a useful score. Gatto has never been finished in her career and we don’t see that changing here. The odds imply Vidal has a 26% chance to win, an 11% chance to land a finish, and a 5% chance it comes in round one.

---

Fight #7

Oumar Sy

1st UFC Fight (0-0)

Sy was originally scheduled to face Rodolfo Bellato, but then Bellato dropped out and Antonio Trocoli stepped in. However, then Trocoli dropped out and Tokkos was just announced as the replacement on Tuesday.

Making his UFC debut, Sy is undefeated as a pro and finished each of his last two opponents in the first round. His last win ended in a ground and pound TKO 81 seconds into the first round against a 40-year-old opponent in Ildemar Alcantara who came in a four fight losing streak and who previously went 4-3 in the UFC from 2013 to 2015, competing anywhere from 170 lb to 205 lb. That fight was listed as taking place at Heavyweight, which is sort of bizarre since neither guy has ever competed above Light Heavyweight in any of their other fights and Alcantara and fought a bunch at 170 lb. Prior to that, Sy locked up a quick first round submission against another former UFC fighter in Henrique da Silva, who went 2-4 in the UFC from 2016 to 2017. Just before that, Sy won a pair of wrestling-heavy decisions, after finishing his first five pro opponents in under two rounds.

Now 9-0 as a pro, Sy has four wins by KO/TKO, three submissions, and two decision victories. Six of his seven finishes came in round one, with the other ending in round two. Sy has struggled some on the scale lately and missed weight multiple times in his last few fights.

Overall, Sy is a French wrestler who is typically looking to take opponents down and control them on the mat, while looking for ground and pound and submissions. He doesn’t have much interest in keeping fights standing for long and can sometimes telegraph his takedown attempts because of that. However, he’s generally done a good job of getting opponents down, even if he does get reversed on the mat at times. He’s big and powerful, and also moves well, while doing a good job of floating through grappling positions. He’s spent some time training at Allstars in Sweden, so he’s had good training partners to work with and he’s shown the ability to completely dominate fights on the ground with his wrestling.

Tuco Tokkos

1st UFC Fight (0-0)

Making his UFC debut on just a few days’ notice, Tokkos is coming off three straight wins, with the last two of those ending in first round TKOs. However, the most recent of those came from a freak injury when his opponent, Myron Dennis, dislocated his elbow. Dennis is now 35 years old and 1-4 in his last five fights, with his claim to fame being he lost on TUF in 2016. Tokkos’ previous win should barely qualify as a pro fight, as he immediately took down a 1-7 opponent and then landed borderline fake ground and pound, which somehow caused the ref to immediately stop the fight. Literally zero damage was inflicted. Just before that, Tokkos won a low-volume striking battle, after getting violently knocked out in the first round by Mingyang Zhang, who recently landed another first round knockout in his UFC debut. Tokkos has won six of his last seven fights, with all but one of those matches ending early.

Now 10-3 as a pro, Tokkos has six KO/TKO wins, two submissions, and two decision victories. Six of his eight finishes ended in round one, one came in round two and the other was in round four. He’s also been knocked out twice himself, in the third round of a 2020 fight and then again in the first round of a 2022 match. He also has one decision defeat. He’s faced a lot of dubious competition, so take his finishes with a grain of salt. Tokkos has competed at both 205 lb and 185 lb, but lost both of his 185 lb fights. He’s often come in under the 206 lb limit at Light Heavyweight, a sign that he isn’t cutting much weight.

Overall, Tokkos is decently well rounded, but doesn’t stand out anywhere. He’s a Gracie black belt and will look for opportunistic submissions, despite only having completed two in his career. His game plan seems to vary from fight to fight and sometimes he’s immediately looking for takedowns, while others he’s content with keeping fights entirely standing. He generally doesn’t put up big striking or takedown totals and likes to operate at a slower pace. His last two losses both came via knockout, so it’s fair to question his durability. He trains at Kill Cliff FC with Brendan Allen, who’s been trying to get him into the UFC for a little while. So Tokkos has a good team around him, but he’s also already 33 years old.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 6’4”, but Sy will have an 8” reach advantage and is five years younger than the 33-year-old Tokkos.

Sy is always looking to get fights to the ground, but he’ll need to be mindful of his head position in this matchup as Tokkos is a Gracie BJJ black belt who likes to look for front chokes as opponents shoot in. None of Tokkos’ last five opponents even tried to take him down, which makes it harder to evaluate his defensive wrestling. However, the last time he did get taken down was in his 2021 fight against Clayton York, who Tokkos ended up submitting late in the first round with a Brabo choke as York shot for a takedown. Tokkos was also able to land a reversal on the mat early in that fight, and he looks like a decent grappler. That should keep things interesting here and make it harder for Sy to completely dominate the grappling exchanges, the way he has in most of his previous fights. With that said, Tokkos stepped into this fight on just a few days’ notice and it remains to be seen how his cardio will hold up. It’s possible he’ll wilt under the heavy top pressure of Sy as the fight goes on if he’s not in great shape. Working in Tokkos’ favor, it doesn’t seem like he cuts a lot of weight, which is beneficial when it comes to taking short notice fights. While Tokkos will have a shot at locking up a submission, we still expect Sy to find wrestling success and periods of top control if he can keep his neck safe. That should leave Tokkos reliant on landing a finish if he wants to pull off the upset. It’s certainly possible that Sy shoots a sloppy takedown and gets choked out, but it’s more likely that he dominates this fight on the mat and he finds a ground and pound finish or wins a wrestling-heavy decision

Our favorite bet here is “Tokkos SUB” at (Waiting on Props Still).

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Sy’s wrestling-heavy approach to fighting provides him with a much safer scoring floor on DraftKings compared to FanDuel, but his ability to rack up takedowns and find finishes on the mat leaves him with a solid ceiling on both sites. There’s always some additional volatility when you have a fighter making his debut, especially when they’re taking on a short notice opponent with very little time to game plan. However, Sy’s gameplan never really seems to change and he’s looking for takedowns regardless of who he’s facing. He’ll just need to be careful not to leave his neck out, as Tokkos is a Gracie BJJ black belt with decent front chokes. We also haven’t seen anyone force Sy into a striking battle, which leaves some uncertainty with how he’ll look on the feet if he can’t land takedowns. With that said, we expect him to be able to get this fight to the ground and he’s done a great job of racking up takedowns and control time in the past. While he doesn’t land a crazy amount of ground strikes, he will look to do damage on the mat and generally finds a way to finish opponents from top position. At his high price tag, there are ways for him to put on an impressive performance and still get priced out of tournament winning lineups, but he has a ton of scoring upside. The odds imply Sy has a 79% chance to win, a 63% chance to land a finish, and a 30% chance it comes in round one.

Tokkos is making his UFC debut on just a few days’ notice, which has historically been a very tough spot to win in. However, it does happen occasionally and we just saw Chris Padilla pull off a first round submission win in the same position, but those upsets are generally few and far between. Tokkos has a lower output that doesn’t appear great for DFS production, but he is also a Gracie BJJ black belt and will look for opportunistic front chokes when opponents try to take him down. While that sort of defense submission rarely results in a really big score, at his cheap price it could still be enough for him to be useful. We’ve also seen Tokkos reverse positions on the mat in the past, as well as Sy getting reversed, so maybe Tokkos can exceed expectations in a grappling battle. We do worry about how his cardio will hold up in a grueling wrestling match given he had so little time to prepare, which likely leaves him reliant on landing an early finish to win. The odds imply Tokkos has a 21% chance to win, a 15% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.

---

Fight #6

Tom Nolan

2nd UFC Fight (0-1)

Looking to bounce back from a nightmare start to his UFC career, Nolan recently got knocked out just 63 seconds into his debut. He entered that fight as a massive -375 favorite against a struggling Nikolas Motta who was fighting for his job. Nolan came in recklessly hunting for a finish and was made to pay for it as Motta dropped him less than a minute into the fight and then rained down ground and pound to force a stoppage. Prior to the loss in his UFC debut, Nolan landed a quick first round knockout on DWCS, after landing three more knockouts with the Eternal MMA promotion in Australia. While his last six bouts all ended in the opening two rounds, his first two pro fights both ended in decision wins.

Now 6-1 as a pro, Nolan has four wins by KO/TKO and two decision victories. After his first two wins both ended with the judges, his last four all ended in under 10 minutes, including three in round one. He’s coming off the first loss of his career, which also ended in a first round knockout. Nolan hasn’t fought much in the way of competition, so take his record with a grain of salt and he’s still largely unproven. Despite being 6’3”, Nolan actually competed down at 145 lb as an amateur, before moving up to 155 lb when he turned pro. He said that he could still make 145 lb if he had to but he thinks he’ll have more longevity at 155 lb and it’s a healthier weight class for him.

Overall, Nolan is an aggressive Australian fighter with massive size for the 155 lb division. He’s a BJJ brown belt and has the ability to fight from distance, out of the clinch, or on the mat, and seems pretty well rounded. He throws good elbows from up close and a variety of kicks and punches from distance, which make him a tough fighter to deal with. He’s the same height as Jalin Turner, although doesn’t have quite as long of a reach. However, while he has all of the physical tools to be successful, he still needs to prove he can hang at the UFC level. He’s so focussed on his offense that he doesn’t put much thought into his defense, and he was made to pay for that in his recent TKO loss. We also question his fight IQ after seeing his reckless approach in that loss, as well as the illegal knee he threw in his second most recent win. However, he’s still only 24 years old and only turned pro in 2020, so he should be learning and improving all the time at this stage in his career.

Victor Martinez

2nd UFC Fight (0-1)

Also coming off a first round knockout loss in his UFC debut, Martinez hasn’t competed in 15 months after he got finished in just two and a half minutes by a pillow-fisted grappler in Jordan Leavitt, who had never knocked anybody out on the feet before. The finish resulted from a series of knees out of the Thai clinch, as Martinez looked wide eyed from the start and never put up much of a fight. Martinez had been booked to face Trevor Peek four months after that loss, but decided to pull out as he was looking for a job as a firefighter and wasn’t able to fully devote his attention to training. He eventually found a job and is now working full-time as a firefighter, meaning he’s only training MMA part-time. He also had an extended 17 month layoff leading up to his February 2023 UFC debut, after winning a decision on DWCS in September 2021. That victory should be taken with a grain of salt as his opponent broke his arm in the fight. Leading up to the injury, Martinez got outlanded 43-32 in significant strikes, taken down, and knocked down in the first round. However, he then capitalized on the compromised opponent and finished the fight ahead 144-113 in significant strikes. That was his seventh straight win at the time, but he’s been pretty fortunate along the way. Prior to his last opponent breaking his arm in the fight, Martinez was the beneficiary of a quick stoppage or two and his previous four decisions were all split, with him winning the last three of those, after losing a 2016 split decision to a terrible Erick Gonzalez, who since joined the UFC but has been finished in under six minutes in all three of his fights. Martinez also had a long 21 month layoff leading up to his DWCS fight and he’s only fought twice since 2019.

Now 13-5 as a pro, Martinez has eight wins by KO/TKO and five decision victories. He’s been knocked out twice, submitted twice, and has one decision loss. Two of those early losses came in the second round of his first two pro fights, with the more recent two each ending in round one. Martinez had been facing a lot of suspect competition on the regional scene, so take all of his finishes with a grain of salt.

Overall, Martinez is allegedly a BJJ black belt, but you wouldn’t guess it by watching him fight. He’s never submitted anybody and looks like a pure striker by all accounts. Between his DWCS fight and his recent UFC debut, he landed one of his two takedown attempts (50% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 2 of their 10 attempts (80% defense). While Martinez landed a ton of striking volume in his DWCS fight, keep in mind that came against an injured opponent, who has also been on DWCS twice and absorbed a combined 286 significant strikes in those two fights. Martinez has a thick and stocky build and seems to have okay power, but hasn’t been the most durable or impressive. Martinez trains at Diego Ferreira’s gym in Texas and also gets some work in at Fortis MMA, so we’ll see if Ferreira’s massive upset win last week gives Martinez a little extra confidence as he steps into his second UFC fight as a massive underdog.

Fight Prediction:

Nolan will have a 7” height advantage and 3” reach advantage, while being eight years younger than the 32-year-old Martinez.

Martinez looks like basically a worse version of Nikolas Motta, so maybe the UFC is giving Nolan a mulligan here after his recent stumble. Nolan has talked about how he moved away from his friends and family to 100% dedicate himself to MMA and has no other job, while Martinez only seems to have one foot in the door as he only fights once every year and a half or so and is not working full-time as a firefighter. He’s even said that he’s had his doubts if being a fighter is even what he wants to do with his life, which is obviously concerning. He’ll be at a massive height disadvantage and doesn’t stand out as being great anywhere. He’s basically Diego Ferreira’s wingman and doesn’t appear to be a UFC-level talent, if such a thing even exists anymore. With all that said, Nolan’s aggressive nature and lack of defense will always leave his chin available to be hit, so Martinez at least has a puncher’s chance to catch him with something. However, we fully expect Nolan to capitalize on this teed up opportunity and finish Martinez in the first two rounds.

Our favorite bet here is “Tom Nolan R2” at +410.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Nolan is getting the closest thing to a do over you’ll ever see in the UFC. He made his debut back in January as a -375 favorite with a -280 ITD line against a short, chinny one-dimensional striker in Nikolas Motta and proceeded to fall flat on his face, both figuratively and literally, as he got knocked out in just 63 seconds. Now he’s coming in as a massive -500 favorite with an identical -280 ITD line against another short, chinny one-dimensional striker. Martinez is basically a worse version of Motta and once again Nolan finds himself in a dream opportunity to land a finish and put up a huge score. He couldn’t have done much worse in his first go of things, so we’ll see what improvements he’s made over the last four months to try and shore up his defense, which is definitely his biggest area of weakness. He’s massive at 6’3” and is tied with Jalin Turner among others for the tallest Lightweight in the organization. Nolan is a very aggressive striker but will also mix in takedowns and look for front chokes and violent ground and pound. He pushes a hellacious pace that allows him to put up huge striking totals in short amounts of time, but that also results in him leaving himself open to be countered. So while he has massive upside, his floor is a little dubious. He’s still only 24 years old and should be improving all the time, and we often see fighters struggle in their debuts. However, this next fight will help determine if that outcome was a fluke or if Nolan is the fluke. He was 38% owned in his debut, and we’ll see if that terrible result scares anyone off, but we expect him to be popular once again based on his finishing odds and opponent. The odds imply Nolan has a 79% chance to win, a 66% chance to land a finish, and a 38% chance it comes in round one.

Martinez is also looking to bounce back from a R1 KO loss in his UFC debut, but he took more time off and now hasn’t competed in 15 months. He’s been very inactive in recent years and has only fought twice since 2019, while he works full-time as a firefighter and isn’t fully focussed on MMA. He’s short at 5’8” and despite claiming to be a BJJ black belt he hasn’t shown any sort of ground game. And while he was able to put up a huge striking total on DWCS, that came against an opponent who broke his arm in the fight and couldn’t fully defend himself. While there are lots of areas of concern with Martinez, he will be stepping into an uptempo matchup against an opponent with poor defense who just got knocked out in the first round. That at least presents solid upside for Martinez if he can pull off the massive upset here, but his chances of doing that are low. Nevertheless, he’ll be low owned and he offers tournament winning upside in the unlikely event that he wins, so it makes sense to have some level of exposure as a lottery ticket play. The odds imply Martinez has a 21% chance to win, a 13% chance to land a finish, and a 6% chance it comes in round one.

---

Fight #5

Angela Hill

25th UFC Fight (11-13)

Hill traveled into enemy territory down in Brazil for her last fight and won a decision over Denise Gomes, who was coming off back-to-back TKO wins. After only landing 12 total takedowns in her first 23 UFC fights combined, Hill surprisingly took Gomes down five times and controlled her for eight minutes, while also finishing ahead in significant strikes 76-62. Gomes won the first round on two of the three scorecards, but Hill came back to unanimously win each of the later rounds. Prior to that, Hill suffered a five-round beatdown loss at the hands of Mackenzie Dern. Everyone expected Dern to have a massive grappling advantage, but it was far more surprising to see Dern beat Hill up on the feet as she outlanded her 126-66 in significant strikes and 247-94 in total strikes, while tacking on a knockdown, three takedowns, and 13 minutes of control time. Leading up to that loss, Hill won a pair of decisions over Emily Ducote and Loopy Godinez, impressively outlanding Ducote 182-71 in significant strikes. However, Hill lost three straight decisions before that and is still only 4-6 in her last 10 fights. She’s fought to 11 straight decisions and the last time one of her fights ended early was in a 2020 R2 TKO win over a terrible Hannah Cifers, who went 2-5 in the UFC, with all five of those losses ending in the first two rounds.

Now 16-13 as a pro, Hill has five wins by KO/TKO and 11 decision victories. Three of her five knockouts occurred in her first six pro fights, with two of those coming in Invicta. Her only two early wins in her last 23 fights came in a 2019 R3 TKO victory via doctor stoppage against Ariane Carnelossi and a 2020 R2 TKO against a helpless Hannah Cifers. Hill has never been knocked out, but she has been submitted in the first round twice (2015 & 2019) and has 11 decision losses. She’s been to five split decisions in her career, losing the last four of those and has never won a split decision in the UFC. Twenty of her 24 UFC fights went the distance (9-11).

Overall, Hill has always been a decent striker, although she’s not much of a finishing threat. She relies more on volume to outland her way to decision wins, and she averages 5.44 SSL/min and 4.94 SSA/min. To her credit, she’s been improving her grappling in recent years and has a 75% career takedown defense. In her first 16 UFC fights, Hill landed just six total takedowns, while she’s now landed 11 in her last eight fights. No one has ever taken her down more than three times in any of her 24 UFC fights, and only three of her last 19 opponents got her down more than once. Hill has won five of the last six fights where she wasn’t taken down, with the one exception being a close split-decision loss to Amanda Lemos. Hill did turn 39 years old back in January, so she’s getting up there in age, but she showed no signs of slowing down in her last fight and has now won three of her last four matches.

Luana Pinheiro

5th UFC Fight (3-1)

Looking to bounce back from the first early loss of her career, Pinheiro was recently finished in a third round TKO against Amanda Ribas. Pinheiro started strong in that fight, outlanding Ribas in the opening five minutes and winning the first round on all three scorecards, as she landed a bunch of big looping punches and had Ribas visibly damaged. However, putting everything behind her shots came at the cost of her cardio and she predictably slowed down in round two, as Ribas completely took over and then eventually finished her in round three. Prior to that, Pinheiro won her first three UFC fights, but none of those victories were pretty. Just before losing to Ribas, Pinheiro won a split decision over Michelle Waterson-Gomez, who has now lost four straight and six of her last seven fights. Waterson-Gomez outlanded Pinheiro 61-44 in significant strikes and 70-48 in total strikes, while tacking on a takedown and a minute of control time and stuffing all five of Pinheiro’s takedown attempts. That came after Pinheiro didn’t fight at all in 2022, after she hung on to win a 2021 decision over a struggling Sam Hughes. Prior to those two decision wins, Pinheiro won via DQ in her May 2021 UFC debut, after Randa Markos threw an illegal upkick that left Pinheiro dazed on her back for an extended period of time. Before making her UFC debut, Pinheiro had landed six straight first round finishes, with the last of those coming via knockout on DWCS in 2020. However, we’ve yet to see her finish anyone at the UFC level.

Now 11-2 as a pro, Pinheiro has two wins by KO/TKO, five submissions, three decision victories, and one DQ win. She’s coming off the first early loss of her career in a R3 TKO, with her one other defeat ending in a 2017 split decision in her third pro fight. She had won nine straight fights leading up to her recent loss, with seven of those nine wins ending in the first round, but also hadn’t been facing much in the way of competition. Her first 12 pro fights all either ended in the first round (8-0) or went the distance (3-1), while her last fight was the first to end in the later rounds.

Overall, Pinheiro is a Judo black belt who loves to look for hip throws to get opponents to the mat. She’s aggressive with both her striking and her grappling, but didn’t face much in terms of competition prior to joining the UFC, and hasn’t finished anybody in her four UFC fights, so she’s on full fraud alert. Her boyfriend is the very tentative and also chinny Matheus Nicolau, who we’ve always thought was overrated and has now been knocked out in two straight fights. Pinheiro does a terrible job of managing her cardio, as she comes out ultra aggressively in round one and then slows down in the back half of fights. Between her four UFC fights and her DWCS appearance, she landed 8 of her 20 takedown attempts (40% accuracy), while her opponents got her down on one of their three attempts (66.7% defense).

Fight Prediction:

Hill will have a 1” height advantage and 2” reach advantage, while Pinheiro is nine years younger than the 39-year-old Hill.

Hill has been an underdog in seven straight fights, but won four of the last five fights where she was favored, with the one exception being a terrible 2020 split decision against Michelle Waterson-Gomez. While Pinheiro has been the more dangerous finisher and the better grappler, she’s also been facing a much lower level of competition and tends to empty her tank in the first round looking for finishes. Hill has far more experience, much better cardio, and is more durable than Pinheiro. Hill also knows how to pick opponents apart on the feet, while Pinheiro is just out there swinging for the fences with everything she throws. Hill has also really improved her grappling over the years, making her far less of a liability on the mat. While Pinheiro will have a shot at landing bombs or working her way to an early submission, we expect Hill to completely take over in the later rounds. That creates an interesting live betting opportunity on Hill after round one. Hill has fought to 11 straight decisions, but it’s possible we see Pinheiro gas out to the extent that Hill is able to put her away in round three, although a decision is far more likely. We have seen Hill get screwed by the judges at multiple points, while Pinheiro has been gifted at least one decision, so we can’t eliminate a sketchy Pinheiro split decision win, but it would be surprising. Give us Hill to win, most likely by decision, but with a slight chance of a third round finish.

Our favorite bet here is “Angela Hill DEC” at +110.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Hill has averaged 86 DraftKings points in her 11 UFC wins, with nine of those going the distance and two ending in late TKOs. While her last five wins all ended with the judges, she was impressively able to score 109 and 104 DraftKings points respectively in her last two victories. She landed a career best five takedowns in her recent win over Denise Gomes, allowing her to score 109 DraftKings points and 96 points on FanDuel. In her second most recent win, she set a career high in significant strikes landed, when she outstruck Emily Ducote 182-71 and scored 104 DraftKings points and 129 points on FanDuel. So despite now being 39 years old, Hill is still setting new career records every time she steps inside the Octagon. Just keep in mind, Ducote has absorbed over 100 significant strikes in each of her last three fights and Gomes is a short brawler with a just 47% takedown defense. Hill will now face a judo black belt who’s dangerous on the mat, so she may be less inclined to look for takedowns. That will leave her more reliant on either putting up another huge striking total or finding a rare finish to really score well. And considering her last 11 fights all made it to the scorecards, it’s hard to have too much confidence in her finishing ability. With that said, Pinheiro consistently slows down late in fights and just got finished in the third round of her last match. So it’s not the worst spot for Hill to secure just her third finish in what will be her 25th UFC appearance. We expect Pinheiro to be looking to take Hill down, which could slow the fight down and make it tougher for Hill to land the amount of striking volume needed to put up another big score in a decision. So we definitely can’t count on Hill once again topping the century mark, but if Pinheiro completely gasses out it will open up a lot of scoring opportunities. The odds imply Hill has a 57% chance to win, a 12% chance to land a finish, and a 5% chance it comes in round one.

Pinheiro seems to get worse every time we see her. She looked good for as long as her short UFC debut lasted before it was stopped for an illegal upkick and she won via DQ and scored 129 DraftKings points. Then she looked okay early on against Sam Hughes, but scored just 79 points in a decision. After that, she didn’t look good at all against Michelle Waterson-Gomez and scored just 51 points in a split-decision win. Most recently, she looked dangerous in the first round, but then terrible in rounds two and three and suffered the first early loss of her career in a late TKO. That’s a pretty concerning trajectory for her career and her complete inability to manage her limited gas tank is a very serious concern. She comes out throwing bombs and looking for high-energy takedowns in the first round of fights, but then quickly fades when she’s unable to get opponents out of there in the opening five minutes. While that leaves her with solid theoretical scoring upside, she’s yet to finish anyone at the UFC level and now faces a durable veteran in Hill. Pinheiro doesn’t have the cardio to wrestle for three straight rounds, and Hill has shown an improved takedown defense anyways. That leaves Pinheiro reliant on landing a hail mary early finish to score well and we’d be very surprised if she got Hill out of there. If she finds a way to squeak out a close decision, she’s given us no indication that she can score well with the judges and would need a slate where very few underdogs win to have a shot at even serving as a value play. The odds imply Pinheiro has a 43% chance to win, a 15% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.

---

Fight #4

Adrian Yanez

8th UFC Fight (5-2)

Desperate for a win, Yanez is coming off back-to-back TKO losses, which are the only two times he’s been finished in his career. The most recent of those came in a rare leg kick TKO against Jonathan Martinez, where Yanez looked like he had no clue how to defend the leg attacks from the notorious kicker in Martinez. Yanez finished behind 36-20 in significant strikes, with 29 of Martinez’s 36 strikes coming via leg kick. Yanez also notably never attempted a takedown in that fight, despite having his base seriously compromised from a very early point. Prior to that, Yanez suffered the first early loss of his career, when he got knocked out in the first round by Rob Font. Yanez started strong in that fight and did some early damage, but Font bounced back and found the finish midway through the round. Just before that, Yanez landed a first round knockout of his own against Tony Kelley and started out 5-0 in the UFC with four of those wins ending in knockouts. Yanez also landed a first round knockout win on DWCS in 2020 and seven of his last eight fights ended by KO/TKO, with the one exception being a 2021 split decision victory over Davey Grant. Interestingly, Yanez’s last three and four of his last five decisions were split.

Now 16-5 as a pro, Yanez has 10 wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and four decision victories. Five of his knockout wins ended in R1, three came in R2, and two occurred in R3. Both of his submission wins came early in his career in 2015 and 2016. On the other side of things, he has two TKO losses (R1 & R2) and three decision defeats.

Overall, Yanez is a patient but active striker who averages 6.15 SSL/min. He has crisp boxing and had been durable up until his recent two early losses. He does a good job of countering, but his striking defense has arguably been his biggest weakness, and he averages 5.73 SSA/min. He has a BJJ black belt, but it might as well be a souvenir as he never looks to grapple. His late father was a boxer and Yanez seems primarily focused on carrying on in his father’s footsteps by using his striking to win fights. He hasn’t shown any interest in going to the ground, with zero takedown attempts in his seven UFC fights or his DWCS appearance. He’s also never been taken down in any of those fights, on just seven attempts. After facing a pair of ranked opponents in his last two fights, Yanez will now get a major step down in competition against an 0-2 opponent.

Vinicius Salvador

3rd UFC Fight (0-2)

Still in search of his first UFC win, Salvador is coming off a pair of decision losses at 125 lb in his first two fights with the organization. He missed weight by 2.5 lb for his last fight, and has now decided to move back up to 135 lb, where he had previously spent most of his career before dropping down to 125 lb in 2022. He was outlanded 109-88 in significant strikes in his recent loss to CJ Vergara, while he also failed to land either of his two takedown attempts. Prior to that, he lost another 29-28 decision in his UFC debut against Victor Altamirano, who tried to take Salvador down 22 times, but only landed three of his attempts. Salvador landed one of his own six attempts and finished behind 62-47 in significant strikes. Just before that, Salvador went on DWCS in 2022 and knocked out a fragile Shannon Ross in the second round, who since joined the UFC, only to get finished three more times. While both of Salvador’s UFC fights went the distance, 17 of his 18 fights before joining the UFC ended early. His last six fights before making his UFC debut all ended by knockout in the first two rounds (5-1).

Now 14-6 as a pro, Salvador has 13 KO/TKO victories and one submission win. Thirteen of his 14 wins occurred in the first two rounds and he’s only seen the third round four times in his career (1-3). He has nine first round finishes, four in round two, and one in round three. He’s also been knocked out twice, submitted once, and lost all three of the decisions he’s been to. A lot of his wins have come against very dubious competition, with three of his last five wins coming against opponents making their pro debuts, so take his 100% finishing rate with a grain of salt.

Overall, Salvador is a wild brawler with a background in jiu-jitsu and boxing. He grew up training with Amanda Ribas in Brazil and even she calls him crazy, which says a lot. He has decent power, but throws a lot of big looping punches that quality competition can easily sniff out and avoid. Despite his jiu-jitsu background, his grappling leaves something to be desired and he hasn’t looked great on the mat from what we’ve seen from him. Between his DWCS match and his two UFC fights, he landed just one of his nine takedown attempts (11.1% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on just three of their 23 attempts (86.96% defense). Salvador is a kill or get killed type of fighter, who relies on knockouts to come out victorious, but he’s just 5-5 in his last 10 fights. It will be important to see how he looks on the scale here as he moves back up to 135 lb for the first time in a couple of years.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 5’7” with a 70” reach.

This sets up as an exciting striking battle between two finishers who are each coming off a pair of losses. While Salvador is moving up a weight class, he’s just as tall and long as Yanez, it will just be a matter of how he fills out. Yanez is the much more technical striker, while Salvador comes out throwing big looping punches. Salvador likes to keep his hands low and his chin up, which is a dangerous game to play against legitimate competition. He also likes to showboat and taunt his opponents, and doesn’t appear especially focussed on the task at hand. This will be a big step up in competition for Salvador and a big step down for Yanez, who we expect to come in hungry for a win and looking to make a statement performance. Salvador’s reckless lack of defense leaves him open to being knocked out and we expect Yanez to capitalize and get him out of there early. Unfortunately the books are also expecting Yanez to win by knockout, making it tough to find much value when it comes to betting.

Our favorite bet here is “Adrian Yanez DEC” at +300.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Yanez is a solid striker who averages 6.15 SSL/min, but has yet to attempt a takedown in the UFC or land more than 100 significant strikes in a fight. That leaves him reliant on landing knockouts to really score well in DFS, and he finished with just 70 DraftKings points in his lone UFC decision win. He also scored just 81 points in a third round TKO win back in 2021, despite notching a pair of knockdowns in that fight. However, 7 of his last 9 wins have ended in knockouts and he averaged 109 DraftKings points in his three UFC knockout wins that ended in the first two rounds. So he’s shown decent upside and now he gets a major step down in competition after suffering back-to-back TKO losses against tougher opponents who are both currently ranked. Salvador has terrible defense and Yanez is fairly hittable himself, so we’re expecting this to be a high-volume war with little to no grappling, which makes it an ideal fit for the FanDuel scoring system. Yanez will have a decently high scoring floor on both sites based on striking volume alone, which makes him a good option in low-risk and smaller field contests. However, at his high price tag, even if he lands a knockout he could still get priced out of tournament winning lineups on a higher scoring slate. Nevertheless, he has slate-breaking potential with a well-timed knockout and this looks like a perfect bounce back spot for him. The odds imply Yanez has a 78% chance to win, a 50% chance to land a finish, and a 26% chance it comes in round one.

Salvador is a reckless brawler who’s moving up from 125 lb to 135 lb, after losing a pair of decisions in his first two UFC fights. He averages 5.44 SSL/min and 6.05 SSA/min and will now face a high-volume striker in Yanez who averages a similar 6.15 SSL/min and 5.73 SSA/min. While Salvador will mix in occasional takedown attempts, he only landed one of his nine attempts in his last three fights and Yanez has successfully defended all seven of the attempts against him in the UFC, while also being a BJJ black belt. So we’re not expecting to see much grappling here, which should keep the pace up and the punches flowing. Both guys have two KO/TKO losses on their records, showing the potential for either of them to get finished. However, this is a big step up in competition for Salvador and a big step down for Yanez and it would be pretty surprising to see Salvador pull off the upset. However, we get surprised on a pretty regular basis in this sport so you can’t completely rule it out either. At Salvador’s cheap price tag, even a high-volume decision win could be enough for him to serve as a value play and a finish would surely lock him into the optimal. The odds imply Salvador has a 22% chance to win, a 15% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.

---

Fight #3

Themba Gorimbo

4th UFC Fight (2-1)

Fresh off his first early win in the UFC, Gorimbo landed a quick 32 second knockout win over a terrible Pete Rodriguez in February. Prior to that, Gorimbo secured his first UFC win when he predictably dominated a one-dimensional striker in Takashi Sato on the mat for three rounds on his way to a unanimous 30-27 decision victory. Gorimbo finished the fight with three takedowns landed on eight attempts with over 11 minutes of control time. He also knocked Sato down in the second round and finished ahead in total strikes 110-56, but only 33-30 in significant strikes. Leading up to those two wins, Gorimbo was submitted in the second round of his February 2023 UFC debut against AJ Fletcher. Prior to making his UFC debut, Gorimbo fought to a pair of wrestling heavy decisions (1-1). Those two fights were essentially mirror images of each other. They both played out almost entirely on the mat and ended with the judges, but in the first of those Gorimbo spent the entire time on his back, while in the second he was the one on top. Gorimbo did later say that he dislocated his shoulder in the opening 30 seconds of the loss, which if true, would help to explain why he was unable to do anything in the fight. Gorimbo was the former EFC welterweight champion and also fought for the EFC lightweight belt in 2015, but got submitted in that match.

Now 12-4 as a pro, Gorimbo has two R1 TKO wins (2019 & 2024), six submissions, and four decision victories. His six submission wins were split evenly across the first two rounds and he’s never finished an opponent beyond round two. He’s been knocked out once, submitted twice, and has one decision loss. All three of his early losses occurred in the second round. Most of Gorimbo’s career has been spent at 170 lb, but he also fought down at 155 lb for a two fight stretch in 2015 (1-1). His lone KO loss came in a 163 lb Catchweight fight in 2017 against Dave Mazany, Gina Mazany’s brother.

Overall, Gorimbo is typically looking to take opponents down and control them. While he will fish for submissions, he’s just a BJJ blue belt and only has one submission win since 2015, which was back in 2020, after starting his career with five straight submissions against low level opponents. In his three UFC fights, Gorimbo landed 5 of his 11 takedown attempts (45.5% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 2 of their 6 attempts (66.7% defense). He’s been reversed on the mat in both of his UFC fights that lasted longer than 32 seconds and he’s definitely still a work in progress, despite already being 33 years old. On the feet, he throws long, wild punches and kicks and is a pretty sloppy striker who will dangerously lunge into striking exchanges. However, he has shown some recent improvements in the feet and knocked down each of his last two opponents. Gorimbo is the first Zimbabwean fighter to ever win a UFC fight, although Blood Diamond was the first fighter from Zimbabwe to be signed by the organization. It’s hard not to root for the guy if you hear his story, as he came to the US from Zimbabwe dead broke and was sleeping on the couch at his gym, MMA Masters. As soon as he started making some money he turned into the humanitarian of the year as he funded projects in his home village to provide clean drinking water, cure diseases, and is now planning on building a library next. The UFC has been helping him out by giving him very favorable matchups, although he will face a step up in competition here.

Ramiz Brahimaj

5th UFC Fight (2-2)

Brahimaj is coming off a 27 month layoff caused by a neck injury, after he submitted an awful Micheal Gillmore in the first round of a February 2022 match. That was a teed up matchup for him to find a finish and save his job, after he started out 1-2 with the UFC. The matchup was so favorable that Brahimaj was willing to step in on short notice to take it after Gillmore lost his original opponent. That came just over a month after Brahimaj lost a wrestling-heavy 30-27 decision to UFC dinosaur Court McGee, who was able to take Brahimaj down five times and control him for 11 minutes, while also knocking him down once. Brahimaj looked absolutely exhausted late in the fight and he’s still never won a fight that lasted longer than 7:34. For context, McGee is now just 2-6 in his last eight fights. Just prior to that loss, Brahimaj notched his only UFC win when he predictably put on a near flawless grappling performance against low-level talent Sasha Palatnikov, submitting him in the first round. That came after Brahimaj curiously didn’t even attempt a takedown in his November 2020 UFC debut against Max Griffin, which resulted in him getting easily outstruck and having his ear punched off in the third round to force a stoppage. Brahimaj had previously been scheduled to make his debut in June 2020, but was forced to withdraw when one of his cornermen tested positive for COVID. A year prior, Brahimaj had been scheduled to go on DWCS in 2019, but a week before his match they discovered a tumor behind his eye. After having it successfully removed and going through an extensive recovery process, he endured a 20 month layoff leading up to his UFC debut.

Now 10-4 as a pro, all 10 of Brahimaj’s career wins have come by submission, including nine in the first round and one in round two. On the other side of things, three of his four pro losses went the distance. The only time he’s lost a fight early was in a freak injury in his UFC debut when Max Griffin gruesomely knocked his ear off, resulting in an immediate stoppage midway through the third round.

Overall, Brahimaj is a one-dimensional grappler who relies on landing quick submissions to win fights, with 90% of his career wins coming by first round submission and the other a second round submission back in 2018. He completely gassed out after a round against Court McGee, and while that was two and a half years ago, we have no reason to believe he’s made major improvements to his cardio. He lost all three of the decisions he’s been to and he’s never finished a UFC fight ahead in significant strikes and only averages 2.47 SSL/min. In his four UFC fights, he landed 4 of his 6 takedown attempts (66.7% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 5 of their 12 attempts (58.3% defense). He’s dealt with various injuries and medical conditions over the last several years, and it will be important to monitor him closely on the scale after so long away.

Fight Prediction:

Gorimbo will have a 3” height advantage and 5” reach advantage, while Brahimaj is two years younger than the 33-year-old Gorimbo.

Gorimbo has fought four times since Brahimaj last competed, and it will be interesting to see how Brahimaj looks after 27 months away following a neck injury. While you would expect him to have made some improvements, his level of inactivity is very concerning. He’s so heavily reliant on landing quick submissions to win fights that if he has a slow start while knocking off some ring rust, his already small window for a finish could shrink considerably. While Gorimbo has been submitted twice in the past, he’s also a grappler and isn’t helpless on the mat like the guys that Brahimaj has been able to submit in the UFC. And while Gorimbo can get pretty wild with his striking, he still looks like the more dangerous of the two on the feet, even if Brahimaj appears more technical. Gorimbo also has the better cardio in this matchup, and when it comes to ranking fighter attributes, cardio is king. It will be interesting to see how willing Gorimbo is to engage in the grappling exchanges, given that’s where Brahimaj is the most dangerous. After he knocked down each of his last two opponents, it would make sense for Gorimbo to try and keep things standing, at least early on while Brahimaj is fresh. Once Brahimaj begins to slow down in the later rounds, there’s less of a risk in taking him down, although he will look for desperation guillotines instead of trying to defend takedowns once he’s tired. The only way we see Brahimaj pulling off the upset is with an early submission, but we’re taking Gorimbo to secure his third straight win, most likely in a decision where Brahimaj gasses out but narrowly survives.

Our favorite bet here is “Themba Gorimbo ML” at -130.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Gorimbo has averaged 122 DraftKings points in his two UFC victories, after getting submitted in the second round of his UFC debut. He bounced back with a wrestling-heavy decision win that was good for 114 DraftKings points, but only 70 points on FanDuel, a good demonstration of how his wrestling-heavy approach is better suited for the DraftKings scoring system. However, he followed that up with a quick first round knockout win that scored 130 DraftKings points and 119 points on FanDuel, showing a solid ceiling in all formats. Each of those last two wins came in absolute dream matchups, whereas now he’ll be facing a step up in competition in ​​Brahimaj. However, ​​Brahimaj is also a one-dimensional grappler who has shown serious cardio concerns and is coming off a 27 month layoff, so he has plenty of flaws. Gorimbo will need to be very careful not to leave his neck exposed or have his back taken in this matchup, but if he can push a pace and survive the first round, he should be able to take over down the stretch. Predicting cardio collapses is far from an exact science, but ​​Brahimaj has never won a fight that lasted longer than eight minutes and looked absolutely terrible in the later rounds against Court McGee. If he tires out once again, Gorimbo will be in a great position to score well even without a finish on DraftKings and will also have a good shot at getting ​​Brahimaj out of there early. The odds imply Gorimbo has a 57% chance to win, a 33% chance to land a finish, and a 16% chance it comes in round one.

Brahimaj is a one-dimensional grappler with cardio concerns, who’s coming off a 27 month layoff following a neck injury. All 10 of his career wins came by submission in under eight minutes, including nine in round one. He’s had five rounds scored by the judges so far in the UFC and lost all five of those. He showed a low fight IQ in his UFC debut, where he never even attempted a takedown and just allowed himself to get out struck by Max Griffin, to the point that his ear got blasted off his head in the third round. He then got dominated in all aspects of the game for three rounds by a washed up Court McGee, who’s now 2-6 in his last eight fights. Brahimaj’s only two wins in the UFC came in a pair of first round submissions, where he was able to score 98 and 105 DraftKings points respectively. However, those came against Sasha Palatnikov and Micheal Gillmore, who were both so terrible that the UFC didn’t even allow either guy to finish their initial contract before cutting them after their losses to Brahimaj. Despite everything we know about Brahimaj, the line has steadily been moving in his favor since it opened. When you combine the line move with the upside he’s shown in his wins, you can expect him to be popular once again, which lowers his tournament appeal. However, if he does win, it very likely comes by early submission and at his cheaper price tag he would likely end up in the optimal. The odds imply Brahimaj has a 43% chance to win, a 34% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.

---

Fight #2

Khaos Williams

8th UFC Fight (5-2)

Williams is just over a year removed from a close split decision win over Rolando Bedoya, who was making his UFC debut and actually outlanded Williams 149-130 in significant strikes, while no takedowns were landed in the fight on just two Bedoya attempts. The two fighters were separated by a single strike in the opening two rounds, with two judges scoring both of those rounds for Williams and the other giving them both to Bedoya. That win came almost exactly a year after Williams lost a split decision to Randy Brown, who outlanded Williams 93-75 in significant strikes, but failed to land any of his four takedown attempts. Four of Williams’ last five fights went the distance (2-2), with the one exception being a 2021 R3 KO win over Miguel Baeza, who has now lost three straight fights and hasn’t competed in over two years. Leading up to that finish, Williams won a decision over Matthew Semelsberger, after losing a decision to Michel Pereira. While his last five fights all made it to the third round, his first two UFC fights each ended in violent first round knockout wins in 30 seconds or less against Alex Morono and Abdul Razak Alhassan.

Now 14-3 as a pro, Williams has seven wins by KO, one submission, and six decision victories. He’s never been finished and all three of his losses went the distance. Six of his eight finishes occurred in the first round, one ended early in round two, and the last came a minute into round three.

Overall, Williams is a patient one-dimensional power puncher who generally either knocks opponents out immediately or fights to decisions and only two of his 17 pro fights have ended in finishes beyond the first round. In his seven UFC fights, he failed to land either of his two takedown attempts, while his opponents got him down on two of their 10 attempts (80% defense), with Michel Pereira being the only fighter to ground him. Williams averages 5.77 SSL/min and 5.33 SSA/min, and is coming off career highs for both significant strikes landed (130) and absorbed (149). He’s been very durable and he’s never even been knocked down in the UFC, let alone finished.

Carlston Harris

6th UFC Fight (4-1)

Harris was well on his way to losing a wrestling-heavy decision in his last fight, before he locked up a third round anaconda choke against Jeremiah Wells, who had taken Harris down in each of the first two rounds and controlled him on the mat for essentially the entire fight. Prior to that, Harris was the one who dominated his opponent on the mat, when he won a smothering decision against Jared Gooden, who was filling in on just three days’ notice, missed weight by 6 lb, and then got taken down five times by Harris and controlled for nearly 10 minutes. That win came 13 months after Harris got knocked out in the first round by an insanely dangerous Shavkat Rakhmonov. Leading up to that loss, Harris landed a pair of round one finishes in his first two UFC fights. He made his UFC debut in May 2021 and landed a first round submission against Christian Aguilera, which he followed up with a first round knockout of Impa Kasanganay. Harris has won 7 of his last 8, with all but one of those fights ending early. While his last two fights both saw the third round, his previous seven all ended in under eight minutes, with five of those being stopped in round one. Well before he joined the UFC, he notably won decisions over Michel Pereira and Wellington Turman.

Now 19-5 as a pro, Harris has five wins by KO/TKO, six submissions, and eight decision victories. Nine of his 11 finishes came in the first two rounds, with six of those ending in round one. He’s been knocked out twice himself, both times in the first round (2018 & 2022), and has three decision losses. However, he won seven of the last eight decisions he went to, with the one exception being a 2016 split decision.

Overall, Harris is primarily a grappler but does have an unorthodox striking game with sneaky power. He’s shown the ability to chain wrestle and rack up takedowns, but generally doesn’t put up big striking numbers, averaging just 2.93 SSL/min and 2.44 SSA/min in the UFC. He’s a threat to end fights on the mat both by submission or ground and pound, but loves to look for chokes. In his five UFC fights, Harris landed 5 of his 17 takedown attempts (29.4% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 4 of their 9 attempts (55.6% defense). He hasn’t looked especially durable, which is somewhat concerning as he takes on an explosive power puncher here in this next matchup.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 6’0”, but Williams will have a 1” reach advantage and is six years younger than the 36-year-old Harris.

Harris clearly has the grappling advantage, but Williams has a solid 80% takedown defense and the only fighter who’s been able to get him down in the UFC is Michel Pereira, who is huge and has since moved up to 185 lb. However, he also hasn’t faced many great wrestlers, so it’s possible his defensive wrestling is being somewhat overvalued. With that said, he’s a dangerous guy to try and close the distance on based on how powerful he is and Harris has shown some durability concerns at times, while also getting pretty wild with his striking offense. That could create opportunities for Williams to land an early knockout, but it’s been three and a half years since he got anyone out of there before the third round. And because Williams has only been taken down twice in the UFC, his ability to defend submission attempts remains somewhat of a mystery. That creates a more volatile landscape, as Williams could obliterate Harris on the feet or Harris could choke Williams out on the mat. Harris’ grappling could also benefit him in a decision, which is especially useful since all four of Williams’ UFC decisions have been close. That makes it hard to confidently lay the chalk on Williams, and it won’t be surprising if this ends in a close decision, but we kind of like his chances of catching Harris with something clean in the first two rounds and knocking him out.

Our favorite bet here is “Khaos Williams DEC” at +600.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Williams is a one-dimensional striker with tons of power, but no grappling to boost his DFS scoring. His first two UFC wins each came by knockout in 30 seconds or less and returned scores 129 and 127 DraftKings points respectively. However, both of those wins were all the way back in 2020 and his lost five fights all made it to the third round, with four of those going the distance. The one exception was a 2021 R3 TKO win over Miguel Baeza, where Williams scored 78 DraftKings points. Despite landing a career best 130 significant strikes in his last decision win, he still only scored 84 points, after putting up 74 points in his previous decision victory. He’s yet to land a takedown in the UFC on just two attempts and appears reliant on land a knockout in the first two rounds to score well in DFS. Working in his favor, Harris is kind of wild on the feet and has been knocked out twice in the first round previously. However, Williams is coming off a year layoff and his second most recent fight was just over two years ago. That makes it hard to confidently rely on him coming out sharp and landing the quick knockout he needs to be useful, but the upside is certainly there. Despite failing to score well in any of his last five fights, Williams continues to be pretty popular in DFS based on the upside he showed in his first two UFC fights. The odds imply Williams has a 55% chance to win, a 40% chance to land a finish, and a 21% chance it comes in round one.

Harris has averaged 92 DraftKings points in his four UFC wins, but is coming off a worst-case third round submission win with no stats behind it. He spent the first 10 minutes of that fight being controlled on the mat and barely made a dent on the statsheet, which resulted in him scoring just 50 DraftKings points in the finish. His other two UFC finishes both occurred in round one and returned DraftKings totals of 110 and 94 points respectively. He also impressively scored 113 points in his lone UFC decision victory, where he dominated on the mat against a terrible Jared Gooden, who was stepping in on very short notice and missed weight by six pounds. Harris will face a tougher test here as he takes on a dangerous power puncher in Khaos Williams, who enters with an 80% takedown defense, and who has never been finished in his career. That will make it tougher for Harris to either land a finish or dominate the fight on the ground, which are the two ways he can score well. Harris has also been very popular recently in DFS, with his DraftKings ownership checking in at 44% and 30% in his last two matches. That makes it harder to get excited about playing him in tournaments. The odds imply Harris has a 45% chance to win, a 26% chance to land a finish, and a 13% chance it comes in round one.

---

Fight #1

Lerone Murphy

7th UFC Fight (5-0-1)

Ten months removed from a low-volume three-round decision win over Josh Culibao, Murphy had been scheduled to face Dan Ige back in February, but ended up pulling out due to an injury. In that last fight, we saw more grappling from Murphy than we’re used to, as he took Culibao down three times on five attempts and finished with seven and a half minutes of control time, after previously never landing more than a single takedown in a fight and only securing three total in his first five UFC fights combined. While Murphy was able to knock Culibao down in the third round with a shot that looked like it barely landed, we didn’t see much striking volume in the match, with Murphy finishing ahead just 59-23 in significant strikes. Prior to that, Murphy won a close/questionable split-decision over Gabriel Santos, who was making his short notice UFC debut in enemy territory. Murphy outlanded Santos 93-69 in significant strikes, but Santos was able to take Murphy down five times and control him for four minutes. You have to go all the way back to 2021 to find Murphy’s third most recent fight, when he knocked out Makwan Amirkhani in the second round, and Murphy has really struggled with fight cancellations throughout his UFC career. Murphy originally made his UFC debut in 2019 and fought Zubaira Tukhugov to a draw, which is the only time he hasn’t come out victorious in a fight. He’s won five fights since that draw, with two of those wins ending in knockouts, but three of his last four going the distance. The UFC hasn’t thrown him any bones and all of his fights have come against tough opponents.

Now 13-0-1 as a pro, Murphy has seven wins by KO/TKO and six decision victories. While his last knockout came 14 seconds into round two, his other six all ended in round one. Murphy started his pro career at 155 lb but dropped down to 145 lb in 2018, where he’s stayed since.

This will be the 1st five-round fight of Murphy’s career, so he’s never been past the third round in his career and it remains to be seen how his cardio will look in the championship rounds.

Overall, Murphy is a dangerous striker with good hands and seems to be trying to improve his grappling, but that’s still been the one area where he’s struggled the most. In his six UFC fights, he landed six takedowns on 13 attempts (46.2% accuracy), while he’s been taken down by his opponents 17 times on 32 attempts (46.9% defense). Four of his six UFC opponents got him down at least once and three of them landed five or more takedowns against him. On the flipside, only one time did he land more than a single takedown of his own, which was when he landed three in his last fight. Murphy only averages 3.65 SSL/min and 2.40 SSA/min, and only once in his UFC did he land more than 59 significant strikes in a fight, although he also only absorbed more than 39 once. So we generally see lower volume striking battles from him.

Edson Barboza

30th UFC Fight (18-11)

Barboza is coming off a five-round decision win over Sodiq Yusuff, but nearly got knocked out in the opening minute of that fight. Yusuff had Barboza badly hurt 30 seconds into the first round, but Barbosa was narrowly able to hang on and survive, with the help of Yusuff taking him to the mat after having him rocked. Yusuff then slowed down in round two, after emptying his gas tank looking for a finish in round one. And after Yusuff won a 10-8 first round, all three judges scored the final four rounds in Barboza’s favor. We saw some rare wrestling from Barboza late in that fight as he landed three takedowns in the fifth round, after only landing one total takedown in his previous 12 fights combined. That’s Barboza’s second straight win after he landed a first round knockout against Billy Quarantillo earlier in 2023. However, leading up to those two victories, Barboza went just 3-7 in his previous 10 fights. In his third most recent fight, he lost a smothering decision to Bryce Mitchell in 2022 after getting knocked out in the third round by Giga Chikadze in a 2021 main event. Barboza competed at 155 lb until 2020, when he dropped down to 145 lb following a pair of losses to Justin Gaethje (R1 KO) and Paul Felder (S-DEC). Barboza then lost another close split decision in his Feathweight debut against Dan Ige, before bouncing back with a decision win over Makwan Amirkhani and a third round knockout of Shane Burgos, leading up to his loss to Chikadze. After going just 1-4 in his final five fights at 155 lb, Barboza has gone 4-3 since dropping down to 145 lb in 2020.

Now 24-11 as a pro, Barboza has 14 wins by KO/TKO, one submission (R1 2009), and nine decision victories. He’s been knocked out four times, submitted twice, and has five decision defeats. Four of his last six wins ended in knockouts, while three of his last four losses went the distance. While 21 of Barboza’s 35 pro fights ended early, it’s rare to see his fights end in the opening five minutes and only two of his last 19 fights ended in the first round.

This will be the 5th five-round fight of Barboza’s career. He was finished in his first three, before winning a decision most recently. The first of those losses was against Kevin Lee in a 2018 R5 doctor stoppage TKO. The next ended in a 2019 R1 KO against Justin Gaethje, and the next was a 2021 R3 TKO against Giga Chikadze. Only twice in his career has Barboza seen the championship rounds and only once has he gone the full 25 minutes.

Overall, Barboza is a legend in the sport who’s known for his violent kicks, but historically doesn’t offer much in terms of offensive grappling, although he did surprisingly land three takedowns in the fifth round of his last fight. He does have a 75% takedown defense. However, that number has dropped down to just 50% in his seven fights at 145 lb, where he’s been taken down nine times on 18 opponent attempts. He didn’t even attempt a takedown in his first six fights at 145 lb, but then landed three of his four attempts in his last fight. That fight bucked a lot of trends with Barboza, as he also set career records for significant strikes landed at 164 and absorbed at 178. He came into that matchup only averaging 4.00 SSL/min and 4.12 SSA/min and only once in his first 28 UFC fights had he landed more than 98 significant strikes or absorbed more than 89. However, when he does land, he makes it count and we often see his opponents wilt in rounds two and three from an accumulation of damage. Barboza is now 38 years old and has been inconsistent going back to 2017, but everytime he gets counted out he shows he still has some more left in the tank.

Fight Prediction:

Barboza will have a 2” height and reach advantage, while Murphy is six years younger than the 38-year-old Barboza.

Both of these two are primarily strikers, although they each did surprisingly land three takedowns in their most recent fights. While Barboza is still really dangerous despite being 38 years old, he hasn’t been wearing damage especially well in recent years. He got knocked down twice by Giga Chikadze and then finished in the third round. Then he surprisingly got knocked down by a wrestler in Bryce Mitchell in his next fight, before losing a decision. Barboza then knocked Billy Quarantillo out quickly in round one before he even had a chance to absorb much damage. However, then Barboza got knocked down and nearly finished in the first round of his last fight. So he’s been knocked down four times in his last four fights, and was knocked down in the first round in two of his last three matches. Murphy was knocked down in the first round of his UFC debut, but hasn’t been dropped since, and we give the durability advantage to him. Both guys are a liability on the mat, so that’s kind of a wash, although either could look to attack that weakness in the other. They both have dangerous boxing, but Barboza is the more dangerous kicker and also has the clear advantage when it comes to experience. However, with that experience comes a ton of wear and tear and Barboza’s tendency to get hurt in fights makes him a tough guy to trust at this stage of his career. With that said, he’s fully capable of pulling off the upset if his chin holds up. Murphy has never been in a five-round fight, so he also comes in with some uncertainty. Murphy also has a pretty wide stance and seems to stand heavy on his lead leg, leaving him potentially vulnerable to leg kicks. All seven of Murphy’s career finishes came in under five and a half minutes, and his best chance of winning could be with an early knockout. Barboza has a history of wearing on opponents and finishing them in rounds two or three, while he also has experience in five-round fights. So it could be a decent live betting opportunity with Barboza after round one, although it’s not like we’re expecting Murphy’s cardio to go off a cliff or anything. There’s enough uncertainty on both sides of this one that it’s a tough spot to predict and we agree with the odds that it’s essentially a coin flip. However, if anyone is going to look better than expected, it’s probably the younger fighter in Murphy and eventually Barboza’s age is going to catch up with him. And in a fight that we expect to play out mostly on the feet, durability could play an essential role. So we will give Murphy the slight edge to knock Barboza out early, but things could get very interesting if the fight runs a little longer.

Our favorite bet here is “Lerone Murphy ITD” at +270.

Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets and to be notified throughout the week when and where these lines are available.

DFS Implications:

Murphy has averaged 86 DraftKings points in his five UFC wins, with three of his last four victories going the distance. He’s never been in a five-round fight before, which adds some inherent volatility to this matchup, as we don’t know how his cardio will look beyond the third round. However, he generally doesn’t land a high amount of striking volume (3.65 SSL/min) or look to wrestle all that often (1.3 TDL/15 min), so there’s no reason to think he can’t go another two rounds with that slower paced style. His lack of output has typically left him reliant on first round knockouts to score well, although he did put up the second highest score of his career in his recent 98 point decision win with the help of a knockdown and three takedowns. That matched the number of takedowns that he landed in his first five UFC fights combined, so maybe he’s been working on his wrestling, which would be useful here as he takes on a one-dimensional striker in Barboza. We’ve also seen Barboza get knocked down four times in his last four fights, which is encouraging for Murphy’s chances of landing a quick knockout. And while Murphy and Barboza have both historically been lower volume strikers, we also just saw Barboza set career highs for both significant strikes landed and absorbed in his last fight. That’s all encouraging for Murphy’s upside, but he’s also capable of landing a poorly timed mid-round knockout without much striking behind it that fails to score well or of winning a lower volume decision. Demonstrating that, he only scored 82 DraftKings points in a terribly timed second round knockout win over Makwan Amirkhani and only put up 60 DraftKings points and 55 points on FanDuel in a 2021 decision win over Douglas Silva de Andrade. Even if you extend his numbers in that fight over five rounds, he still only would have been looking at 80 DraftKings points and 78 points on FanDuel. However, he scored progressively more points in each of his last two decision victories, returning DK/FD totals of 81/82 and 98/95. And if we extend those numbers over five rounds, he’d be looking at 115/123 and 143/146 points on DK/FD. So the upside is definitely there, he just hasn’t shown it since 2020 when he secured his first UFC win in a R1 TKO over Ricardo Ramos that was good for 107 DraftKings points. His unimpressive recent box scores should help to keep his ownership under control, which adds to his tournament appeal. The odds imply Murphy has a 57% chance to win, a 25% chance to land a finish, and an 8% chance it comes in round one.

Barboza has averaged 83 DraftKings points in his 17 UFC wins, and that average jumps to 99 points if we just look at his four victories since he dropped down from 155 lb to 145 lb. While he’s never scored more than 66 points in a three-round decision victory, he put up a career best 129 points in his recent five-round decision win over Sodiq Yusuff. That’s pretty insane when you consider he averaged just 59 points in his eight three-round decision wins. And even if we extend his numbers in those eight fights over the course of five rounds, he still only would have averaged 79 DraftKings points and wouldn’t have topped 90 points in any of them. Despite nearly getting finished 30 seconds into his last fight and losing a 10-8 first round, Barboza came back to land a career best 164 significant strikes landed (6.56 SSL/min), after coming in averaging just 4.00 SSL/min in his first 28 UFC fights. He also landed three takedowns in the fifth round, after only landing one total takedown in his previous 12 fights. Some may look at that as a late career resurgence for the 38-year-old Barboza, but it probably had a lot to do with the fact that Yusuff punched himself out looking for the finish in round one and had never been past the third round before. However, now Barboza will face another opponent who’s never been in a fight that lasted longer than 15 minutes, so cardio management could play a factor once again. That was the fourth five-round fight of Barboza’s career, but the first he won, after he got knocked out in each of his previous three. In those three losses, Barboza’s opponents averaged 121 DraftKings points and 126 points on FanDuel. So while we haven’t always seen the biggest scores in Barboza’s three-round fights, his five-round matches have been far more useful in DFS. The only time the winner failed to score at least 110 DraftKings points was when Chikadze knocked Barboza out early in round three and scored 92 points. So while the career striking and takedown averages of these two suggest we could see a lower-volume striking battle, the results of Barboza’s previous four five-round fights are far more encouraging. However, that disconnect does leave us with an uncertain scoring floor. After putting up two straight big scores as an underdog and now priced as the dog once again, we expect the field to chase Barboza’s recent scoring success, driving his ownership up and his tournament appeal down. However, if he does win, he most likely ends up in the optimal lineup at his cheap salary. The odds imply Barboza has a 43% chance to win, a 26% chance to land a finish, and a 9% 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!

Receive up to a $100 deposit bonus when you sign up with our promo code: MMADFS

Here's our top play on the house! For the rest of our PrizePicks plays, check out the DFS Cheat Sheet in our premium DFS content on: patreon.com/mmadfs.