Tip: Hard Refresh this page (Cmd + Shift + R on a Mac, Ctrl + F5 on PC) to assure you're looking at the most up to date version of 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.
Fight Day Scratches: None
Fighter Notes:
Fight #14
Tagir Ulanbekov
2nd UFC Fight (1-0)Just over a year removed from a decision win in his UFC debut over a tough Bruno SIlva, Ulanbekov has had three fights scheduled in the time since but withdrew from all three. In his last fight, Ulanbekov took Silva down 5 times on 11 attempts with a little under four minutes of control time, while Silva landed 4 takedowns on 8 attempts with a little over two minutes of control time. Silva did a good job of beating up Ulanbekov’s lead leg as he landed 17 leg strikes to the skinny stilts of Ulanbekov, including 11 in the first round. The significant striking totals were almost dead even, with Silva ahead 47-46, but Ulanbekov leading in total strikes 69-59.
A teammate of Khabib, Ulanbekov has now won four in a row since suffering his only career loss in a five-round decision against UFC fighter Zhalgas Zhumagulov. He’s currently 13-1 as a pro, with two wins by KO, six by submission and five decisions. While three of his last five fights have gone the distance, he landed back-to-back second round submission victories just before joining the UFC. While he does have eight finishes on his record, his last nine fights have made it out of the first round, with seven of those seeing the third round and five going the distance.
Overall, Ulanbekov is primarily a grappler and is an unlikely candidate to land a high number of significant strikes. He does have the ability to compete on the feet, but he generally does so just to set up takedowns.
Allan Nascimento
1st UFC Fight (0-0)Nascimento originally tried to crack the UFC roster through DWSC Brazil in 2018, but lost a split-decision to Raulian Paiva in a relatively high-volume affair. Each fighter landed one takedown, Paiva on his only attempt and Nascimento on a notable 10 attempts. Nascimento actually finished ahead in significant strikes 105-81, but it was Paiva that got the nod.
Following the loss, Nascimento had four fights canceled over the next three years before finally competing most recently in July 2020. That fight took place in a small boxing ring and hardly looked like it should even count as a professional fight and it was filmed on a cell phone.
Nascimento has now gone 2-2 in his last four fights, with both of those losses ending in split-decisions. He’s 18-5 as a pro with two KOs, 13 submissions and three decision victories. All five of his losses have come by decision and he’s never been finished. With just one “professional” fight in the last three years, it’s hard to know what we can expect out of Nascimento, and it was hard to take too much away from his recent fight, but to his credit he did win it with a R1 Rear-Naked Choke. He’s primarily looking to end fights with submissions, but he does notably train out of Chute Boxe, which is encouraging for his striking potential.
It was hard to find much of his more recent tape, so Nascimento remains somewhat of a mystery when it comes to his recent form, but in the film we did see he looked relatively easy to takedown and overly reliant on his Jiu-Jitsu to defend grappling.
Fight Prediction:
Nascimento will have a 2” height advantage, but Ulanbekov will have a slight half inch reach advantage. We expect this to play out as a grappling match with both guys looking to take the other down. It will be an interesting stylistic matchup as we see the Dagestani wrestling of Ulanbekov square off against the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu of Nascimento. Both fighters are capable strikers as well, and there’s always a chance when you pair two grapplers against one another that it turns into more of a striking match than expected, as neither wants to test the strength of the other on the mat. With that said, we’d be surprised to see this one remain on the feet for its entirety. Ulanbekov has both a better takedown accuracy and defense and we like his chances to control the dance as long as he can stay out of danger from Nascimento’s submission attempts. Nascimento would be wise to attack the lead leg of Ulanbekov, after seeing how much success Silva was able to have with that strategy. We’ll side with the 13-1 fighter in Ulanbekov, opposed to the guy that’s gone 2-2 in his last four with just one fight in the last three years, but the uncertainty surrounding Nascimento makes this somewhat of a high variance spot.
Our favorite bet here is “Fight Ends in Submission” at +190.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Ulanbekov’s wrestling-heavy attack will generally perform better on DraftKings than FanDuel, but he still scored just 85 DraftKings points in his UFC debut despite landing five takedowns with nearly four minutes of control time. He lacks the striking volume to really score well in a decision unless he absolutely dominates the entire fight on the mat, so he likely needs to land a submission here to be useful or land double-digit takedowns. While Nascimento remains more or less of an unknown as he’s had one bush league fight in the last three years, he’s notably never been finished. The main reason to get excited about Ulanbekov in tournaments here is that his ownership projects to come in incredibly low owned as few people will opt to click his name over the other top priced plays. He’ll also be fighting for the second time in the UFC, going against a debuting fighter, which is generally a great spot to be in. The odds imply he has a 76% chance to win, a 31% chance to get a finish and a 16% chance it comes in R1.
Making his UFC debut, Nascimento likely needs a submission to win here and Ulanbekov has notably never been finished and has only lost one fight in his career. So needless to say, this looks like a tough spot for Nascimento to succeed. While this fight more likely than not ends in a decision according to the odds, both fighters will be very low owned so it’s an easy spot to gain leverage on the field without going crazy. We did see Nascimento land over 105 significant strikes in addition to attempting 10 takedowns (1 landed) in his DWCS Brazil fight, so at his ultra-cheap price tag he could potentially serve as a value play with a decision win. Ulanbekov also wasn’t overly impressive in his UFC debut, so we get rolling the dice here on Nascimento in tournaments at incredibly low ownership. The odds imply he has a 24% chance to win, a 13% chance to get a finish and a 4% chance it comes in R1.
Fight #13
Andre Petroski
2nd UFC Fight (1-0)Stepping in on two weeks notice after Alen Amedovski dropped out of this fight, Petroski made his UFC debut two months ago following a run on The Ultimate Fighter. Despite losing on the show against the guy who ultimately won the whole thing in Bryan Battle, Petroski was still given a shot in the UFC in a teed up matchup against the worst opponent on the show in Micheal Gillmore. It seems like Petroski has become the UFC’s pet project as they spoon feed him favorable matchups, but we’ll see how long that lasts.
In his debut, Petroski was easily able to control Gillmore on the mat for the majority of the fight as he landed 4 of his 9 takedown attempts with over seven and a half minutes of control time. He also led in significant strikes 46-31 and in total strikes 91-38 before finishing the fight with a third round ground-and-pound TKO. It can’t be overstated, Gillmore is not a UFC level talent and Petroski’s performance in that fight needs to be taken in context. That was notably the first time Petroski has even seen the third round in his career, but we should keep in mind that Gillmore put up so little resistance in that fight that Petroski was less likely to gas out than normal.
A former D1 college wrestler, Petroski made his pro debut in 2018 at 170 lb, but moved up to 185 lb for his next fight, where five of his seven pro matches have been. While he trains out of Factory X in Colorado, his cardio has looked somewhat suspect at times later in fights. He won his first three pro fights in the first round with a pair of submissions following a KO victory in his pro debut, so he didn’t even see a second round until his fourth pro match. He then landed back-to-back second round knockouts in his fourth and fifth pro fights before suffering his only career loss in an October 2020 R2 knockout in the LFA against his most experienced opponent to date in 8-2 Aaron Jeffery. Petroski came in with his normal wrestling heavy approach against Jeffery, and while he was able to take him down multiple times, he struggled to do anything with the takedowns or even hold him down for long. Jeffery then dropped Petroski with a knee in the second round and the fight was soon stopped.
Prior to that LFA match, Petroski had been fighting for a smaller promotion out of Philadelphia going against inexperienced opponents who entered with records of 1-2-1, 2-2, 1-1, 7-11, and 4-1. He relies heavily on his wrestling to win fights, but he does have okay power in his hands. With that said, he generally just uses his striking to set up takedowns and he’s not the most refined striker.
While it’s encouraging that Petroski made it to the third round in his last fight without gassing out, we still need to see him do it in a more competitive environment before removing his questionable cardio tag.
Hu Yaozong
3rd UFC Fight (0-2)Yaozong had been scheduled to face Alen Amedovski, initially back in July and then on this card, but Amedovski withdrew from both matches and Petroski stepped in on two week’s notice.
Making his pro debut in 2016 at Heavyweight, Yaozong landed three straight finishes to start his career, including a first round Guillotine Choke followed by a pair of knockouts in the later two rounds. His first two wins took place in some sort of multi-day tournament as they came just one day apart, which further diminishes his already limited experience as he really just competed in two events leading up to his UFC debut. However, the UFC had a card taking place in Shanghai, China in 2017 and needed a Heavyweight to fill in on short notice against 1-2 Cyril Asker and it appears the 22-year-old Yaozong was in the right place at the right time in his home country of China and was awarded the opportunity to join the UFC despite having just one year of pro experience and just three fights under his belt. Yaozong went for a standing Guillotine Choke early in the fight but was unable to complete it and did little else the remainder of the match before getting submitted midway through the second round. Yaozong was somewhat undersized at Heavyweight as he weighed in at just 232 lb for that fight.
Following the early loss in his UFC debut, Yaozong took a year off and dropped down to Light Heavyweight (205 lb), before returning in November 2018 to fight on another card taking place in China, this time in Beijing. Yaozong took on Rashad Coulter, who was also dropping down from Heavyweight to Light Heavyweight after getting knocked out in the first two rounds of his first three UFC fights. Although Coulter wasn’t able to fully complete the drop in weight as he missed the mark by two pounds for that fight. Coulter knocked Yaozong down midway through the first round with a right hand, but Yaozong was able to recover and appeared to steal the momentum in the second and third rounds. However, the judges gave Coulter a unanimous decision victory and he narrowly came out ahead in significant strikes 98-92 and 108-98 in total strikes. Yaozong missed on his only takedown attempt but did finish with nearly five and a half minutes of control time.
Yaozong looked terrible in his first UFC fight but actually seemed somewhat improved for his second. However, in March 2019 Yaozong tested positive for a banned substance and was suspended for 10 months. An investigation into the matter concluded that the positive test was the result of a dietary supplement he had been taking. So that suspension is at least part of the reason why we now haven’t seen Yaozong fight in nearly three years. He’s also now dropped down another weight class and will be competing at Middleweight (185 lb) for the first time in his career. Despite the long layoff, Yaozong is still just 26 years old. This will also notably be the first time Yaozong has ever fought outside of China.
Yaozong hasn’t looked very explosive in the past, but has been fairly durable. While only one of his five pro fights has gone the distance, his last four have all made it out of the first round, with two making it to the third. Outside of a standing Guillotine Choke, which he appears fond of, we haven’t seen much grappling out of Yaozong, but he does have a background in Greco-Roman wrestling. So there’s at least the potential for him to utilize more grappling moving forward.
Considering his extended layoff and drop down to Middleweight, it will be essential to monitor Yaozong closely at weigh-ins.
Fight Prediction:
Yaozong will have a 3” height advantage, but Petroski will have a 1” reach advantage.
In a matchup between two unproven fighters with wrestling backgrounds, we get the much larger Hu Yaozong coming down from Light Heavyweight following a three year layoff going against the former Welterweight in Andre Petroski. We’ve seen Petroski put on impressive grappling performances, but we’ve yet to see Yaozong do anything to impress us. We still have some questions regarding Petroski’s cardio, while Yaozong actually turned up the pace in the third round of his last fight. In fairness to Petroski, his cardio wasn’t an issue in his last fight as he landed a third round TKO. However, that’s the one way we could see Yaozong winning this fight—with Petroski gassing out trying to slam his larger opponent one too many times and Yaozong potentially catching Petroski with a Guillotine Choke on a lazy takedown late in the fight. With that said, it’s still far more likely Petroski wins this match and the UFC seems to be trying to build him up with low-level opponents.
You can get crazy here if you want with some of Yaozong’s late round or submission lines, but our favorite bet here is “Fight Ends in R2” at +370.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Petroski had a dream matchup in his last outing and scored 106 DraftKings points with a late finish in an overall solid performance. His wrestling-heavy style lends itself more towards the DraftKings scoring system if this fight goes the distance, but it’s more likely to end early according to the odds, and a finish should score well on both sites. The UFC once again gave him an easier matchup, as Yaozong is 0-2 with the organization and hasn’t fought in three years. However, Yaozong is coming down from Light Heavyweight for the first time and has even fought at Heavyweight at times, so he could be a tough guy to take down. This makes for a high variance spot where you’ll want to have exposure on both sides. We’re still not entirely sold on Petroski and it will be interesting to see how he looks against a legitimate opponent down the road, but we still may be a fight or two away from seeing that happen. The odds imply he has a 68% chance to win, a 45% chance to get a finish and a 21% chance it comes in R1.
Yaozong hasn’t given us much to get excited about, but he did land 92 significant strikes in his last fight and showed he could take a punch. Yaozong hasn’t shown his grappling at the UFC level so it still remains a mystery, but he does have a background in Greco-Roman wrestling. Keep in mind, this is a high variance fight with a wide range of potential outcomes and the most likely scenario is Yaozong looks terrible and gets finished, but Petroski projects to be a popular play and Yaozong looks like an interesting leverage option in tournaments. He notably started his career at Heavyweight, before dropping down to Light Heavyweight in his second UFC fight and now all the way down to Middleweight, so it will be interesting to see the size advantage he holds on fight day as he towered over Petroski at faceoffs. The odds imply he has a 32% chance to win, a 15% chance to get a finish and a 7% chance it comes in the first round.
Fight #12
Lerone Murphy
4th UFC Fight (2-0-1)After having two scheduled fights with Charles Jourdain fall through in August and September, Murphy stepped into this matchup at the end of September after Tristan Connelly withdrew.
Murphy is coming off a low-volume decision win over Douglas Silva de Andrade, where he outlanded De Andrade 48-39 in significant strikes and 60-51 in total strikes. Each fighter landed one takedown, Murphy on four attempts and De Andrade on two attempts. The fight played out as a tactical striking battle with both guys landing heavy shots at times.
That win stretched Murphy’s undefeated record to 10-0-1 pro record, after he knocked out Ricardo Ramos in the first round of his previous fight. Murphy made his UFC debut in 2019 against Zubaira Tukhugov and fought to a split-decision draw. Murphy was taken down six times on eight attempts in that fight, which has been his one weakness so far. Murphy started his pro career at 155 lb but dropped down to 145 lb in 2018. All six of his KO victories have notably occured in the first round, while his other five fights have all ended in decisions.
Overall, Murphy is a dangerous striker with good hands and seems to be trying to improve his grappling but he’s gotten into trouble at times with getting reversed as he’s looked for takedowns of his own. To his credit, after getting taken down six times on eight attempts in his debut by Zubaira Tukhugov, Murphy has only been taken down once on four attempts in his last two fights.
Makwan Amirkhani
11th UFC Fight (6-4)Amirkhani had been preparing to face Tristan Connelly, but will now get a tougher opponent in Lerone Murphy. Coming off a pair of decision losses, Amirkhani has now lost three of his last four fights and desperately needs a win to get back on track. To make matters worse, his recent decision loss came against a debuting late replacement fighter. Prior to that, he lost a low-volume decision to Edson Barboza after getting knocked out in R3 by Shane Burgos in 2019.
In his recent low-volume decision loss, Amirkhani trailed in significant strikes 28-20 and in total strikes 100-25. He was able to land five takedowns on nine attempts with just under seven minutes of control time, but it was actually his opponent, Kamuela Kirk, who finished the fight with three official submission attempts. That’s surprising considering Amirkhani is essentially a one-dimensional submission threat, but Kirk is a solid grappler in his own right.
Prior to that recent loss, Amirkhani was defeated in an ultra low-volume decision loss against Edson Barboza, where Barboza led in significant strikes 32-11 and in total strikes 34-25. Barboza landed a pair of knockdowns, while Amirkhani went 3 for 6 on takedowns, but couldn’t do anything with them and two came right at the end of the first two rounds.
Prior to the decision loss, Amirkhani finished Danny Henry in the first round with an Anaconda submission. Not much else happened in that fight, as Henry led in strikes 6-2, but Amirkhani hyper efficiently finished the fight with his only submission attempt on his lone takedown. Henry came into that fight following a loss and a 16 month layoff, and looked like the oldest 32-year-old you’ve ever seen.
Looking back one fight further, Amirkhani was knocked out by Shane Burgos in the third round after failing to land an early submission attempt. Prior to that fight he landed another Anaconda submission, that time in the second round of a 2019 match against Chris Fishgold. Amirkhani had fought to three straight ultra low-volume decisions before the win over Fishgold, after winning his first two UFC fights in 2015 with a pair of first round finishes. One of those was by Rear-Naked Choke, following an eight second Flying Knee KO in his UFC debut—which remains Amirkhani’s only KO win to date.
The only fighter to ever land more than 32 significant strikes on Amirkhani is Shane Burgos who more than tripled that number, landing 105. Amirkhani has similarly never landed above 32 significant strikes in a UFC fight, and that was back in 2016. It’s no secret that he wants to get fights to the ground, and that generally keeps the striking volume in check in his fights.
Amirkhani has landed at least one takedown in his last nine UFC fights and at least three in six of those. He claims to have improved his boxing, but so far he’s been a one-dimensional grappling submission specialist in his UFC career. His speciality is the Anaconda Choke, which is how he finished his last two wins.
He’s currently 16-6 as a pro, with 11 wins by submission and one by KO. He’s also been finished twice himself, but only once in the last 10 years, which was the R3 KO against Burgos. His only other early career loss was a 2011 Triangle Choke in his third pro fight.
Fight Prediction:
Amirkhani will have a 1” height advantage, but Murphy will have a 1” reach advantage.
This is a classic striker vs. grappler matchup and neither guy will want to compete in the other’s comfort zone. All six of Murphy’s career KO wins have come in the first round as have 10 of Amirkhani’s 11 career submission victories and his lone KO. So both of these two generally either land a quick finish or fight to a decision. We like Amirkhani’s chances to get this fight to the ground where he’ll have a massive grappling advantage and good shot to land another quick submission to break Murphy’s undefeated record.
Our favorite bet here is “Amirkhani Wins by R1 Submission” at +1700.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Still undefeated as a pro with a 10-0-1 career record, Murphy is a solid striker but looks vulnerable on the ground. With five of his 11 fights ending in decisions, including four of his last six, he’s far from a safe bet in DFS to return value. Instead he’s a R1 KO or bust play that should go low owned at his steep price tag. We expect a low-volume chess match here where Amirkhani is looking to get the fight to the ground and Murphy will be carefully selecting his shots to avoid leaving himself to getting taken down. All six of Murphy’s career finishes have come by R1 KO, which makes determining your tournament exposure pretty simple. The odds imply he has a 72% chance to win, a 39% chance to get a finish and a 19% chance it comes in R1.
Amirkhani has struggled to really score well even when he lands an early finish, with DraftKings scores of “just” 97 and 86 in his last two wins, which came in R1 and R2 submissions respectively. However, that’s far less of a concern at his ultra cheap price tag and he looks like a very intriguing DFS play here as he’s desperate to get back in the winning column and going against a one-dimensional striker. If Amirkhani can get this fight to the ground he’ll have a massive advantage and a great chance to land another early submission. It’s also possible he could win a grappling heavy decision and still return value on DraftKings. Working in his favor, Murphy has just a 41% career takedown defense. However, if Amirkhani can’t get this fight to the ground he essentially has no chance of making it competitive on the feet, so there’s still obviously a lot of risk involved here. The odds imply he has a 28% chance to win, a 15% chance to get a finish and a 7% chance it comes in R1.
Fight #11
Shamil Gamzatov
2nd UFC Fight (0-1)Two years removed from a painfully slow paced split-decision win in his November 2019 UFC debut, Gamzatov has had four fights fall through since the win as he’s withdrawn from his last three bookings after a 2020 event was cancelled due to COVID. In his 2019 debut, Gamzatov outlanded Klidson Abreu 64-32 in significant strikes and 82-47 in total strikes, while Abreu landed one of his two takedown attempts with 106 seconds of control time and stuffed Gamzatov’s only attempt.
That win extended Gamzatov’s undefeated record to a perfect 14-0, with five wins by KO, five by submission and four decisions. However, those four decisions have all occurred in his most recent four fights and two of those were split-decisions. It’s also notable to point out that he has a pretty padded early career record, with wins over opponents who entered with records of 0-0, 0-0, 0-0, 1-1, 0-0, 0-0, 6-3, 1-1, and 10-19 in his first nine pro fights. Only two of his 10 finishes came against opponents with winning records and he does not appear especially dangerous.
While almost his entire career has been spent at 205 lb, Gamzatov actually dropped down to 185 lb when he joined the PFL for his two fights just before joining the UFC. He moved back up to 205 lb for his UFC debut and that’s where this next fight will be as well.
Gamzatov is notably a BJJ brown belt and a Master of Sports in Sambo, so while we didn’t see any grappling from him in his last fight, he theoretically has that in his back pocket.
Michal Oleksiejczuk
7th UFC Fight (3-2, NC)Oleksiejczuk is coming off an up-tempo but ultimately lower volume split-decision win over Modestas Bukauskas, who was recently cut by the UFC following his third straight loss. Bukauskas spent much of the fight circling away from contact, but closed out the second round strong. Nevertheless, Oleksiejczuk appeared to do more damage in the fight and rightfully won the decision as he never stopped pressing the action in the fight. The striking was close, with Bukauskas ahead in significant strikes 58-56, but Oleksiejczuk ahead in total strikes 77-62. No takedowns were landed, but Oleksiejczuk attempted two with Bukauskas attempting one.
Oleksiejczuk originally came into the UFC in 2017 with a 12-2 record and on a nine fight winning streak. However, after winning his 2017 UFC debut by decision over Khalil Rountree in 2017, Oleksiejczuk tested positive for a banned estrogen blocker and was suspended for a year along with the results of the fight being overturned to a No Contest.
After 14 months away, he got back inside the Octagon against Gian Villante and finished him in the first round with a body shot. Dan Hardy perfectly summarized the look on Villante’s face after absorbing the shot to the liver as, “He looks like he swallowed a hard candy and he’s not sure what to do with it.”
Oleksiejczuk then took on Gadzhimurad Antigulov, who looked like he was fighting on a frozen pond as he lunged forward towards Oleksiejczuk. That resulted in Oleksiejczuk scoring three knockdowns and a KO in a fight that lasted just 44 seconds.
At that point Oleksiejczuk was 2-0 in the UFC, not counting the win that was overturned to a No Contest, and hadn’t lost in his last 12 fights going back to 2014. He then took on a much larger Ovince St. Preux in 2019. Oleksiejczuk brought the fight to OSP early in the match, but OSP did a better job of controlling the distance early in the second round. Midway through the second round OSP was able to take Oleksiejczuk down and submit him with his patented St. Preux Choke.
Coming off his first loss in nearly five years, Oleksiejczuk then got his toughest test to date against Jimmy Crute, who immediately looked to take the fight to the ground. Crute amazingly landed eight takedowns in a fight that lasted just three and a half minutes before he submitted Oleksiejczuk with a Kimura.
Oleksiejczuk is a little undersized for the Light Heavyweight division and broadcasters are constantly moving him down to Middleweight. That could be part of the reason why three of his four pro losses have come by submission, as he sometimes gets bodied by larger opponents. Two of those three submission losses have notably come in the first round, while the other ending in round two. His only other pro loss was a 2014 R1 KO, so all four of his career losses have ended early. Of his 15 pro wins, 11 have come early, with 10 KOs and one submission. He has been to five decisions in his 20 pro fights, but two of those came in his first two career matches back in 2014. Two more were in 2016 and 2017 before the most recent decision in his last fight. The 2017 decision win was overturned to a No Contest, however, so he only has four official decision wins.
Oleksiejczuk landed two takedowns on three attempts in his 2017 UFC debut, but then didn’t attempt any in his next four fights before going 0 for 2 most recently.
Fight Prediction:
Gamzatov will have a 2” height and reach advantage.
Oleksiejczuk has been the far more aggressive fighter in this matchup, but he’s also been prone to getting submitted. It was hard to take away much from Gamzatov’s UFC debut as the fight was so slow paced and very little actually happened. While he owns a perfect 14-0 record, only six of those wins came against opponents with winning records and two of his last four victories ended in split-decisions. So while it looks good on paper, his record is far less impressive once you dive into it. We expect Oleksiejczuk to push the pace and be the more aggressive striker, so the ultimate question will be whether or not Gamzatov looks to take the fight to the ground where Oleksiejczuk has been the most vulnerable. Gamzatov has five submissions on his record, but the most recent of those was all the way back in 2014 and only one of his submission wins came against a fighter with a winning record. Gamzatov looks like a potential fraud and we like Oleksiejczuk to either knock him out or outland his way to a decision.
Our favorite bet here is Oleksiejczuk’s ML at +105.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
The unreplicable 148 point DraftKings score that Oleksiejczuk put up against Antigulov on the back of three lightning quick knockdowns in a 44 second KO had far more to do with Antigulov’s psychotic fighting style than anything Oleksiejczuk does especially well. Oleksiejczuk has just one knockdown in his other five UFC fights combined. WIth that said, Oleksiejczuk lands an above average number of significant strikes and has a history of pushing the pace and landing finishes. This has the appearance of a tough matchup as Oleksiejczuk faces off against a 14-0 opponent, and we have no reason to question Gamzatov’s durability, but we do question the competition he’s faced for most of his career. Gamzatov’s only UFC fight was two years ago in a slow paced split-decision and it was hard to take much away from that other than being generally unimpressed with his offense. It’s entirely possible Gamzatov turns this into another lackluster decision, so we’re not overly optimistic about Oleksiejczuk’s chances to put up a ceiling performance, but we do like his chances to win the fight through sheer output and he’s always got a shot to land a knockout based on how aggressive he is. He scored just 59 DraftKings points in his last decision win, which indicates that even at his underdog price tag, he may still need a finish here to be useful, but he has one of the best chances to win on the slate among underdogs. The odds imply he has a 47% chance to win, a 19% chance to land a finish and an 8% chance it comes in R1.
Gamzatov scored just 60 DraftKings points in a split-decision win in his UFC debut and now hasn’t fought in two years since. He was completely uninspiring in that match and has now fought to four straight decisions. The only possible argument we can make for playing him is that he’ll be low owned, he’s from Dagestan, and he’s going against an opponent who’s been submitted in three of his four pro losses. WIth that said, he failed on his only takedown attempt in his debut, and he’s given us no indication that he can live up to his inflated 14-0 pro record. We don’t have much interest here in playing him, but the odds imply he has a 53% chance to win, a 24% chance to get a finish and a 10% chance it comes in R1.
Fight #10
Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos
12th UFC Fight (8-3)Fifteen months removed from a split-decision loss against really tough Muslim Salikhov, Dos Santos has now lost two of his last three fights and has fought to two straight decisions after winning seven of his first eight UFC fights. He’s notably the only person to ever finish Sean Strickland and on the other side of things, the only time Dos Santos has been finished since joining the UFC in 2015 was in a 2019 R3 KO against Li Jingliang.
A BJJ black belt, Dos Santos utilizes a flashy Capoeira style of fighting that includes spinning kicks and unorthodox attacks that can catch his opponents by surprise. However, he generally doesn’t land a ton of striking volume or takedowns.
Now 22-7 as a pro, 14 of Dos Santos’ wins have come by KO, three have ended in submissions and five by decision. He’s been knocked out once and submitted twice, while losing four decisions. His two submission losses both came by R2 Rear-Naked Choke in 2012 and 2013. The last time Dos Santos finished an opponent was back in March 2019 when he landed a first round Rear-Naked Choke and his last KO was in September 2018 against a debuting Luigi Vendramini, who was fighting up a weight class.
Of Dos Santos’ 11 UFC fights, eight have made it to the third round, with six ending in decisions. He did go through a stretch in 2018-2019 where he landed a R1 submission and a pair of KOs spread across the first two rounds, but that’s the extent of his early wins.
Benoit Saint-Denis
1st UFC Fight (0-0)Making his UFC debut with a perfect 8-0 record, Saint-Denis has only been past the second round once and has never required the judges. His last six wins have ended in the first two rounds and he looks to get opponents to the mat and aggressively hunt for submissions. He’s landed a wide variety of submissions in the past, with Guillotines, Rear-Naked Chokes, Armbars and Kneebars, but his most recent two finishes have both come by Arm-Triangle Choke. He also has one KO on his record to go along with his seven submission wins.
While he looks to be a decent grappler, Saint-Denis doesn’t appear to offer much on the feet and his last two fights have notably taken place in the “Super Lightweight” division (165 lb), whereas he’ll now be moving back up to Welterweight (170 lb). So if he can’t get this fight to the ground he’ll be in real trouble against a dangerous striker like Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos. With that said, Saint-Denis actually made his 2019 pro debut at 185 lb, before dropping down to 170 lb in his second fight and then 165 lb for his most recent two fights.
Overall, Saint-Denis looks like a one-dimensional grappler who can finish fights in a variety of ways on the mat and will shoot for a high number of takedowns to get it there.
Fight Prediction:
Both fighters are 5’11” with a 73” reach, but Saint-Denis is notably nine years younger than the 34-year-old Dos Santos.
Saint-Denis steps into his UFC debut against longtime UFC veteran Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos, who will be making his 12th trip inside the Octagon. While Dos Santos has had his struggles as of recently, this still appears to be a mismatch as he should have a massive striking advantage on the feet and is notably a BJJ black belt who hasn’t been submitted since 2013 if this fight hits the mat. With that said, Saint-Denis’ best chance is clearly to get the fight to the ground and Dos Santos’ 52% career takedown defense isn’t overly imposing as he’s been grounded on 17 of his opponents’ 36 attempts in the UFC. We should point out that 15 of those takedowns came in his first four UFC fights and he’s only been taken down twice on 12 attempts in his last seven fights. Saint-Denis will need to get the fight down and land a submission or win a grappling heavy decision to get the upset, but a Dos Santos knockout win is the most likely outcome here. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Saint-Denis sell out for takedowns and submissions early and end up gassing out and getting finished by Dos Santos in the second round.
Our favorite bet here is “Fight Ends in Submission” at +300.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Dos Santos has been a R1 or bust play throughout his career with DraftKings scores of 102 and 107 in his two R1 wins, but totals of just 72, 86 (R2 KO), 70, 71, 53 and 85 (R3 KO) in his other six most recent wins. He lacks the striking volume and grappling stats to score well even with a later finish, and will be defending a ton of takedowns here, which should further slow down the fight. He does project to go low owned, which gives him some appeal in tournaments, just realize you likely need a first round finish out of him to be useful. The odds imply he has a 67% chance to win, a 42% chance to get a finish and a 19% chance it comes in R1.
Saint-Denis makes his UFC debut with a perfect 8-0 record with seven of those wins coming by submission and all eight ending early, including seven in the first two rounds. He appears to be a one-dimensional grappler and he’s going against a BJJ black belt who has 11 fights of UFC experience and this certainly doesn’t appear to be a favorable matchup for the UFC newcomer. With that said, his grappling-heavy style lends itself well to DFS scoring, especially on DraftKings, and if he can pull off the upset he should score well. The odds imply he has a 33% chance to win, an 18% chance to get a finish and an 8% chance it comes in R1.
Fight #9
Albert Duraev
1st UFC Fight (0-0)Making his UFC debut six weeks after landing a first round submission win on DWCS, Duraev is Russian grappler built from the same mold as Khamzat Chimaev. He likes to get opponents to the ground and beat them up while he hunts for submissions, but we’ve also seen him keep fights standing and win on the feet. He won the Russian ACB Middleweight Championship in 2017 in a striking battle that only ended up on the mat once Duraev hurt his opponent and forced him to look for a takedown, at which point Duraev reversed it and finished the fight with ground and pound. Duraev also previously won the ABC Welterweight title in 2016, as he’s fought at both 170 lb and 185 lb throughout his career. However, his last four fights have all been at 185 lb, where he will be making his UFC debut.
In his recent DWCS fight, Duraev put on a Chimaev-esque performance where he got the fight to the ground in the opening 30 seconds and beat his opponent up on the mat with relentless ground and pound before submitting him with a Neck Crank with 91 seconds remaining in the round. He landed 78 total strikes (just 2 significant) with one takedown and over three minutes of control time in the first round finish.
Prior to going on DWCS, Duraev hadn’t competed in almost exactly three years since defending the ACB Middleweight belt in a five round decision in September 2018. Now 14-3 as a pro, Duraev has only required the judges in two of his 17 pro fights. He has three wins by KO, nine submission victories and has won both of the decisions he’s been to. All three of his losses have come by KO, with one of those coming against UFC fighter Ramazan Emeev in the first round of a 2012 match, which was Duraev’s fifth pro fight. He was knocked out again three fights later in 2014, this time in the first round, which was the last time Duraev lost a fight. Since then, he’s rattled off nine straight wins, with seven of those coming early (5 Submissions & 2 R1 KOs).
While one of his three losses came against a current UFC fighter in Emeev, Duraev has also defeated three fighters with UFC experience in Clifford Starks, Sergey Khandozhko, and Xavier Foupa-Pokam. Duraev trains out of Xtreme Couture and is one of Sean Strickland’s primary sparring partners.
Roman Kopylov
2nd UFC Fight (0-1)A patient striker, Kopylov is nearly two years removed from getting submitted late in the third round of his 2019 UFC debut by kickboxer Karl Roberson. The fight played out entirely on the feet as a low-volume striking match leading up to the finish, with Roberson tearing up Kopylov’s lead leg and then Kopylov landing a brutal eye poke shortly before the finish in R3. The fight ended with Roberson ahead 43-37 in significant strikes, while landing one of his three takedown attempts and Kopylov missing on his only attempt. Kopylov did nothing to deter Roberson from landing leg kicks, which will be something he’ll need to improve moving forward.
Despite his Russian descent and having trained out of Dagestan, Kopylov doesn’t appear to offer much in terms of grappling. He’s now 8-1 as a pro and all seven of his finishes have come by KO, while he won the only decision he’s ever been to, which occurred in his 2016 pro debut. His last seven wins have all been by KO, with the last two coming in the fourth round of five round fights. Only one of his seven KOs came in R1, with two ending in R2, two in R3 and two in R4. He entered the UFC with a perfect 8-0 record before getting submitted in his debut and hasn’t fought since, after having fights in March 2020, October 2020 and July 2021 all canceled. One of those was due to the event getting scrapped because of COVID, but Kopylov withdrew from the most recent two.
Fight Prediction:
Kopylov will have a 1” height advantage, but both fighters share a 75” reach.
Duraev looks like a very interesting prospect with the ability to dominate opponents on the mat, but we still need to see him get it done at the UFC level to be sure his skills will translate. He approaches fights similarly to Chimaev, where he’s generally looking to get fights quickly to the mat and unload rabid ground and pound to set up either a TKO stoppage or a submission. We expect that to be his gameplan here as well. Kopylov prefers to keep fights on the feet and was recently submitted by kickboxer Karl Roberson, who has been incredibly prone to getting submitted himself. Kopylov essentially put up zero defense to Roberson choking him out as he never even looked to fight the hands. We like Duraev to finish this one early, likely with a submission in the first round.
Our favorite bet here is “Duraev R1 or R2 Win” at +110.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Making his UFC debut but priced right up there with the other top guys, it will be interesting to see where Duraev’s ownership ends up as he’s one of those fighters that’s tougher to pin down with no scoresheet for the field to chase. His impressive DWCS performance would have been good for 117 DraftKings points and 112 points on FanDuel and he’s got a Chimaev Lite type feel to him. His grappling heavy style lends itself more towards the DraftKings scoring system in fights that go the distance, but with 12 of his 14 career wins coming early, he looks like a great play on both sites. It’s somewhat concerning that he’s only fought once in the last three years and that fight lasted just three and half minutes, so we have no clue what his cardio will look like later in fights. We’re not actually expecting this fight to last long enough to find out, but with several unknowns this is a high variance spot as Duraev makes his debut against Kopylov who lost his debut two years ago and hasn’t fought since. We expect Duraev to look for an early takedown and rack up ground strikes as he works his way to finish, and he has a great chance to put up a huge score. The odds imply he has a 75% chance to win, a 47% chance to get a finish and a 22% chance it comes in R1.
Kopylov is a patient striker who has KO power but doesn’t add much in terms of grappling. He’ll need to keep this fight standing to have a chance, which looks like it may be hard to do. Working in his favor, Duraev has been knocked out in all three of his career losses and has fought just once in the last three years, which came just six weeks ago and he immediately got his opponent to the mat and quickly finished the fight. Finishes like that tend to cover up any potential warts, so it’s always possible Kopylov can expose him on the feet. We always like to target fighters coming into their second UFC fight going against debuting opponents, but the fact that Kopylov lost his debut two years ago has us less excited about that angle. Still, it makes sense to have some exposure in tournaments, as Kopylov projects to be incredibly low owned and likely breaks the slate if he wins. The odds imply he has a 25% chance to win, a 15% chance to get a finish and a 6% chance it comes in R1.
Fight #8
Zubaira Tukhugov
8th UFC Fight (4-2-1)Coming off a decision loss to a really tough Hakeem Dawodu, Tukhugov finished the fight in confusing fashion as he circled away from contact and refused to engage for the final two minutes of a fight he was losing. Dawodu was literally walking him down with his hand by his side screaming, “LET’S FUCKING FIGHT!” while the ref hilariously told him, “No cursing, be respectful!” Instead, Tukhugov simply ran out the clock, frustratingly passing on giving even the slightest effort to win the fight or put on a good show. Tukhugov also notably missed weight by 4 lb for that fight so it was overall a terrible showing. Dawodu finished ahead in significant strikes 69-35, while Tukhugov landed the only takedown in the match on seven attempts.
A heavy handed striker, Tukhugov won his first three UFC fights before going just 1-2-1 in his last four. He has a pair of R1 KO wins in the UFC, with his other five matches going the distance. Amazingly, the last four times he’s gone the distance his fights ended in split-decisions. Looking at his entire pro career, he’s 19-5-1 a pro, with seven KOs, one submission and 11 decisions. He’s been knocked out once in the first round of a 2012 fight, submitted once in the first round of a 2010 match and has lost three decisions. So he hasn’t been finished since 2012. His last 19 fights have all ended in KOs (6-1) or decisions (8-3-1). Four of his last five bouts have now gone the distance. He’s notably a teammate of Khabib, who helped him with the weight cut to make sure he didn’t miss again.
Tukhugov has attempted at least seven takedowns in three of his last four fights, as he’s gone 10 for 23 on his attempts over that stretch. Looking at his entire UFC career, he’s landed 14 of his 30 takedown attempts. Obviously training with Khabib is a boost for his takedown potential and he has the ability to both strike and grapple. Tukhugov started his career at 155 lb before moving down to 145 lb just one fight before joining the UFC in 2013. He’s fought exclusively at 145 lb in the UFC.
Ricardo Ramos
9th UFC Fight (6-2)Ramos is looking to gain some momentum after winning a decision over Bill Algeo back in May. A BJJ black belt, Ramos set a career high in takedowns as he landed 8 of his 13 attempts after only landing nine in his previous seven fights combined. Algeo led the fight in significant strikes 76-53 and in total strikes 90-57 while failing on his only takedown attempt, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the grappling of Ramos.
That win followed Ramos’ second R1 KO loss in his last five fights, although it should be noted that Ramos’ two UFC losses came against 10-0-1 Lerone Murphy and 14-2 Said Nurmagomedov. Four of his six UFC wins have gone the distance, while he also has a 2017 R3 KO victory and a 2019 R1 Rear-Naked Choke Submission win more recently.
Ramos is now 15-3 as a pro, with 10 of his wins coming early, including three KOs and seven submissions. All three of his career losses have occurred in the first round, two by KO (2019 & 2020) and one by submission (2016). Overall, 10 of his 18 pro fights have ended in round one, one has ended in round two, two have ended in round three, while the other five ended in decision wins. Ramos is a flashy striker and notably fought his first five (4-1) UFC fights at 135 lb before moving up to 145 lb in 2019 where he’s since gone 2-1.
Fight Prediction:
Ramos will have a 1” height advantage and 4” reach advantage.
As long as Tukhugov is actually willing to engage here, this has the potential to be a sleeper fight on the card as both of these two are well-rounded, explosive fighters. While Tukhugov hasn’t been finished since 2012, Ramos has been put away in all three of his career losses, with two of those coming by KO in his last five fights. So this sets up as a good bounce back spot for Tukhugov to land an early finish and he should have the power advantage in the striking as he fought up at 155 lb before joining the UFC, while Ramos started his UFC career down at 135 lb. We like Tukhugov’s chances to win by R1 KO here.
Our favorite bet here is “Tukhugov Wins by KO” at +460.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Tukhugov has been a boom or bust DFS play for his entire UFC career with DraftKings scores of 24, 121, 55, 31, 45, 107 and 61. All of his UFC fights have ended in either R1 KO wins (2) or decisions (5). His last four decisions have all been split and you never know which way the judges will rule when he’s fighting. While Tukhugov had us pulling our hair out as he refused to actually fight late in his last match as he simply circled away for the final two minutes as he went on to lose a decision, his upside his undeniable and Ramos is the perfect opponent to show it against, as Ramos has been finished in the first round in all three of his career losses. Tukhugov also has grappling upside as he’s attempted at least 7 takedowns in his last three fights that made it out of the first round. So while we seriously question his motivation and fight IQ at times, Tukhugov looks like a solid tournament play at a very affordable price tag. The odds imply he has a 61% chance to win, a 24% chance to land a finish and a 10% chance it comes in R1.
Ramos is coming off a career high in takedowns as he landed almost as many in his last fight (8) as he had in his previous seven UFC fights combined (9). However, Tukhugov has notably never been taken down in the UFC, so a repeat performance is unlikely. With that said, we generally like targeting Ramos’ fights in DFS, as three of his last five matches have ended in the first round (1-2) and he’s generally looking to force the action. Up until his recent takedown explosion, he hadn’t been a guy that scored well in decisions, with DraftKings totals of 68, 60 and 63 in his first three UFC decision wins, before notching 98 most recently. This looks like a tough spot for him to land a finish considering Tukhugov hasn’t been finished since 2012, so we definitely prefer Tukhugov’s side of things. With that said, the odds imply Ramos has a 39% chance to win, a 19% chance to land a finish and an 8% chance it comes in R1.
Fight #7
Amanda Ribas
6th UFC Fight (4-1)Looking to bounce back from a R2 KO loss to Marina Rodriguez in January 2021, Ribas had been scheduled to face Angela Hill back in May but tested positive for COVID. The matchup was pushed back a month, but Ribas once again withdrew citing COVID issues.
Outside of defeating Mackenzie Dern in a 2019 decision, most of Ribas’ UFC wins haven’t aged well. She submitted Emily Whitmire in the second round of her UFC debut, but Whitmire went on to get submitted in the first round of her next two fights, including by one-dimensional striker Hannah Goldy. Ribas’ next win was against Randa Markos, who lost her next three fights following that loss. In her most recent win, Ribas submitted Paige VanZant, who was then released by the UFC after losing three of her last four fights. So while we still believe Ribas to be a legit talent, she’ll need to reprove herself against tougher competition to be considered as a top contender in the 115 lb division.
In Ribas’ most recent fight, she controlled Marina Rodriguez on the ground for most of the first round, however, Rodriguez caught her with a clean right hook to the chin that dropped Ribas early in the second round and Rodriguez went to town with her ground and pound, until Herb Dean appeared to stop the fight. At that point, Rodriguez pulled up and walked away, seemingly victorious, only to turn around and see Dean claim he never actually called the fight. Both ladies appeared to look at Herb Dean confused—Ribas unsure what dimension she was in and Rodriguez pointing at him to call bullshit—but Dean told them to fight on. So Rodriguez quickly went back to work landing elbows and punches before Dean quickly stepped in again, to stop things for real just moments later, as he appeared to realize the mess he had caused. After the fight, you could see in super slow motion that Dean appeared to be going in to stop the fight, but at the very last second changed his mind and tried to juke his way out of making contact with Rodriguez. It was clearly not his best work and everyone watching/participating seemed to think that he had initially stopped the action. Regardless of the referee's shenanigans, the Muay Thai striker Rodriguez clearly demonstrated her power in that matchup as she handed Ribas her first UFC loss and second KO loss of her career.
Ribas is now 10-2 as a pro, with three wins by KO, four by submission and three decisions. Both of her losses have come by KO. A BJJ and Judo black belt, Ribas has a well rounded game and is also a solid striker, who’s probably being undervalued after her recent KO loss.
Virna Jandiroba
6th UFC Fight (3-2)Coming off the first TKO of her career, we’ve seen Jandiroba go through a bit of a body transformation in recent years as she’s put on a ton of muscle in her arms and shoulders. She used to be a one-dimensional submission specialist, but has really expanded her striking in her last two fights, and now needs to be respected on the feet. She’s still obviously incredibly dangerous on the mat and locked up a tight armbar in the first round of her last fight that actually broke the arm of her opponent, Kanako Murata. However, Murata showed her toughness and refused to tap, which screwed everyone that had bet Jandiroba’s submission line. However the fight was stopped following the second round due to the arm injury once it was clear to everyone that it was broken. Jandiroba finished the fight ahead in significant strikes 36-23 and never even attempted a takedown.
Leading up to that win, Jandiroba suffered a decision loss to Mackenzie Dern, which was just Jandiroba’s second loss in 19 pro fights. However, both of those have occurred in her last five matches since joining the UFC. Her first career loss came in a grappling-heavy decision in her UFC debut against Carla Esparza, who outlanded Jandiroba in significant strikes 25-17 and in total strikes 97-64, while landing 4 of 10 takedown attempts to Jandiroba’s 3 on 9 attempts. Esparza also led in control time 5:27-3:48 on her way to a unanimous decision win.
A BJJ black belt, Jandiroba bounced back from that first career loss with a R2 Rear-Naked Choke Submission win over Mallory Martin in 2019. Martin has notably been submitted in 2 of her last 3 UFC fights now for what it’s worth. Jandiroba followed that up with a R1 Armbar submission victory against Felice Herrig in August 2020, although Herrig was somewhat of a mess as she was coming off knee injury and a two year layoff, had to switch gyms, was missing her new coach at the fight, and entered on a two fight losing streak at 35 years old.
In her decision loss to Dern, Jandiroba wanted to test her striking more, which did look very much improved, but the bar had been set low. Jandiroba curiously only shot for one takedown in the fight, which she landed, while Dern missed on all five of her attempts. Just keep in mind Dern has a putrid 10% career takedown accuracy, so she could have missed four more before landing one and it would have been par for the course. Dern finished ahead in significant strikes 82-63 and in total strikes 101-80 on her way to a very close, but unanimous 29-28 decision win.
Prior to joining the UFC, Jandiroba won 14 straight fights, with 11 of those coming by submission. She now owns a 17-2 pro record with 13 wins by submission, including eight in the first round, four in round two and just one in the third. She also now has one TKO win, with her other three career wins all ending in decisions. Both of her previously mentioned losses have also gone the distance and she’s never been finished. Jandiroba really excels on the mat, especially when she can exert downward pressure. Her ground game is pretty straightforward—shoot for a double leg takedown, assume top position, try to set up an Arm-Triangle Choke, and adjust to an Armbar or Rear-Naked Choke depending on how her opponent reacts.
Going into this next matchup, it’s notable that Jandiroba’s only two career losses have come against a wrestler in Esparza and a grappler in Dern, so Jandiroba appears to struggle the most when she goes against opponents who also excel on the mat.
Fight Prediction:
Both fighters are 5’3” but Ribas will have a 2” reach advantage.
This matchup feels somewhat similar to when Jandiroba faced Mackenzie Dern, although Ribas is a better striker than Dern and not quite as dangerous on the ground. Still, Ribas is both a solid striker and grappler and her well rounded game should give Jandiroba trouble. We expect the grappling skills of these two to cancel each other out for the most part, at which point we like Ribas to win the striking battle to take the decision.
Our favorite bet here is “Ribas Wins by Decision” at +130.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Ribas has been a consistent DFS producer as she has landed at least one takedown in all five of her UFC fights and generally does a good job of tacking on ground strikes and control time. However, the last time we saw her go against a dangerous grappler, in Mackenzie Dern, Ribas had her lowest scoring DraftKings performance where she totaled just 75 points, while her other three UFC wins have been good for totals of 101, 105 and 106. Two of those higher scoring performances came from finishes, while the third included massive amounts of ground strikes and control time in a decision. We see this fight playing out very similarly to the way Ribas’ matchup against Dern did, which will make it tougher for her to produce a ceiling performance. We could also see Ribas come out a little less aggressive after getting knocked out in her last fight, so overall this could be a let down spot from a DFS perspective, but we still do expect Ribas to do enough to win a decision. The odds imply she has a 60% chance to win, a 20% chance to land a finish and an 8% chance it comes in R1.
Jandiroba has shown a consistently high floor when she wins, which is easy to do when all of your wins come early. She’s scored 86, 101 and 97 DraftKings points with a pair of submissions and a TKO, all in the first two rounds. It’s tougher to see her scoring well in a decision as she scored just 39 and 48 DraftKings points in her two decision losses, which would still be good for just 69 and 78 points had the decisions gone her way. Jandiroba seems far more willing to stand and trade these days as her striking has come a long way since she joined the UFC in 2019, but that’s actually bad for her DFS outlook, as she’s unlikely to finish anyone on the feet. Her recent TKO came from an Armbar submission where she broke her opponent's arm, but there was never a tap so the fight played on before it was later stopped. Had there been a tap, a pop or a scream, it would have been stopped immediately and ruled a submission. So in reality, she still needs a submission to win fights and she now faces a BJJ and Judo black belt, who’s never been submitted and generally fights intelligently. We expect Jandiroba to be a somewhat popular underdog at her cheaper price tag and having finished three of her last four opponents. However, this looks like a big step up in competition and we want to be under the field on her in what appears to be a let down spot. The odds imply she has a 40% chance to win, a 16% chance to land a finish and a 7% chance it comes in R1.
Fight #6
Magomed Ankalaev
8th UFC Fight (6-1)Coming off a decision win over a tough Nikita Krylov, Ankalaev bounced back from a shaky first round to win the later two rounds and cruise to his sixth straight victory in a decision. Krylov was notably the only fighter to take Ankalaev down in those six wins, but was still only able to do so once on six attempts. The two fighters were somewhat evenly matched in their skill sets so it’s not at all surprising that it went the distance and that’s what we expected going into the fight despite both of their histories of landing finishes. After getting taken down once in the first round, Ankalaev bounced back with three takedowns of his own and nearly six minutes of control time in the later two rounds as he methodically secured the victory. Ankalaev narrowly outlanded Krylov in significant strikes in the later two rounds but the total striking margin was much wider. Krylov actually finished the fight ahead in significant strikes 47-43 based on his R1 early lead, but Ankalaev led in total strikes 89-58, while also leading in takedowns 3-1 and in control time 5:59-1:44. It was a pretty cut and dry decision and Ankalaev clearly knew what he needed to do to win.
Ankalaev is a violent yet patient striker, and prior to his recent decision win he notched back-to-back R1 KO wins against Ion Cutelaba. The reason they ran it back is that the ref stopped the first match way too quickly after he thought Cutelaba was out on his feet. However, there was little to be left to interpretation in the rematch, as Ankalaev violently dropped Cutelaba late in the first round and then bounced his head off the canvas a couple times for good measure.
Now 14-1 as a pro, Ankalaev’s only career loss occurred in his 2018 UFC debut against Paul Craig, who threw up a hail mary Triangle Choke to steal the fight with literally 1 second left in the fight. Ankalaev had been dominating Craig for the entire match, outlanding him 59-18 in significant strikes and exerting heavy top pressure with nearly seven minutes of control time. Craig was able to land two takedowns on seven attempts, but Ankalaev landed a pair of reversals, showcasing his strong defensive wrestling. He has a background in Greco-Roman Wrestling and also holds the title of Master of Sports in Combat Sambo, so he’s no slouch on the ground.
Bouncing back from the demoralizing loss, Ankalaev easily knocked out an extremely hittable Marcin Prachnio in R1 of his next fight. He then faced another submission specialist in Klidson Abreu and Ankalaev badly broke Abreu’s nose in the middle of the first round—to the point that the broadcast was joking about him now being able to sniff around corners—but Abreu was somehow able to survive to lose a decision. Ankalaev defended all five of Abreu’s takedown attempts as he went on to easily win a decision.
Ankalaev then went on to knock out Dalcha Lungiambula in the third round with a head-bobbling straight kick to the chin followed by a stiff right hand just to be sure. Despite that fight lasting ten and half minutes, Lungiambula landed just six significant strikes to Ankalaev’s 44 and went 0 for 2 on takedowns, while Ankalaev went 1 for 3.
Five of Ankalaev's seven UFC fights have ended early, including three R1 KO wins, a R3 KO victory and the last second R3 submission loss in his debut. Looking at his entire pro career, 8 of his 14 wins have come early, all by KO, including six in the first round. His two finishes outside of the first round were a R3 highlight reel KO against Dalcha Lungiambula and a 2016 R4 KO over Maxim Grishin before either guy joined the UFC roster. Ankalaev’s other six wins have all ended in decisions. He’s never been in a fight that ended in R2.
Volkan Oezdemir
10th UFC Fight (5-4)Oezdemir had the unenviable task of welcoming wild man Jiri Prochazka into the UFC in July 2020 and despite outlanding the UFC newcomer 41-33 in significant strikes, Oezdemir finished the fight unconscious early in R2 from one of the more deadly right hands you’ll see.
While Oezdemir had won two in a row prior to that murder, he’s now just 2-4 in his last six fights, with three of those losses and one of the wins coming early, despite all six making it out of the first round. His recent struggles come after he started out 3-0 in the UFC in 2017, with a split-decision win over OSP in his debut followed by a pair of first round KO victories.
The string of victories paired with his overall 15-1 pro record at the time was enough to propel Oezdemir into a title shot against Daniel Cormier in 2018, but that’s when Oezdemir’s career took a turn for the worse. He was actually able to slightly outland Cormier in the first round 37-27, but it was Cormier that did more damage and actually locked up a Rear-Naked Choke right at the end of the round, but Oezdemir was saved by the bell. Cormier got the fight back to the mat early in R2 and quickly worked his way to a Crucifix position where he was able to pummel Oezdemir to the tune of 55 total strikes in two minutes time before the ref finally stopped the fight.
Oezdemir compounded the defeat with a R3 submission loss to Anthony Smith in his next fight and then turned all the way sideways as he lost a split-decision to Dominick Reyes after that. He finally fighted the ship against Ilir Latifi with a R2 KO victory and then won a split-decision over Aleksandar Rakic in his second most recent fight, before getting cadavered by Jiri Prochazka in July 2020.
He had been scheduled to face Nikita Krylov in October 2020, but Oezdemir withdrew citing a knee injury. This matchup against Ankalaev had then been scheduled for early September 2021, but it ended up getting rescheduled to this card, so Oezdemir now hasn’t competed in 15 months.
Oezdemir is 17-5 as a pro, with 12 wins by KO, one by submission and four decisions. Four of his five losses have notably come early, with two KOs, two submissions and one decision. Three of those losses occurred in R2 with the other in R3 and he’s never been put away in the first round. His last six fights have all notably made it past the first round.
Fight Prediction:
Ankalaev will have a 1” height advantage, but both fighters share a 75” reach.
Oezdemir is no stranger to tough matchups and this is another brutal one for him. Not only does Ankalaev look like the more dangerous striker, he also has a clear grappling advantage, as Oezdemir has only landed two takedowns in nine UFC fights. While Ankalaev generally doesn’t need to fall back on his grappling and only has five takedowns in seven UFC fights, he showed in his last matchup that it’s there when he needs it, as he landed three takedowns in the final two rounds. Oezdemir looks like the far more hittable of the two fighters and the numbers agree as Oezdemir has a 55% striking defense, while Ankalaev’s check in at 65%. We don’t see any likely paths to victory for Oezdemir and expect Ankalaev to knock him out, it’s just a matter of when. Oezdemir has never been finished in the first round, and Ankalaev’s patient approach limits his opportunities for a quick finish, but he’s so accurate with his kill shots that a finish could come at any moment. The fact that Oezdemir is coming off a violent KO loss and a 15 month layoff could also result in him coming in a little more conservatively, which would further reduce the chances for a quick finish. So there are several reasons to think a mid to late round KO is more likely than a first round finish, but it’s hard to say with any certainty and we’ll simply leave it at Ankalaev wins by KO.
Our favorite bet here is Ankalaev wins by KO at +110.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Ankalaev is an extremely dangerous striker and showed more of his grappling in his last fight than we’ve seen in the past, but he still scored just 82 DraftKings points in that recent decision win. That reinforces the idea that he definitely needs a finish to be useful at his high DFS price tag, and even then, he scored just 97 DK points in his lone R3 KO. As a patient counter striker, he doesn’t land much striking volume at just 3.41 SSL/min and only tacks on 1.2 takedowns landed per 15 minutes, so you likely need him to land a knockout in the first two rounds to put up a usable score for tournaments. To his credit, six of his eight career KO wins have come in the first round. We’ve yet to see him land a knockout in R2, but it would likely score somewhere in the 100-110 point range, which is solid, but still doesn’t guarantee him a spot in winning lineups if he can’t outscore the other top priced fighters. So overall you’re relying on him to land a R1 KO with somewhat of a chance that a R2 finish still scores enough to crack winning lineups. He’s definitely one of the safer plays on the slate, as we don’t see him losing this fight, and we love him in cash. However, he has a more narrow path to finishing in tournament winning lineups than his ITD line suggests, especially on DraftKings where late finishes are less valuable than on FanDuel. And while Oezdemir has been finished in four of his five career losses, he’s never been put away in the first round. The odds imply Ankalaev has a 74% chance to win, a 44% chance to get a finish and a 19% chance it comes in R1.
This is a brutally tough spot for Oezdemir, who’s coming off a violent R2 KO loss to Jiri Prochazka, followed by a 15 month layoff. Oezdemir has gone just 2-4 in his last six fights, after starting his career off 15-1. He’s a one-dimensional striker and Ankalaev has notably never been knocked out or lost a decision, with his only career loss coming in a flukey last second Triangle Choke by submission specialist Paul Craig. Oezdemir’s last win came in a low scoring split decision that totaled just 67 DraftKings points, indicating that even at his extremely cheap price tag, he’ll still need a finish to be useful. We really don’t see that happening for him, but the odds imply he has a 26% chance to win, a 16% chance to get a finish and a 7% chance it comes in R1.
Fight #5
Khamzat Chimaev
4th UFC Fight (3-0)Chimaev exploded onto the UFC scene in July 2020 with a pair of dominating finishes spaced just 10 days apart, followed by 17 second R1 KO just two months later. And then, just like that, he was gone. Over the past 13 months since Chimaev last fought, he had been scheduled to face Leon Edwards on three separate occasions, but all three were canceled due to COVID, with Edwards testing positive the first time and then Chimaev dealing with ongoing effects of a serious COVID case that he contracted. At one point, Chimaev even announced that he was retiring due to the lingering effects. Thankfully he was finally able to get past it and reverse that position, and he’ll now step back inside the Octagon for the first time in over a year against his toughest opponent to date.
Having previously split his time between the Welterweight (170 lb) and Middleweight (185 lb) divisions, Chimaev has gone 4-0 at 170 lb in his career with three R1 KOs and a R2 submission. Meanwhile, he’s gone 5-0 at 185 lb with three KOs and two submissions spread across the first two rounds. He made his UFC debut at 185 lb and then cut down to 170 lb for a fight just 10 days later, before moving back up to 185 lb for his third UFC win. He’ll now be dropping back down to 170 lb for this next match.
Chimaev is a dominate grappler who wasted no time in getting his first two UFC opponents to the mat and smothering them with violent ground and pound and relentless submission attempts. He does a great job of dragging or even carrying his opponents over to his corner as he gets them to the mat and appears in total control of every fight he’s been part of. He also showed us a momentary glimpse of his stand-up game as he kept his last fight on the feet and knocked Gerald Meerschaert out with a single right hand just 17 seconds into the first round.
We have yet to see Chimaev face any sort of adversity since joining the UFC and his three opponents have ridiculously combined for a single significant strike landed against him, with his last two opponents failing to make any sort of mark on the stat sheet. If you thought Islam Makhachev’s 0.77 SSA/min average was impressive, Chimaev has averaged a mindbottling 0.10 SSA/min. While Chimaev doesn’t have enough UFC fights to qualify for the record books (5), Makhachev currently holds the all time UFC record for fewest significant strikes absorbed per minute and still averages nearly eight times as many as Chimaev.
Obviously we need to pump the breaks a little on Chimaev, simply due to the fact that he’s faced three underwhelming opponents in mat turtle John Phillips, who went 1-5 in the UFC before getting cut, short notice UFC newcomer Rhys McKee, who went 0-2 in the UFC before being released, and Gerald Meerschaert, who had lost four of his previous six fights coming into that fight and has a highly dubious chin. However, if Chimaev can find the same success against a tougher opponent in his upcoming match, the hype train will instantly be back up to ludicrous speed.
UPDATE: Chimaev took forever to weigh in and then missed weight by a half pound before using the extra hour to hit the mark. There’s obviously reason for concern there following the long layoff and bout with COVID.
Li Jingliang
15th UFC Fight (10-4)Coming off an impressive R1 KO win over Santiago Ponzinibbio, who was notably coming off a 26 month layoff, Jingliang led the dance before finishing the fight late in the first round with a heavy left hook. Jingliang nearly tripled the output of Ponzinibbio in that match, as he threw 50 strikes compared to just 18 for Ponzinibbio. Jingliang landed 21 of those attempted strikes, while Ponzinibbio connected on 11.
Jingliang’s last three wins have now all come by KO and he has a total of seven knockout victories since joining the UFC in 2014, to go along with three UFC decision wins. He’s only been finished in one of his four UFC losses, which came in a 2015 R3 Rear-Naked Choke. Only two of Jingliang’s last seven opponents have gotten him down to the mat, but Jingliang notably lost both of those fights when he gave up a takedown.
Prior to his recent highlight reel R1 KO, Jingliang lost a decision to Neil Magny, who was able to get Jingliang down four times on seven attempts with over five minutes of control time. Magny also dominated in striking as he led in significant strikes 74-16 and in total strikes 123-16.
Jingliang is notably a BJJ black belt and has a background in wrestling, so he’s certainly not helpless on the mat, but he hasn’t submitted anybody since 2013 and all four of his career submission wins have come by Guillotine Choke, with two of those coming in his first three pro fights in 2009. Jingliang is now 18-6 as a pro, with nine KOs, four submissions and five decisions. He’s only been finished once in his career, which came in a 2015 R3 Rear-Naked Choke, and his other five career losses all ended in decisions.
Prior to his recent R1 KO win, Jingliang had seen the third round in five straight fights with a pair of R3 KOs wins and three decisions (1-2). Jingliang is a durable power puncher who throws big looping shots and is always dangerous until the end
Fight Prediction:
Chimaev will have a 2” height advantage and 4” reach advantage.
Despite this looking like Chimaev’s toughest matchup to date, we fully expect him to continue where he left off and put on another dominating performance. Jingliang has looked more vulnerable on the mat than the feet, and his unimposing 59% takedown defense is unlikely to be enough to stop Chimaev from getting it there. Chimaev has never been past the second round and we expect that trend to continue here. A late first or early second round submission win for Chimaev is our prediction here. The bad weigh-in is definitely concerning, but we’re not getting off him, more so just upping our Jingliang hedge in bets and DFS.
Our favorite bet here is “Khamzat Chimaev R1 or R2” at -110. If that’s not available at your book, you can bet his R1 and R2 lines individually at +195 and +430 respectively, or go with his -175 ITD line.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Leading the slate in fantasy point per fight, Chimaev has put up DraftKings scores of 127, 122 and 124 in his first three UFC fights and rightfully projects to be the highest owned three round fighter on the slate by a wide margin. There are a few areas of concern here as Chimaev is coming off a 13 month layoff and a serious battle with the after effects of COVID, which at one point were so bad that he briefly announced he was retiring. He’s also facing a step up in competition, so there are a few small things to hang your hat on if you want to take a contrarian approach and fade him, but do so at your own peril. Chimaev has routinely demonstrated that he’s the quintessential DFS play as he drags his opponents to the mat and pummels them with ground and pound while looking for submissions. That allows him to simultaneously rack up ground strikes, control time and submission attempts as his DFS scores shoot up like you’re filling up your gas tank with a fire hose. We’re hoping the year layoff will keep his ownership from getting too out of control on a slate this large, and the bad weigh in could help in that department as well, but he was notably 58% owned on a 14-fight slate the last time he fought. We do expect that number to check in a little lower, especially considering all of the high priced options on this slate. The odd simply Chimaev has a 82% chance to win, a 57% chance to get a finish and a 27% chance it comes in R1.
Jingliang is coming off an impressive R1 KO win, but that pales in comparison to what his opponent, Chimaev, has been able to do in past fights, so we don’t expect much of the field to be chasing Jingliang’s recent results. With that said, Jingliang’s notably scored 99 or more DraftKings points in his last three wins and at his dirt cheap DFS price tag it’s hard to see him getting left out of winning lineups with a finish here. However, in his three UFC decision wins he’s scored just 68, 80 and 75 DraftKings points, so even at his cheap price tag he likely needs a finish to be useful. The odds imply he has an 18% chance to win, a 14% chance to get a finish and a 6% chance it happens in R1.
Fight #4
Alexander Volkov
11th UFC Fight (7-3)Coming off a five-round decision loss to Ciryl Gane, Volkov has now gone the full 25 minutes in two of his last four fights. He never looked comfortable against Gane, who outlanded Volkov 135-115 in significant strikes and 139-115 in total strikes. Volkov was able to defend all four of Gane’s takedown attempts, but Gane notably has just a 20% takedown accuracy and has struggled to get anyone down lately.
Leading up to the recent decision loss, Volkov had landed a pair of second round knockouts against Walt Harris and Alistair Overeem and looked more impressive than ever. However, it has to be noted that Harris has now been knocked out in the first two rounds of his last three fights, including a R1 KO against Marcin Tybura just after the loss to Volkov, and Overeem was 40 years old, in his final UFC fight and his last 14 losses have all come early.
While three of Volkov’s last five fights have gone the distance, including a pair of five-round decision losses, 29 of his 42 pro fights have ended early. He’s now 33-9 as a pro, with 22 KO wins, three submission victories and eight decisions. He’s been finished in four of his nine career losses, with a pair of KOs (R3 2018 & R1 2013) and two submissions (R1 2009 & R1 2010). He’s notably only been finished once in his last 19 fights, which came in a late R3 hail mary KO against Derrick Lewis in 2018. All 10 of Volkov’s UFC fights have made it out of the first round, with eight seeing the third round, three going into the championship rounds and five ending in decisions, including a pair of five-rounds. However, despite half of his UFC fights going the distance, four of Volkov’s last five wins have come by KO, with two in R2, one in R3 and another in R4. So anytime Volkov fights, a mid to late round KO victory is a good bet.
Despite the three submission wins on his record (R1 2010, R2 2014 & R3 2016), Volkov is a one-dimensional striker and essentially requested no grappling in his recent fight against Gane. There was some discussion that Volkov put on the additional weight to help to prevent takedowns, as he had historically tipped the scales between 245-251 lb until he got dominated on the mat by Curtis Blaydes in June 2020 and decided to bulk up to 265 lb from there on out. Since tacking on the additional 15-20 lb, Volkov has successfully defended all six of the takedowns attempted against him in his last three fights, after getting taken down 14 times on 25 Curtis Blaydes attempts and a total of 19 times on 54 attempts from his first seven UFC opponents combined. However, if we remove the Blaydes outlier performance, Volkov has only been taken down 5 times on 35 attempts (14%) from his other nine UFC opponents.
Volkov has generally done a good job of bouncing back from losses throughout his career. He rebounded from his first four career losses with four R1 KO wins before suffering consecutive losses for the first time in his career in a pair of 2015 Bellator decisions. However, he rebounded from the second of those with a 2016 R3 submission win. After getting knocked out by Derrick Lewis in 2018, Volkov answered with a three round decision win over Greg Hardy, and then he bounced back from his smothering five-round decision loss to Blaydes with a R2 KO of Walt Harris. So it will be interesting to see how he responds to his recent decision defeat, but historically he’s only lost consecutive fights once in his 42-fight career.
Marcin Tybura
15th UFC Fight (9-5)Entering this fight on an impressive five fight winning streak, Tybura is coming off back-to-back knockout victories for the first time since 2016-2017. Prior to the string of victories, Tybura lost four out of five fights from 2017 to 2019, with his most recent three losses all ending in knockouts.
Tybura’s current winning streak began in February 2020 against another Heavyweight grappler in Serghei Spivac. Tybura was able to utilize his size advantage and take Spivac down twice on eight attempts, while controlling him for nearly eight and a half minutes of time. Tybura then defeated an undersized Maxim Grishin, who was moving up from Light Heavyweight in his UFC debut and is now 1-2 with the organization. Tybura was able to take him down three times on seven attempts and control him for nearly nine and a half minutes of the fight, which ended in another ultra low-volume grappling-heavy decision.
Following the pair of smothering decisions, Tybura landed a three-round career high number of significant strikes (94) in a high-volume Heavyweight brawl against Ben Rothwell. For the record, Tybura landed 127 significant strikes in a five-round decision loss back in 2017. Anyways, the fight against Rothwell also went the distance, but ended with Tybura taking Rothwell down and punishing him with ground and pound on the mat. While Tybura wasn’t able to put Rothwell away, he did finish with 155 total strikes (94 significant) as he punctuated the decision win with violent ground and pound to close out the fight. That was Rothwell’s fourth loss in six fights at the time, although he did recently bounce back with a win over a UFC newcomer.
After winning three straight decisions, Tybura finally landed his first stoppage in what had been 10 fights dating back to 2017. The R2 TKO victory came against Greg Hardy, who was controlling the fight in the first round and landed several heavy shots towards the end of the round that had Tybura in some trouble. However, Tybura was able to survive the early assault to see the second round, where he simply outlasted the cardio-less Hardy. Tybura took Hardy down with just over a minute and a half left in the second round and Hardy essentially gave up at that point, as he simply shelled up and allowed Tybura to rain down ground and pound until the ref eventually stopped the fight with 29 seconds remaining in the round. Hardy has now dropped two in a row and is just 2-3 in his last five.
In his most recent fight, Tybura took on a struggling Walt Harris, who came in having been knocked out in the second round in his last two fights, with the most recent coming against Volkov. As Harris typically does, he came out of the gates swinging as he blitzed Tybura for the first 80 seconds of the fight, landing numerous heavy shots, before Tybura was finally able to tie him up. The two briefly returned to space after Harris was able to escape along the fence, but Harris appeared to be slowing down and Tybura was able to catch a lazy Harris kick midway through the round and take him to the mat. That was the beginning of the end for Harris, as Tybura was able to take his back and slowly put him away with ground and pound until the fight was finally stopped with just under a minute remaining in the first round. Harris has now dropped three straight and his last five losses have all come early, including three in R1 and two in R2. On the other side of things, that was Tybura’s only R1 win in his last 14 fights dating back to a 2015 R1 TKO by leg injury prior to joining the UFC.
Tybura is now 22-6 as a pro, with nine wins by KO, six by submission and seven decisions. He’s been knocked out in four of his six career losses (R1 2019, R2 2019, R3 2018 & R3 2015), with his other two defeats ending in decisions. Half of his 14 UFC fights have ended in decisions (5-2) with the other seven ending in knockouts (4-3). Five of those seven knockouts came in rounds two and three and his grappling-heavy style generally leads to more of a grinding pace than it does to early finishes. He has shown himself to be pretty hittable on the feet and often has to weather a storm before he can finally end up in the clinch, which certainly hasn’t always worked out for him as he’s been knocked out in his last three losses. While all of his recent finishes have come by KO, his six submission wins all occurred earlier in his career from 2011 to 2014.
Fight Prediction:
Volkov will have a 4” height advantage and 2” reach advantage, and is also two years younger than the 35-year-old Tybura.
The first thing that will likely pop into most people’s minds when deliberating on this matchup will be Blaydes taking Volkov down at will for 25 minutes, but it’s import to keep in mind that Blaydes (53% career takedown accuracy) averages 6.27 takedowns per 15 minutes on 11.8 attempts, while Tybura (45% career takedown accuracy) averages just 1.67 takedowns on 3.7 attempts. So Blaydes averages almost four times as many takedowns landed and more than three times as many attempts compared to Tybura. And while Tybura owns a 45% career takedown accuracy, that number actually dips down to just 33% in his recent five wins, as he’s landed just 8 of his 24 attempts. The average takedown defense of those five opponents is a respectable 71%, but that’s just ever so slightly above the 67% takedown defense of Volkov. So while it seems clear that Tybura’s path to victory is to get Volkov down and beat him up on the mat, that could prove to be a challenge. And while Tybura’s last two opponents essentially conceded after getting taken down, Volkov will be far more resilient if he does get taken down, even if he does potentially ride out the round on his back. A Tybura ground and pound finish is exponentially less likely in this matchup compared to his previous two, and at best he’s probably fighting to win a decision. We like Volkov to bounce back from his recent defeat with a mid to late round KO.
Our favorite bet here is “Volkov Wins by KO” at +150.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Despite landing knockouts in four of his seven UFC wins, Volkov has generally struggled to really score well in DFS. His four KO victories have returned DraftKings totals of 102, 88, 92 and 123, while his three decision wins have been good for just 64, 80 and 69 points. All 10 of his UFC fights have made it out of the first round, with two of his finishes coming in R2 and the others ending in R3 and R4. He’s only landed one takedown in his last five fights, and as a one-dimensional striker the only time he’s topped 102 DraftKings points came in a R3 KO where he filled up the statsheet against Stefan Struve, so we can’t just simplify this down to Volkov needing a first round finish to be useful. What we do know is that coming off a loss and priced towards the top of the heap, Volkov will fly under the radar on this slate and projects for lower ownership than Tybura in this matchup. Also encouraging for his chances, four of his last five wins have come by KO, as have Tybura’s last three losses. All of that makes Volkov an exciting tournament play in an ideal leverage opportunity as the favorite in this fight. The odds imply Volkov has a 72% chance to win, a 42% chance to get a finish and a 17% chance it comes in R1.
Tybura is coming off the highest DraftKings scoring win of his career, as he landed his only first round win with the organization in his 14 UFC fights. The only other time he’s been part of a UFC fight that ended in R1 was when he got knocked out by Augusto Sakai just 59 seconds into the first round in 2019. So while Tybura’s grappling-heavy fighting style certainly lends itself more towards the DraftKings scoring system compared to FanDuel, he’s still generally struggled to put up really big scores. With that said, he has shown a solid floor with DK scores of 112, 100, 90, 81, 87 and 94 in his last six wins. While the first two of those scores ended in KOs, the last four were all in decisions. When you combine his high floor (when he wins) with his cheap DFS price tag, Tybura stands out as a decent value play on paper. We expect the field to pick up on that and for Tybura to be a fairly popular underdog play on this slate as he’s now won five straight, while Volkov is just 2-2 in his last four. Many people will point to how Blaydes was able to dominate Volkov on the mat as further reason for optimism, but we’re highly skeptical that Tybura will have similar success. This actually looks like a let down spot for Tybura as he faces a step up in competition against an opponent is Volkov who’s only been taken down five times on 35 attempts (14%) by his nine UFC opponents not named Blaydes. Volkov has also notably defended all six of the attempts against him since adding on 15 lb of mass following the Blaydes fight. It’s certainly possible that Tybura still finds a way to get it to the mat, but we don’t see him putting Volkov away so he’ll likely need to land at least two takedowns to win a decision, while not getting knocked out along the way. The odds imply Tybura has a 28% chance to win, a 12% chance to get a finish and a 5% chance it comes in R1.
Fight #3
Islam Makhachev
11th UFC Fight (9-1)Makhachev had been booked to face Rafael dos Anjos here, but after RDA withdrew, Hooker stepped in on a month’s notice, agreeing to this matchup just days after his September 25th fight.
Coming off the first five round fight of his career, Makhachev became the first person to ever finish Thiago Moises and he did so with a fourth round Rear-Naked Choke. Makhachev was in no rush to finish the fight, and only attempted one takedown in the first two rounds, which he landed late in R1. However, Moises took the fight to the ground in R2 and Makhachev was able to easily reverse the position and control Moises on the mat for the remainder of the round, almost landing a last second Armbar attempt. Makhachev was able to control the fight from that point on before eventually landing a Rear-Naked Choke submission in the fourth round.
Just prior to that win, Makhachev landed a near flawless third round submission win over Drew Dober, Makhachev absolutely dominated Dober on the ground (as everyone expected going in). While Makhachev only led 15-10 in significant strikes, that jumped all the way up to 102-14 in total strikes and he also went 3 for 4 on takedowns while amassing nearly nine and a half minutes of control time before finishing Dober with an Arm-Triangle Choke a little under two minutes into the third round.
Prior to his win over Dover, Makhachev hadn’t stepped inside the Octagon since September 2019. He had been scheduled to fight Alexander Hernandez in April 2020, but the event was canceled due to COVID. He was then booked to take on Rafael dos Anjos on the Khabib vs. Gaethje undercard in October 2020, but RDA contracted COVID and was forced to withdraw. The fight was rebooked as the main event on the November 14th card, but then Makhachev was forced to withdraw due to an injury. That was the fight when Paul Felder then stepped in on less than a week’s notice.
Makhachev’s only career loss came when he got knocked out in the first round of his second UFC fight at the hands of Adriano Martins, who then went on to lose his last four fights after that, not counting a No Contest. Since that loss, Makhachev has won eight straight fights. Makhachev owns the UFC record for fewest significant strikes absorbed per minute (Minimum 5 UFC fights) as he averages just 0.77/min.
A Combat Sambo world champion, Makhachev made his UFC debut in 2015 with a perfect 11-0 record. He won that first UFC fight with a R2 Rear-Naked Choke Submission, before suffering his only career loss when he was knocked out less than two minutes into his second UFC fight with a single clean right hook. Since that loss, four of his eight fights have ended in decisions, while he finished the other four opponents with a 2018 R1 KO, a 2018 R1 Armbar Submission, a 2021 R3 Arm-Triangle Choke and the recent 2021 R4 Rear-Naked Choke.
Of his 20 career wins, 12 have come early, with three KOs and nine submissions. All three of his career KO wins have come in the first round, although two of those occurred in his first three pro fights. Since then 9 of his 10 finishes have come by submission, including four in the first round, two in second, two in the third and one in the fourth.
Dan Hooker
18th UFC Fight (11-6)Bouncing back from a pair of losses against elite competition in Dustin Poirier and Michael Chandler, Hooker won a wrestling heavy decision just five weeks ago against Nasrat Haqparast. Hooker landed three of his seven takedown attempts with over seven minutes of control time. He also led in significant strikes 73-27 and in total strikes 177-35, while stuffing Nasrat Haqparast’s only takedown attempt. The first round stayed entirely on the feet before Hooker looked to grapple in rounds two and three.
That fight almost didn’t happen as both guys scrambled to get their visas in time to hop on last minute flights to arrive in Vegas just in time to weigh in. Hooker actually talked about how the City Kickboxing team is considering a permanent move to the US to avoid all of these travel and quarantine complications.
Just prior to the win, Hooker suffered just the second KO loss of his career, as he welcomed Michael Chandler into the UFC and got knocked out midway through the first round. Chandler landed 17 significant strikes, while Hooker landed just 8 in a slow paced first round before the abrupt finish.
The only other time Hooker has been knocked out in 30 pro fights came at the hands of Edson Barboza in the third round of a 2018 fight from an accumulation of strikes more than anything else. He’as also been submitted twice, both times by Rear-Naked Choke in the second round, however those occurred in 2010 and 2012 prior to joining the UFC. The other six of his 10 pro losses all ended in decisions and despite his recent early loss, Hooker is incredibly tough.
Of his 21 career wins, 17 have come early, with 10 KOs and 7 submissions. However, his last three wins all went the distance, including a five round split-decision over Paul Felder. Hooker was notably the first person to ever finish Gilbert Burns early until Kamaru Usman recently became the second. Hooker knocked Burns out in 2018 with a R1 KO. Hooker started a little slow in the UFC. After joining in 2014, he alternated wins and losses over his first six fights to grind out a 3-3 early UFC record. Since then he’s gone 8-3.
Hooker has an impressive 80% takedown defense and has only been taken down 13 times on 65 attempts in his 17 UFC fights. Even more impressive, he’s only been taken down twice on 21 attempts in his last 10 fights and only once on 14 attempts in his last eight matches.
Fight Prediction:
Hooker will have a 2” height advantage and 5” reach advantage.
Hooker does a good job of landing knees, which is always dangerous when you’re looking to shoot on him. This looks like a nothing-to-lose situation for Hooker, so he should be able to fight loose. Everyone expects him to lose in a smothering decision or to get submitted after taking this fight on relatively short notice and he’s getting praise simply for accepting the match that no one wanted. Hooker has a puncher’s chance to hand Makhachev his second career KO loss, but it’s still highly unlikely. The most likely outcome here is clearly for Makhachev to get Hooker down and control him until he eventually submits him or wins a grappling heavy decision. We’ll say Makhachev wins this one in another smothering decision, but wouldn’t be surprised at all to see it end early.
Based on value, our favorite bet here is “Makhachev Wins by Submission” at +240.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Makhachev owns the record for the lowest average number of significant strikes absorbed in UFC history at 0.77 per minute, and no one has ever landed more than 13 on him in a fight. He’s also never landed more than 43 significant strikes in a three-round fight himself and only averages 2.24 significant strikes landed per minute. So overall, his fights never include many significant strikes, but he does land a decent number of total strikes and racks up a ton of takedowns and control time. That inherently makes him a better DraftKings play compared to FanDuel and it’s not close. Like most fighters, he’ll still put up solid scores on both sites with a finish in the first two rounds, but he can’t really score well on FanDuel in a decision. As the most expensive fighter on the slate, he has his work cut out for him to crack winning lineups even with a finish, as he generally scores well, but rarely puts up ridiculous numbers. Now he goes against the 80% takedown defense of Dan Hooker to make things even tougher. There are several other top plays who we expect to outscore Makhachev, so while he has a great floor, his ceiling is less reliable. Had his recent five round fight ended in a decision following the third round, he would have scored 90 DraftKings points and 64 points on FanDuel. And his previous two decisions scored just 75 and 73 DraftKings points. The odds imply he has a 83% chance to win, a 39% chance to get a finish and a 17% chance it comes in R1.
If Hooker wins this fight, it means he either knocked Makhachev out or somehow turned it into a striking battle. The latter seems unlikely, so you’re really just relying on Hooker catching Makhachev shooting in, which certainly is possible. In that scenario and considering his super cheap price tag, Hooker would be a lock to end up in winning lineups so we don’t need to spend much time on his scoring potential and we’re solely concerned with the chances of him landing a finish and his projected ownership. Unfortunately, the odds imply he has just a 17% chance to win, a 10% chance to land a finish and a 4% chance it comes in R1. When you compare that to his projected ownership, there’s no leverage to be gained. So the argument for playing Hooker is that you think the odds are too low and/or his ownership will end up being lower than projected, which are both valid arguments and we don’t mind sprinkling Hooker into our tournament exposure a little, as his last three finishes have all come by R1 KO.
Fight #2
Petr Yan
9th UFC Fight (7-1)After infamously relinquishing the Bantamweight belt in an American History X curb stomp like moment, Yan was disqualified for one of the more blatant illegal knees you’ll ever see, just as he appeared moments away from defeating Aljamain Sterling in the fourth round of a title fight.
Sterling came out of the gate firing in the match and actually led the first two rounds in significant strikes, but actually got outgrappled by Yan, who went 7 for 7 on his takedown attempts, while Sterling amazingly landed just 1 of his 17 attempts. Sterling landed a couple of flying knees early in the fight, which Yan will need to be careful of in his next matchup.
Yan knocked Sterling down with a heavy right hand in R1, which when combined with his two takedowns landed appeared to win him the round, despite Sterling leading 27-14 in significant strikes in the first period. Two of the judges agreed and of course you’ll always have at least one judge that disagrees with anything.
The majority of the second round was spent with Sterling trying and failing on takedowns (0 for 5) as he pushed Yan up against the cage. With only a brief time spent in space, the striking exchanges were close in that round, but since Sterling finished ahead 17-10 in significant strikes we can see giving him that round, despite Yan landing his only takedown attempt in the period while Sterling missed on all five of his.
Following the second round, Sterling appeared to be slowing down considerably and Yan clearly began to pull away in R3 despite the striking numbers remaining close on paper. Yan landed all three of his takedown attempts in R3, while Sterling once again went 0 for 5 on his attempts. Yan also appeared to be doing far more damage with his strikes. All three judges agreed Yan won the round.
Sterling looked even more labored in R4 and Yan was easily able to get him to the mat with a trip. Yan nearly landed an illegal knee as Sterling rose to his feet just 41 seconds into R4, and the ref even appeared to signal to replay to take a look at it, but Sterling had just barely lifted his left knee off the mat when Yan made contact and Yan’s knee looked like it may have narrowly missed Sterling’s chin to land on his upper chest anyways. So while that strike appeared clean, it showed Yan had no problem cutting it close and foreshadowed events to come. Sterling stopped even trying to set up takedowns at that point as he telegraphed numerous attempts and was easily shaken off or wrapped up himself. That’s actually what led to the finishing sequence. As Sterling labored for one final takedown he slowly crouched over to grab a single leg and Yan easily wrapped up his neck and took him down to one knee on the mat. The ref told Yan Sterling was grounded and you could hear Yan’s corner yell “Just punch” in English. However just seconds later Yan unleashed a violent right knee to the left side of Sterling’s face and the fight was immediately stopped. There was some debate over what the corner said in Russian as Khabib said he heard them say to kick him, but Yan was clearly instructed by the ref that Sterling was down just seconds before.
The fight ended with Sterling ahead in significant strikes 97-86 and 119-103 in total strikes, but those numbers are pretty misleading as Yan was inflicting far more damage, while Sterling rarely landed anything clean and was more just peppering the high guard of Yan. Sterling began to slow down after R2 and looked exhausted by the fourth round. Yan was cruising to either a late finish or an easy 49-46 decision win before he landed the illegal knee, and he still had plenty of gas left while Sterling had little left to offer late in the fight. Despite being a high-level grappler, Sterling was never able to get anything going on the mat and Yan was routinely able to trip him to the ground and kick at his legs. That was probably the most impressive part of the fight for Yan as he showed excellent defensive grappling.
Prior to the DQ loss, Yan won the vacant Bantamweight belt in July 2020 against Jose Aldo. Yan looked to hurt Aldo’s ribs early in the fight, but in terms of striking numbers they were actually extremely close early on. While the final significant striking total of 194-83 tells a different story, it wasn’t until late in that fight that Yan really pulled away in terms of the numbers. And if it wasn’t for the ref allowing Yan to land an extra 80 strikes or so on a bloodied, battered and bruised face down Aldo, the final tally wouldn’t have finished nearly as high. That win over Aldo marked Yan’s 10th straight victory and moved him to 7-0 in the UFC.
Looking back at Yan’s rise to glory in the UFC, he was paired up with Teruto Ishihara In his 2018 UFC debut, who came in having lost three of his last four fights and has now gone 1-7-1 in his last nine. Yan knocked out Ishihara in the first round, which remains his only R1 win since his 4th pro fight back in 2015.
Following his near perfect debut, Yan took on Jin Soo Son, who was making his own debut. Yan won a unanimous decision, leading 100-58 in significant strikes and stuffing 6 of Soo Son’s 7 takedown attempts. For what it’s worth, Jin Soo Son finished 0-2 in the UFC.
Yan then got his first opponent with a winning UFC record in Douglas Silva de Andrade, who came in 3-2 in the organization but also with an extensive 22 fight win streak prior to joining the UFC. Andrade had never been knocked out in his career, but following the second round his corner threw in the towel based on the beating he was taking, giving Yan his second TKO in the UFC. Yan then convincingly beat a tough John Dodson. Yan outlanded Doson 80-30 in significant strikes and won a unanimous 30-27 decision, but Dodson was notably able to knock Yan down once and take him down twice.
Yan then won another decision, this time against another tough fighter in Jimmie Rivera. Rivera actually outlanded Yan 73-56. However, Yan was able to land a pair of knockdowns and a takedown on his way to winning a unanimous decision.
After winning that pair of decisions, Yan took on a 40-year-old Urijah Faber in a clear mismatch. Yan landed three knockdowns, two takedowns and outlanded Faber 54-18 in significant strikes before finishing him in the beginning of the third round. The fight was nearly stopped a round earlier as Faber was busted up badly, but the doctor let it continue. That win was enough to propel Yan into a Bantamweight title fight against Aldo.
Yan is now 15-2 as a pro. Other than his recent DQ loss, his only other career loss occurred prior to joining the UFC in a 2016 five-round split-decision against Magomed Magomedov. Yan avenged the loss a year later in another five round decision against Magomedov. Seven of Yan’s 15 career wins have come by KO, but he generally wears on his opponents and only two of those knockouts have occurred in R1 and just one in R2. So more than half of his career KOs have come in R3 or later with three in the third round and one in round five. Even his lone R2 KO came following the second round as his opponent’s corner threw in the towel. His last five fights have all made it at least to R3 and his last two fights have made it to the fourth round. Yan also has one submission win on his record, which resulted from a 2015 R1 Guillotine Choke in his third pro fight. His other seven wins have all gone the distance.
Yan is a calculated striker who wears on his opponents with his crisp, powerful striking and has elite defensive wrestling with an impressive 90% takedown defense. He effectively utilizes a high guard to avoid absorbing many clean shots and has a solid 62% striking defense. He does a great job of catching kicks and mixing in trips to ground his opponents, although he’s only looking for ground and pound on the mat and would generally prefer to keep fights on the mat against anyone that poses a submission threat.
Cory Sandhagen
10th UFC Fight (7-2)Coming off a 5-round split-decision loss to a returning TJ Dillashaw, Sandhagen led in significant strikes 128-110 and appeared to do enough to win the fight, but judges Sal D’Amato and Junichiro Kamijo disagreed and awarded Dillashaw the victory.
Sandhagen landed a flying knee in the opening minute of the fight, but Dillashaw was able to drive through it and take the fight to the mat where Sandhagen went for a reverse Triangle Choke with no success. After a brief scramble on the mat, Sandhagen was able to return to his feet as Dillashaw controlled his back. Dillashaw eventually broke free and the fight momentarily returned to space before Sandhagen missed on a spinning kick attempt and Dillashaw immediately looked to retake his back as the two momentarily tumbled to the mat before quickly returning to their feet. It didn’t stay there for long, however, as Dillashaw was once again able to take Sandhagen’s back on the feet and return him to the mat, where Sandhagen routinely looked to rely on his Jiu-Jitsu and roll out of takedowns as he hunted for submissions off his back. He locked up Dillashaw’s left leg late in the first round but Dillawshaw was able to fight through it. However, it was later revealed that Dillashaw tore multiple ligaments in that knee during that exchange and required surgery following the fight, so it’s somewhat amazing he could fight four more rounds on it.
After Dillashaw won the first round on all three judge’s score cards, Sandhagen bounced back in R2 and split Dillashaw open right above the eye as he appeared to settle into the fight as he took round two on all three scorecards. Sandhagen notably landed another flying knee in round two.
Dillashaw was finally able to return Sandhagen to the mat in the third round following another failed spinning attack, but he wasn’t able to do anything with the takedown and Sandhagen quickly returned to his feet. The striking was extremely close in the round, with Dillashaw narrowly ahead 26-23 to go along with two minutes of control time and a takedown. It seemed like despite accomplishing nothing on the mat, the grappling is what got him the nod on all three judges' score cards in round three. Sandhagen did a good job of staying on his feet in rounds four and five as Dillashaw went 0 for 8 on his takedown attempts in those two rounds. Sandhagen led in significant strikes 26-19 in the fourth round while Dillashaw narrowly left in R5 40-38. The fight ended with Dillashaw bloodied and battered and Sandhagen essentially looking the same as when he entered, so all of the visuals clearly said Sandhagen won the fight. When you factor in that Sandhagen also finished ahead in striking, while Dillashaw went 2 for 19 on takedowns, it appeared Sandhagen had clearly won the fight. However, when you look at the round by round breakdowns you can see how Dillashaw managed to steal a decision.
The fight had four close rounds and one round that Sandhagen clearly won. So as long as Sandhagen could split the close rounds he wins the decision. Unfortunately for him, all three judges gave Dillashaw the first two close rounds (R1 & R3), which left Sandhagen needing to convince two of the three judges that he won BOTH the 4th and 5th rounds. Instead, only one judge awarded him both of those rounds and the other two were split between who won the final two rounds. So while two of the three judges thought Sandhagen won R4 and two thought he won R5 (not the same two judges), he lost the fight despite the majority of judges (and probably viewers as well) thinking he had done enough late. Anyways, we’ve spent way too much time talking about judging and scorecards, we just thought it was interesting how that played out and how Dillashaw ended up winning on the scorecards despite appearing to actually lose the fight.
That was notably the first time Sandhagen had been past the third round in his career and seemed somewhat tentative at times, so you have to wonder if preserving his cardio ever played a factor. With that said, he generally prefers to fight in open space while controlling the distance so Dillashsaw’s non stop takedown attempts were more likely the driving factor as everytime Sandhagen attempted a spinning attack or flying knee Dillashaw used it to try and take him down.
Just prior to the decision loss, Sandhagen landed back-to-back highlight reel KOs against a pair of aging fighters in Frankie Edgar and Marlon Moraes. Both of those wins should be taken in context, however, as Edgar has lost 3 of his last 4 fights and is just 2-4 in his last six while getting knocked out in the first round in three of those. Meanwhile, Moraes has been knocked out in three straight fights and four of his last five. Leading up to the pair of KO wins, Sandhagen was submitted just 88 seconds into the first round of a June 2020 fight against Aljamain Sterling.
Sandhagen originally joined the UFC in 2018, fresh off a pair of first round knockout wins in the LFA. He kept that knockout streak going with back-to-back R2 KO wins in his first two UFC fights, followed by a R1 Armbar Submission win in his third UFC match. He then won decisions against John Lineker, who’s still never been knocked out in 43 pro fights, and Raphael Assuncao, who’s only been knocked out once in the last decade. He then was submitted by Sterling.
That submission loss remains the only time Sandhagen has been finished in his career, with his third career loss coming in a 2017 decision to Jamall Emmers in the LFA. Of his 14 career wins, nine have ended early with six KOs and three submissions. All three of his career submission wins have occurred in the first round, but two of those notably came in his first three pro fights. Six of his last seven early wins have come by KO, split evenly between the first two rounds. All nine of his career finishes have ended in under nine minutes and eight of his last 11 fights have ended in the first two rounds with the other three ending in decisions. This will be Sandhagen’s third career fight scheduled to go five rounds, with the first being when he knocked out Moraes in the second round. However, he did show he has the cardio to go five rounds in his most recent fight, although we expected that considering he trains at altitude in Colorado.
Sandhagen fought his first pro fight at 135 lb in 2015, but then moved up to 145 lb for his next eight matches from 2016 to 2018. Following his 2018 UFC debut at 145 lb, Sandhagen dropped back down to 135 lb where he has stayed since. While Sandhagen hasn’t landed a takedown in his last five fights and isn’t a great offensive wrestler, he is a BJJ brown belt and is a decent grappler on the mat who will go for all types of submissions off his back.
Fight Prediction:
Sandhagen will have a 4” height advantage and 3” reach advantage.
While Yan keeps a very sound high guard to defend his head, Sandhagen fights with his hands down and relies more on his length to control the distance. So as long as Yan can effectively close the distance he should be able to easily outland Sandhagen in a boxing match. We did see Yan look somewhat vulnerable to flying knees at times in his match against Sterling and that’s one of Sandhagen’s specialties, which he used to knock out Frankie Edgar and land multiple times in his more recent fight. Landing another flying knee or spinning heel kick KO are probably Sandhagen’s best ways to win this fight, as Yan simply looks too fundamentally sound to be beaten by Sandhagen in a five round decision. Overall, it’s hard to see Sandhagen winning and we Yan to win with either a late KO or more likely in a decision.
Our favorite bet here is “Yan R4, R5 or Decision” at -110.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Yan has now landed seven knockdowns in his last four fights as he’s continued to look unstoppable by anyone but the rules. He’s also landed at least one takedown in six straight fights and notched seven most recently. In addition to that, he averages 5.99 SSL/min (4th highest on the slate), while Sandhagen absorbs the 5th highest average number of significant strikes on the slate at 4.05/min. Despite losing due to a R4 DQ for an illegal knee in his most recent matchup he still scored 90 DraftKings points, which would have been good for 120+ points had the final strike not been illegal, so clearly he was well on his way to putting up a big score. His previous seven wins were good for DK totals of 154, 111, 79, 79, 127, 78 and 121. While his three decision victories haven’t scored especially well (79, 79 & 78), those all came in three round fights and if we extend those scores over the course of five rounds you’re looking at 111-112 DraftKings points in each of those. That gives him a rock solid floor and he’s clearly demonstrated a huge ceiling with 121 or more DK points in three of his eight UFC wins. The odds imply he has a 68% chance to win, a 32% chance to land a finish and a 9% chance it comes in R1.
Sandhagen averages the third highest number of significant strikes landed on the slate at 6.32/minute and has generally been a reliable DFS producer when he wins with DK totals of 126, 95, 70, 91, 113, 112 and 131 in his seven UFC victories. The two lower scores there (70 & 91) ended in three-round decisions and if we extend those over the course of five rounds you’re looking at 96 and 131 DK points. So once you factor in Sandhagen’s cheap DFS price tag, it’s hard to imagine him not ending up in winning lineups if he pulls off the upset regardless of whether he gets a finish or wins a decision. The tougher part for him will be simply winning the fight as Yan is ridiculously tough. Sandhagen will have a noticeable 4” height and 3” reach advantage so his best bet will be to try and control the distance and fight Yan from the outside, where he can fully utilize his spinning kicks, flying knees and longer reach. With that said, we expect Yan to consistently look to close the distance and box Sandhagen up from close range and we feel like Sandhagen’s chances are actually lower than the odds suggest. Speaking of that, the odds imply Sandhagen has a 32% chance to win, a 17% chance to get a finish and a 5% chance it comes in R1.
Fight #1
Jan Blachowicz
17th UFC Fight (11-5)Coming off his first title defense in a fight that had more of an exhibition type feel to it, the 38-year-old Blachowicz handed Israel Adesanya his first career loss as Adesanya attempted a move up to Light Heavyweight for the first time in his career. Clearly massively undersized, Adesanya weighed in at just 200.5 lb for the 205 lb fight, while Blachowicz was undoubtedly cutting a decent amount of weight to get down to 205 lb. Adesanya’s speed gave Blachowicz trouble throughout the fight, but Blachowicz was able to turn to his wrestling late and secure a decision win by using his size advantage and putting Adesanya on his back. We’ve seen Adesanya explode his way off the mat against Middleweights, but Blachowicz was simply too big and too heavy for that work here. After the first three rounds appeared extremely close on the feet, Blachowicz controlled Adesanya for six of the final 10 minutes with a pair of takedowns and ground and pound. The fight ended in a unanimous 49-46 decision win for Blachowicz as he finished ahead in significant strikes 107-78 and in total strikes 184-99, while he landed 3 of his 5 takedowns with over seven minutes of control time. Up until the late one-sided wrestling, the fight appeared much closer than the final striking numbers and scorecards would lead you to believe.
That was just the second time Blachowicz has been to the judges in his last seven fights, although both of those decisions notably came in five round fights. Interestingly, both of those decisions came against opponents who were moving up from Middleweight to Light Heavyweight for the first and only times in their respective career. While we just discussed the most recent of those, the other was against Jacare Souza, just before his 40th birthday. In fact, that was the third time in Blachowicz’s last five fights that he faced a Middleweight coming up to Light Heavyweight for the first time in their career, as just before fighting Souza, Blachowicz took on Luke Rockhold who was attempting the move as well. While Adesanya, Souza and Rockhold are the most notable because they were moving up to Light Heavyweight for the first time and then dropped back down to Middleweight afterwards, just before facing Rockhold, Blachowicz was knocked out by Thiago Santos just a year after Santos moved up from Middleweight as well.
While Blachowicz’s last three wins have come against strikers, his last match against a submission threat was when he faced Souza, which is notable as Blachowicz prepares to face another grappler in Teixeira. We essentially saw a 25 minute staring contest when Blachowicz faced off against Souza, as Blachowicz appeared concerned with the grappling of Souza, and Souza was clearly weary of Blachowicz’s power. Blachowicz also appeared to suffer a foot injury that couldn’t have helped things, but in a 5-round split-decision Blachowicz led just 71-20 in significant strikes and 105-56 in total strikes, while Souza went 0 for 5 on takedowns with nearly eight and a half minutes of control time. The fact that Blachowicz got the W in such a boring fight likely did nothing to deter him from potentially taking that slow paced approach against future grapplers. Blachowicz’s size clearly gave Souza issues with trying to get the fight to the ground. It’s notable to point out that Souza has a 39% career takedown accuracy, nearly identical to the 40% accuracy of Blachowicz’s next opponent, Teixeira.
Following the boring decision win over Souza, Blachowicz landed back-to-back knockouts with a violent R1 KO of Corey Anderson followed by a R2 KO of Dominick Reyes to win the vacant Light Heavyweight belt. The R1 finish of Anderson is notably Blachowicz’s only first round victory since his 2014 UFC debut, although he does have a pair of second round knockouts in his last five fights as well. While Jan’s knockout of Anderson was impressive, it’s not something that hasn’t been done before, as Anderson’s last three losses have all come by KO. However, Blachowicz was notably the first person to ever finish Reyes, although did follow that up with another R2 KO loss and has now dropped three straight.
Because Blachowicz has such great power, people are quick to forget that he actually has more career submission wins (9) than KOs (8). He submitted a pair of wrestlers in Devin Clark and Nikita Krylov, both in the second round, in 2017 and 2018 respectively. Interestingly, 7 of his 9 career submission wins have come in the second round, as have three of his last five knockouts. His other two submission wins and five KO victories all occurred in R1 and he’s never landed a finish beyond the second round. Overall, four of his last five finishes have come in R2. Now 28-8 as a pro, his other 11 career wins have all ended in decisions.
After starting his UFC career off with a R1 KO, Blachowicz fought to five straight decisions, losing four of them. That’s when he seemed to turn a corner and began his most recent 10 fight stretch that includes nine victories. Blachowicz has only been finished in three of his eight career losses over the course of 36 pro fights, and only once in his five UFC losses, which was in a 2019 R3 KO against Thiago Santos. The other two early losses of his career were a 2011 Post R2 “Retirement” KO and a 2007 R1 Kimura Submission. So in the last decade, he only has one early loss.
We expect Blachowicz’s 65% takedown defense to play a key factor in this fight. What’s encouraging for his chances of staying upright is that while he was taken down 11 times on 24 attempts in his first eight UFC fights (54% defense), he’s only been taken down twice on 14 attempts in his most recent eight UFC fights (86% defense). The only two people to get him down were Thiago Santos and Nikita Krylov, who each landed their only attempt. Luke Rockhold and Jacare Souza both went 0 for 5, although as we noted earlier both Rockhold and Souza were moving up from 185 lb to 205 lb for the first and only time in their respective careers, so it makes sense they would struggle to get the larger Blachowicz down. So while there’s potential reason for optimism with his improved takedown defense, it should be taken with a grain of salt. This will be Blachowicz 5th straight scheduled 5-round fight, with two of the last four ending in the first two rounds and the other two going the distance.
Glover Teixeira
21st UFC Fight (15-5)Competing for the Light Heavyweight title just two days after his 42nd birthday, this will actually be Teixeira’s second shot at the belt after he lost a 2014 five-round decision to Jon Jones. Just like Blachowicz, Teixeira is coming off five straight wins, with his most recent victory coming in a R3 submission over Thiago Santos, who is the last person to defeat Blachowicz. Also similar to Blachowicz, three of those wins came against fighters who used to fight at Middleweight in Thiago Santos, Anthony Smith and Karl Roberson, although only Roberson has been fighting at Middleweight recently out of that bunch.
In his recent defeat of Santos, we saw a typical Teixeira performance where he got rocked early and looked to be in serious trouble before he was able to land a takedown and immediately go straight to full mount. Teixeira was also able to quickly get the fight back to the ground early in the second round, and Santos’ takedown defense looked nonexistent. Glover nearly choked Santos out at the end of R2, but Santos was saved by the bell. Santos actually dropped Teixeira again at the start of the third round and was landing heavy strikes from top position. But again, 90 seconds into the round Teixeira dug deep and used his old man strength to push Santos off and reverse the position, while absorbing violent shots to use head. Santos looked exhausted at that point and Teixeira was able to quickly take his back and submit him. For the record, Santos has a career 66% takedown defense, almost identical to the 65% defense of Blachowicz. The fight ended with Teixeira landing four of his seven takedown attempts and leading in significant strikes 46-40 and total strikes 148-81. Teixeira also finished with over nine minutes of control time in a fight that lasted just under 12 minutes.
Leading up to the win over Santos, Teixeira landed a 5th round TKO over Anthony Smith, in a life-shortening beating that was allowed to go on for seemingly way too long, where Teixeira was literally knocking Smith’s teeth out. Teixeira started a little slow in the fight but turned it on late in R2 and really started doing damage in R3. The fight ended with Teixeira ahead in significant strikes 138-86 and in total strikes 202-87, while landing 1 of his 2 takedown attempts with nearly eight minutes of control time.
A 2nd degree BJJ black belt, Teixeira is now 32-7 since turning pro all the way back in 2002. He has 18 wins by KO, nine by submission and just five decisions. While he’s never been submitted, he’s been knocked out three times and has lost four decisions. However, one of his three KO losses occurred in his 2002 pro debut and he’s only been finished twice since. One of those came 13 seconds into a 2016 fight against Anthony “Rumble” Johnson and the other was in the 5th round of a 2017 match against Alexander Gustafsson.
It will be so important for Teixeira to get this fight to the ground to win, that we have to take a closer loss at his 40% career takedown accuracy. If we just look at Teixeira’s last eight fights, he only landed 9 of his 35 takedown attempts (26% accuracy), but he did notably land 4 of his 7 attempts (57%) in his most recent fight. Prior to that he had gone just 5 for 28 (18%) in his other seven most recent fights.
This will be the 9th five round fight of Teixeira’s career, with eight of those occurring in the UFC. He’s 6-2 in his previous eight 5 round fights, with a 2011 R1 Rear-Naked Choke win (Pre-UFC), a 2013 R1 KO win, a 2014 decision loss, a 2015 R3 Rear-Naked Choke win, a 2016 R1 KO, a 2017 R5 KO loss, a 2020 R5 KO win and a 2020 R3 Rear-Naked Choke win. So both of his five round losses made it to the 5th round with one going the distance, while all six of his five-round wins have come early with three first round finishes, two third round submission victories and a R5 KO.
Fight Prediction:
Both fighters are 6’2” but Blachowicz will have a 2” reach advantage and is four years younger than the 42-year-old Teixeira.
This fight appears to simply boil down to whether or not Teixeira can take Blachowicz down. While Teixeira’s 40% takedown accuracy doesn’t look completely terrible on paper, the fact that it drops down to 26% in his last eight fights is somewhat concerning. And on the flip side, Blachowicz’s 65% career takedown defense appears just average on paper, but jumps up to 86% in his last eight fights. That is largely based on a pair of 0 for 5 performances from Souza and Rockhold who were both moving up to 205 lb for the first and only time, but it’s still not overly encouraging for Teixeira’s chances of getting Blachowicz down. However, earlier in Blachowicz’s career we saw him struggle with getting taken down, so it’s still possible that Teixeira can find success. On the feet, Blachowicz is the much more powerful striker, and while Teixeira has a knack for getting rocked and coming back in fights, that should once again get put to the test on Saturday. We notably saw Blachowicz fight to a really low-volume 5-round decision the last time he faced a grappler, and he’s never landed a finish beyond the second round, so if we see these two come out fearing the strength of the other (Blachowicz’s power vs. Teixeira’s grappling) then it’s certainly possible this turns into another disappointing staring contest. Keep in mind this card is back in the big cage on fight island, opposed to the smaller Apex cage where we see a higher rate of finishes. So overall, if Teixeira can get this fight to the ground we like his chances to get a finish on the mat either through ground and pound or with a submission, but if his struggling takedown accuracy fails him then look for Blachowicz to either get another KO in the first two rounds (most likely R2) or to win a low volume decision. We actually think a disappointing decision is somewhat likely here as Blachowicz will be trying not to get taken down while Teixeira should be focussed on not absorbing massive shots to his head. With that said, we have seen Teixeira get reckless at times and take unnecessary damage, but his ability to recover is unmatched. Considering Teixeira has only been finished twice in the last 19 years and Blachowicz has only been finished once in the last 10, combined with the larger Octagon, there appears to be a pretty decent chance this one goes the distance despite both of these two being dangerous finishers.
Our favorite bet here is “Fight Ends in Points” at +200 (FanDuel > How Will FIght End) or “FGTD” at +192 depending on what’s available to you.
Check out our premium betting content on patreon.com/mmadfs for all of our other top bets.
DFS Implications:
Blachowicz is coming off a career best DFS performance where he topped 96 DraftKings points for just the second time in his last 10 fights. He set a career high in significant strikes landed at 107 and also notched three takedowns after failing to land one in his previous five fights. However, in general Blachowicz struggles to put up really big DFS scores due to his patient striking and lack of grappling. And only two of his 16 UFC fights have ended in the first round, while nine have gone the distance. Four of his last five early wins have occurred in R2 and at his high DFS price tag he will need to outscore several other top priced fighters to sneak into winning lineups. Blachowicz has also notably never landed a finish beyond the second round and has been to two five round decisions in his last four fights, with one of those ending in a low scoring staring contest. While he propped up his recent 116 pt DK decision score with grappling and ground strikes against an undersized one-dimensional striker in Adesanya, Blachowicz is less likely to want to go to the ground with Teixeira, and Blachowicz scored just 65 DK points in his other recent five-round decision win over grappler Jacare Souza. So while there’s always a good chance for fighters to score well over the course of five rounds, Blachowicz certainly appears to be the type of guy that also has the ability to bust if this fight makes it past the first round. Even in his last four second round finishes he still scored just 96, 94, 91 and 96 DK points, which is unlikely to be enough to crack winning tournament lineups. The odds imply he has a 72% chance to win, a 45% chance to get a finish and a 17% chance it comes in R1
Teixeira has shown a higher DFS ceiling than Blachowicz, with scores of 120 and 137 in his last two fights. His grappling heavy fighting style clearly lends itself more to the DraftKings scoring system and his cheap price tag makes it unlikely he gets left out of winning lineups with a victory here. However, this does look like a tougher matchup for him to succeed and there’s a chance this fight ends in a lower-volume decision. So we don’t want to go crazy on Teixeira here with your exposure, but he’s actually a more appealing play than the favorite in this matchup with all things considered. We do have concerns with whether or not he’ll be able to get Blachowicz to the mat as Blachowicz has only been taken down twice on 14 attempts (14%) in his last eight fights, while Teixeira has only landed 9 of his last 35 takedown attempts (26%). So this remains a risky play as he’ll be in serious trouble if this turns into a pure striking battle. The odds imply he has a 28% chance to win, a 19% chance to get a finish and a 7% chance it comes in R1.
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!
We recently partnered with PrizePicks, who offer a new way to play DFS. Instead of competing against other users, you simply pick the over/under on two or more fighters' stat lines (i.e. fight time or fantasy points scored). Receive up to a $100 deposit bonus when you sign up with our promo code: MMADFS
Top UFC PrizePicks Play of the Week:
- Petr Yan Over 113.5 Fantasy Pts
For the rest of our top PrizePicks plays check out our DFS Cheat Sheet in our premium DFS content at patreon.com/mmadfs.
