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Fighter Notes:
Fight #12
Takashi Sato
7th UFC Fight (2-4)Sato has now lost three straight and four of his last five fights, with his only win over that stretch coming in a R1 KO against a short notice debuting fighter with no chin in Jason Witt. The only other win of Sato’s UFC career was a second round TKO in his 2019 UFC debut against the corpse of Ben Saunders. Following that win, Sato then got submitted by Belal Muhammad in his next fight, one of the few finishes Muhammad has found in the UFC. While Sato bounced back with the quick knockout win over Witt after that, he then got submitted by Miguel Baeza, who has never submitted anybody else, before losing a decision to Gunnar Nelson, who was coming off a two and a half year layoff. Then in his last fight, Sato got knocked out in just 44 seconds by Bryan Battle, who was dropping down to 170 lb for the first time in his career.
Now 15-6 as a pro, Sato has 11 wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and two decision victories. Sato’s last seven victories all ended in knockouts, with five of those ending in round one and two in round two. He’s also been knocked out twice himself, submitted three times, and has one decision loss. Sato holds the dubious honors of being the only fighter to ever get submitted by either Belal Muhammad or Miguel Baeza. Eleven of Sato’s last 12 fights have ended early (7-4) and the last time he won a decision was in 2015 and even that was split.
Overall, Sato is a one-dimensional striker who’s made a career out of trying to land knockouts before his opponents submit him. He only averages 2.28 SSL/min, but that’s partially due to the fact that he spends so much time being controlled. He’s been taken down 6 times on 15 attempts (60% defense) in his six UFC fights, while landing just one takedown of his own on two attempts. After losing three straight, any fight could be his last with the UFC.
Themba Gorimbo
2nd UFC Fight (0-1)Hoping to bounce back from a second round submission loss in his UFC debut against A.J. Fletcher, Gorimbo has now dropped two of his last three fights and his only win in the last three years was a June 2022 decision victory over a 37-year-old opponent who’s just 3-4 in his last seven outings. Prior to making his UFC debut, Gorimbo fought to a pair of wrestling heavy decisions (1-1). Those two fights were essentially mirror images of each other. They both played out almost entirely on the mat and ended with the judges, but in the first of those Gorimbo spent the entire time on his back, while in the most recent he was the one on top. Gorimbo did later say that he dislocated his shoulder in the opening 30 seconds of the loss, which if true, would help to explain why he was unable to do anything in the fight. Gorimbo was the former EFC Worldwide Welterweight champion and also fought for the EFC Lightweight belt in 2015, but got submitted in that match.
Now 10-4 as a pro, Gorimbo has one win by TKO (R1 2019), six submissions, and three decision victories. His six submission wins have been split evenly across the first two rounds and he’s never finished an opponent beyond round two. He’s been knocked out once, submitted twice, and has one decision loss. All three of his early losses occurred in the second round. Most of Gorimbo’s career has been spent at 170 lb, but he fought down at 155 lb for a two fight stretch in 2015 (1-1). His lone KO loss came in a 163 lb Catchweight fight in 2017 against Dave Mazany, Gina Mazany’s brother.
Overall, Gorimbo is typically looking to take opponents down and control them, but is just a BJJ blue belt. He landed both of his takedown attempts in his UFC debut, but didn’t do a great job of controlling the positions and got reversed easily. On the feet, he throws long, wild punches and kicks and is a pretty sloppy striker who will dangerously lunge into striking exchanges. Gorimbo will be looking to become the first Zimbabwean fighter to ever win a UFC fight, although Blood Diamond was the first fighter from Zimbabwe to be signed by the organization. Gorimbo gets a more favorable matchup here than he did in his debut, so he’ll have a better chance to notch that win he’s been looking for.
Fight Prediction:
Gorimbo will have a 3” height advantage and 4” reach advantage.
Sato’s UFC career is on life support, while Gorimbo’s is just getting started. While Sato got immediately knocked out in his last fight, he’s been most vulnerable on the ground, which is where Gorimbo is typically looking to take fights, with 6 of his 10 career wins ending in submissions. However, it has been over three years since Gorimbo submitted anybody and he still needs to prove that he’s capable of competing at the UFC level after he got submitted in his recent UFC debut. While he has a ton of holes in his game and is pretty sloppy both on the feet and the mat, this does look like a perfect get-right spot for him and if the UFC is ever going to actually do an Africa card they’ll want to build up African fighters like Gorimbo, who still live and train in Africa. As long as he doesn’t get knocked out, and we don’t think he will, this is an ideal matchup for Gorimbo to dominate on the mat and either lock up a submission or ride out a grappling-heavy decision win. Based on how terrible Sato has been on the mat, a submission win is squarely in play, but we’re slightly leaning towards Gorimbo grinding out a lopsided decision win.
Our favorite bet here is Gorimbo’s ML at -110.
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DFS Implications:
Sato has landed knockouts in both of his UFC wins, which were good for DraftKings totals of 133 and 93. His last five wins before joining the UFC all ended in knockouts as well, and he’s essentially a KO or bust fighter. He doesn’t add anything in terms of grappling and is a complete liability on the mat. He only averages 2.28 SSL/min and he’s not a guy that can score well in decisions, although the last time he even won a decision was in 2015. After opening the week as a slight favorite, the line flipped and Sato is now a slight underdog, which when combined with his three fight losing streak should result in him being low owned. The knockout upside and low ownership is all he has going for him and we don’t expect Sato to remain in the UFC for much longer without a win here. The odds imply he has a 48% chance to win, a 34% chance to land a finish, and a 17% chance it comes in round one.
Gorimbo is generally looking to take fights to the ground, making him a better DraftKings play than on FanDuel. He’s a wild striker who throws big looping shots and generally fails to really utilize his long reach. He’s also a little too content with holding top position on the ground and has only landed one submission since 2015, although he does have six submission wins on his record. He couldn’t ask for a better matchup here when it comes to locking up a finish, as Sato has been submitted in three of his last five losses and was then knocked out in his most recent fight. While we saw Gorimbo make several grappling mistakes in his last match and needlessly lost position at times, he also has the potential to grind out a decision win on the mat and score well on DraftKings even without a finish. However, he needs a finish to score well on FanDuel. After the line moved in his favor, Gorimbo is now underpriced on DraftKings, which will drive his ownership up some. That’s slightly annoying in tournaments, but makes him a solid value in low-risk contests. The odds imply Gorimbo has a 52% chance to win, a 32% chance to land a finish, and a 16% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #11
Natalia Silva
3rd UFC Fight (2-0)Coming off an impressive third-round spinning back kick knockout against a debuting Tereza Bleda, Silva has defeated a pair of inexperienced one-dimensional wrestlers in her first two UFC fights. While the finish was impressive in her recent win, she did get stuck in a submission attempt early on in that fight and was only barely able to escape. So it wasn’t a flawless performance, but she did a good job of handling adversity and outlasting her opponent before landing the late finish. Prior to that, Silva convincingly pulled off the upset in a decision win in her UFC debut against Jasmine Jasudavicius. It had been two and a half years since Silva fought leading up to her debut, after she submitted six straight opponents leading up to the layoff, with five armbars and a rear-naked choke. Her only loss in her last 12 fights came in a 2017 decision against UFC Strawweight Marina Rodriguez, when Silva was just 20 years old. Silva turned pro in 2015 just two months after her 18th birthday and had a rocky start to her career as she lost three of her first four fights. However, since then she’s gone 13-2-1 as she’s grown up inside of the cage. Silva had been scheduled to make her UFC debut against Victoria Leonardo in January 2021, but ended up withdrawing and sitting on the sidelines for another year and a half after breaking her arm a month before the fight was set to happen and then reinjuring the same arm to extend her absence. The UFC has now put the matchup against Leonardo back together two and a half years later.
Now 14-5-1 as a pro, Silva has four wins by KO/TKO, seven submissions, two decision victories, and 1 DQ win. Her last two finishes came in rounds three and four, but her previous nine all ended in the first two rounds, with seven in round one and two in round two. She’s been knocked out once, submitted twice, and has two decision losses. All three of her early losses occurred in her first four pro fights when she was just 18 years old. She got knocked out in the second round of her pro debut, and was then submitted in the first round in her third and fourth pro fights. Her only two losses since 2015 both ended in decisions and she showed her toughness going the distance against a 30-year-old Marina Rodriguez, when Silva was just 20 years old. Silva fought some at 115 lb early in her career when she was really young, but has been at 125 lb since 2018.
Overall, Silva is a promising young fighter, who’s done a good job of rounding out her game in recent years. She has a background in Taekwondo and she used to rely mostly on kicks and grappling to get by in fights, but she’s made serious improvements to her boxing. She still throws a high number of kicks as well, which can help her to find her range when she faces taller opposition, but has dangerous hands and great footwork. On the mat, she’s primarily looking to lock up armbars, something she’s had a lot of success with. In her two UFC fights, she’s landed two of her six takedown attempts (33.3% accuracy), while her opponents have only gotten her down once on 13 attempts (92.3% defense). She’s impressively averaged 5.33 SSL/min and just 1.85 SSA/min.
Victoria Leonardo
4th UFC Fight (1-2)Ten months removed from her first UFC victory, Leonardo won a low-volume decision over a terrible Mandy Bohm. Leonardo landed two of her six takedown attempts in the fight, with seven minutes of control time, while Bohm finished ahead in significant strikes just 52-39. Leonardo was forced out of her previous fight against Melissa Gatto following the second round due to a recurring arm injury, She originally broke that arm in her UFC debut, which also ended in a second round TKO loss, against a really tough Manon Fiorot. Prior to joining the UFC, Leonardo landed a R2 TKO of her own on DWCS in November 2020. She also got knocked out in the second round by Erin Blanchfield in a 2020 Invicta fight and four of Leonardo’s last six fights have ended in second round TKOs (1-3).
Now 9-4 as a pro, Leonardo has one TKO win (R2 2020), four submission victories, and three decisions. All four of her submission wins came in the first two rounds of her first six pro fights. She’s been finished in all four of her losses, with three second-round KO/TKOs (all in her last six fights) and a first round submission loss in a 2018 Invicta fight. All four of those defeats came against really tough competition in Miranda Maverick, Erin Blanchfield, Manon Fiorot, and Melissa Gatto, and clearly Leonardo’s manager hasn’t been doing her any favors.
Overall, Leonardo is a low-level grappler who hasn’t looked great on the feet or the mat. While she’s faced several tough opponents in her career, she’s been finished by all of them, while all of her wins have come against low-level fighters. Between her three UFC fights and her DWCS appearance, she’s landed 5 of her 17 takedown attempts (29.4% accuracy), while her opponents have gotten her down on two of their seven attempts (71.4% defense). She got taken down in both of her UFC losses, while failing to land a takedown of her own in those fights. She takes more damage than she lands, averaging 3.33 SSL/min and 4.56 SSA/min. Sitting at 1-2 in the UFC, Leonardo is likely fighting for her job here.
Fight Prediction:
Leonardo will have a 1” height advantage, while Silva will have a 1” reach advantage and is seven years younger than the 33-year-old Leonardo.
Silva is better everywhere in this fight, which is why she’s a prohibitive favorite in the matchup. Leonardo is typically looking to wrestle, but she’ll need to be careful not to get armbarred if she’s successful in taking this fight to the mat. However, Silva’s takedown defense has been solid so far in the UFC and her opponents have only gotten her down once on 13 attempts, while Leonardo has struggled to land takedowns when facing decent competition. Both of these ladies have had recurring arm injuries, which adds a little bit of uncertainty, but by all accounts Silva has gotten past her injury. Leonardo’s is a little more dicey and we could see Silva test that arm as she likes to throw a lot of kicks. We expect Silva to try and control the range and pick Leonardo apart from the outside, while Leonardo will be looking to close the distance and make the fight ugly along the cage. Silva has shown good footwork and mobility, so we’d be surprised if she allowed Leonardo to simply hold her up against the cage for extended periods of time, but you never know and she is still a young fighter who will inevitably run into some growing pains along the way. With that said, we’re not giving Leonardo much of a chance to actually win the fight and the real question is how does Silva win? She’s fully capable of landing a submission, overwhelming Leonardo with a barrage of strikes and forcing a TKO stoppage, or outlanding her way to a decision win. We’d be surprised if Leonardo was actually able to get the fight to the ground and Silva has been more content with striking recently, lowering the chances that it ends in a submission. That leaves us with Silva out striking Leonardo on the feet and then it’s just a matter of whether or not she can force a stoppage. While we like her chances of landing a late round TKO, it won’t be at all shocking if this makes it to the judges.
Our favorite bet here is “Silva Win & Over 1.5 Rounds” at -135.
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DFS Implications:
Silva won a lopsided decision as the underdog in her UFC debut and then most recently landed a third round knockout, with both of those wins scoring exactly 85 DraftKings points. So she’s yet to demonstrate a scoring ceiling, but she did land six straight submissions prior to joining the UFC. Now she’s the biggest favorite and the most expensive fighter on the slate, with the highest implied odds of landing a finish, so it will be interesting to see where her ownership ends up after her two average scoring wins. This does look like a good matchup for her to find a finish as she faces a low-level opponent who’s been finished in all four of her pro losses, but the majority of women’s Flyweight fights go the distance, so it’s hard to have total confidence in Silva ending this early. And even if she does land a finish, there’s no guarantee it will score enough to be useful, as we saw in her recent third round TKO win. Leonardo is also generally looking to push opponents up against the cage and hunt for takedowns, which has the potential to slow the fight down if she’s successful. And if Leonardo does take Silva down and Silva locks up an armbar off her back, that’s unlikely to score enough for Silva to crack tournament winning lineups at her high price. The field isn’t completely oblivious to all of this, which is why Silva’s ownership shouldn’t get out of control, despite being the biggest favorite on the slate by a very wide margin. However, she will be more popular than she’s been in the past, making this an interesting decision point in tournaments. It looks like she’ll need a high-volume knockout in the first two rounds to score enough to be useful or a surprisingly dominant wrestling performance. On a different card with more enticing expensive options, it would be easier to get away from Silva, but there aren’t a ton of great options to choose from. She has the safest floor on the slate and the potential to hit a solid ceiling, so you have to consider her in all contest types, while realizing another 85 point performance is entirely possible. The odds imply she has an 86% chance to win, a 53% chance to land a finish, and a 28% chance it comes in round one.
Leonardo isn’t very technically skilled and has been prone to breaking her arm in fights. While her aggressiveness and desire to grapple are traits we’re looking for in DFS, especially on DraftKings, she’s just not very good. We’ve seen her get dominated anytime she faces decent competition and now she’s going against another bright young prospect. Leonardo’s best path to victory will be to make this fight ugly and use her soccer mom strength to hold Silva up against the cage, which if successful, could potentially allow Leonardo to serve as a value play on DraftKings as the cheapest fighter on the card. However, we don’t see her successfully executing that approach and therefore don’t have much interest in playing her. Leonardo looks outgunned anywhere this fight can go and she’ll need some sort of freak occurrence to pull off the massive upset. The only appealing things about her are her low price tag and that she’ll be low owned in tournaments, but that’s not enough for us to get excited about playing her. The odds imply she has a 14% chance to win, a 6% chance to land a finish, and a 2% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #10
Nick Fiore
2nd UFC Fight (0-1)Looking to bounce back from a smothering decision loss in his recent UFC debut, Fiore got taken down three times and controlled for eight and a half minutes by a fellow debuting fighter in Mateusz Rebecki. Fiore lost every round in the fight and never got any offense of his own going, with the only positive for him being that he didn’t die. That’s the only time Fiore has been past the first round as a pro, after he finished each of his first six opponents in under four minutes. Two of those wins were against the notorious record padder Jay Ellis (16-106 pro record) so they don’t really count and Fiore had been facing a low level of competition on the New England regional scene.
Now 6-1 as a pro, Fiore has two wins by TKO and four by submission, with all of those victories coming in under four minutes. His lone loss ended in a decision in his recent UFC debut. Only two of his six pro wins came against opponents with winning records and he didn’t face any legitimate competition until he got smashed in his recent UFC debut. One of the two opponents with a winning record lost 12 straight boxing matches after losing his last four MMA fights before that, showing you the type of guys he had been facing. Fiore’s first four pro fights were all at 160-165 lb Catchweight and he also fought one match at 170 lb in 2022. This will only be his fourth fight at 155 lb.
Overall, Fiore has looked like a one-dimensional grappler and doesn’t appear to offer much in terms of striking. He’s part of the New England Cartel and despite being just 25 years old, he’s a Renzo Gracie BJJ Black Belt and Calvin Kattar’s BJJ coach. He’s never won a fight that lasted longer than four minutes and looked bad in the later rounds of his last match, so you have to seriously question his cardio. Fiore’s extremely limited experience and terrible debut make it hard to have much confidence in him at the UFC level.
Chase Hooper
7th UFC Fight (3-3)Coming off the first early loss of his career where he got knocked out by Steve Garcia in just 92 seconds, Hooper is now moving up to 155 lb for the first time in the UFC. However, he started his pro career at 155 lb, where he went 4-0 with four finishes, before moving down to 145 lb when he went on DWCS. Hooper has struggled with putting wins together throughout his UFC career as he’s traded wins and losses for his last six fights, but to his credit he’s also never lost two in a row. Hooper was killing himself to get down to 145 lb, and he said he was cutting 40-45 lb and forced to only drink protein shakes and eat honey packets leading up to fights. The UFC clearly hasn’t lost confidence in him as they just gave him a new four fight contract despite his recent KO loss. Just before that defeat, Hooper put on the most impressive performance of his UFC career in a third round TKO against BJJ black belt Felipe Colares. Just keep in mind, Colares was on the smaller side and bounced between 135 lb and 145 lb throughout his career. That fight played out as an action packed grappling match where Hooper eventually wore Colares out and finished him with unimposing ground and pound. Hooper’s other two UFC wins also ended early, with a third round submission, and a first round TKO, both against low-level opponents.
Now 11-3-1 as a pro, Hooper has four wins by TKO, five submissions, and two decisions. He’s coming off his first early loss in a R1 KO, with his other two defeats both going the distance. He’s always had the height to compete at 155 lb, it’s just been a matter of adding on the muscle as he turned pro at such a young age, a month after his 18th birthday. All of Hooper’s UFC wins came against struggling opponents, who were all cut following their losses to Hooper.
Overall, Hooper is a BJJ black belt and has historically struggled on the feet. While he’s still not a good striker, he has shown signs of improvement as he’s worked with Stephen Thompson to improve his stand up game. Still just 23 years old, Hooper is still growing into his massive 6’1” frame and it was just a matter of time before he moved up to 155 lb. He’s had seven months to prepare for his 155 lb debut, so it will be interesting to see how he looks physically at the new weight class. Between his six UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, Hooper landed 8 of his 30 takedown attempts (26.7% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 4 of their 8 attempts (50% defense). His takedown accuracy has been improving, and after landing just one takedown on 11 attempts (9.1% accuracy) in his first three UFC fights, he landed 7 of his 16 attempts (43.8% accuracy) in his last three matches. He’s also great at fighting off his back and has no problem pulling guard or rolling for leg locks, which won’t show up in his takedown numbers but are effective ways for him to look for finishes. It appears the UFC wants this kid to succeed, which is why they matched him up with another one-dimensional grappler opposed to a heavy-hitter in his upcoming 155 lb debut.
Fight Prediction:
Hooper will have a 3” height advantage and 2” reach advantage, despite the fact he’s moving up a weight class. He’s also two years younger than the 25-year-old Fiore.
This sets up as a fun grappling battle between two young BJJ black belts. There’s some level of uncertainty on both sides, as Hooper is moving up to 155 lb for the first time in the UFC and Fiore has so little experience and Octagon time that we don’t really know how good he actually is. While Hooper is two years younger than Fiore, he made his UFC debut a month before Fiore made his pro debut. In addition to being more experienced, Hooper is taller, longer, has better cardio, and looks like the better grappler. Neither guy has shown much in terms of striking, and that’s clearly Hooper’s biggest area of weakness. However, Fiore doesn’t look especially equipped to exploit that. While you sometimes get a striking battle when you pair two grapplers against one another, we’re expecting this one to play out more on the mat. To Fiore’s credit, he took his UFC debut on relatively short notice, but he’s still given us no indication that he can remain competitive later on in fights. We expect Hooper to look even better after eliminating his death cut, and we like his chances to push a grappling pace that Fiore can’t keep up with. That should create opportunities for Hooper to find a late round finish on the mat, both with submissions and ground and pound. We would normally lean more towards Hooper by submission, but since Fiore is also a black belt he may be able to do enough to not get submitted, but could succumb to a ground and pound finish if he really gasses out. Both methods are in play and however he gets it done, we like Hooper to win, most likely with a late finish.
Our favorite bet here is Hooper’s ML at +115.
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DFS Implications:
Fiore is a Renzo Gracie BJJ black belt and a jiu-jitsu coach for the New England Cartel, despite being just 25 years old. However, he has very limited MMA experience and just got dominated on the mat for three rounds in his recent UFC debut. All six of his pro wins have come in the first round, showing some theoretical upside, but all of those victories came against a very low level of competition. Now he’s facing a fellow BJJ black belt in Chase Hooper, and this looks like another tough spot for Fiore to really excel on the mat where he’s the most comfortable. Working in his favor, Hooper is moving up a weight class and is a terrible striker, so there is the potential for Fiore to find success on the feet. However, he’s given us no indications that he’s a great striker himself, so it’s really just a bet against Hooper. Fiore also hasn’t shown any sort of cardio and has never won a fight that made it past the first round. Although in fairness, he’s coming off his first fight to see the second round. Nevertheless, he slowed down late in that fight and typically fighters that come into the UFC with all first round finishes have suspect gas tanks. Fiore hasn’t blown us away with his grappling and Hooper has never been submitted, so it’s hard to get excited about playing Fiore here and he’s really just a bet against Hooper—which apparently a lot of people are willing to make as the line has moved in Fiore’s favor throughout the week. The odds imply Fiore has a 55% chance to win, a 32% chance to land a finish, and a 17% chance it comes in round one.
Hooper has scored anywhere from 4 to 143 DraftKings points in his six UFC fights and can be a tough guy to pin down. He’s been a work in progress since he joined the organization and has yet to develop a legitimate striking game, but he’s extremely dangerous on the mat. All three of his UFC wins have come on the ground, two through ground and pound and the other by submission. He only scored 74 DraftKings points in that third round submission win, where he failed to land any of his six takedown attempts. However, he scored an insane 143 DraftKings points and 125 points on FanDuel in his recent third round TKO win and his takedown accuracy has been steadily improving. He faced a fellow BJJ black belt in that slate-breaking performance and finished with 140 total strikes, four takedowns, three submission attempts, five reversals, and seven minutes of control time as he completely filled up the stat sheet. Now he’ll face another BJJ black belt with cardio concerns who likely will be willing to engage with him on the mat, presenting another huge scoring ceiling for Hooper, especially on DraftKings. The optics on Hooper’s recent KO loss were so terrible that we expect his ownership to come in lower than it did in his last two matches and the line moving against him should also help in that department. That adds to his tournament appeal and at his cheap price tag he doesn’t need to break the slate to end up in tournament winning lineups. He also accrues a high number of submission attempts, which boosts his scoring on FanDuel and he looks like a solid play on both sites. The odds imply Hooper has a 45% chance to win, a 30% chance to land a finish, and a 16% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #9
Rodrigo Nascimento
5th UFC Fight (2-1, NC)Nascimento is coming off a split-decision win over Tanner Boser, where Nascimento finished behind 36-62 in significant strikes and 91-163 in total strikes. However, he was able to take Boser down three times and control him for eight minutes, which was enough to get his hand raised by the judges. Prior to that, Nascimento landed a second round knockout win over a terrible Alan Baudot in July 2021. However, the win was overturned to a No Contest when Nascimento failed a drug test. It seemed like a technicality as Nascimento tested positive for Ritalin, something he’s been prescribed to take for years. He’s since been granted a therapeutic use exemption for the medicine and it appears he’s finally gotten it all sorted out. Leading up to that win/No Contest, Nascimento got knocked out by Chris Daukaus in just 45 seconds, after submitting Don'Tale Mayes in the second round of his 2020 UFC debut.
Now 9-1 as a pro, Nascimento has two official TKO wins, six submissions, and one split-decision victory. Both of those TKOs came in the first round in his first three pro fights in 2012 and 2014. He landed another TKO in the second round of his second most recent fight, before it was overturned to a No Contest. All six of his submission wins ended in the first two rounds, with four coming in round one and two in round two. The only loss of his career came in a first round knockout and he’s only seen the third round once in his career.
Overall, Nascimento is a Brazilian Heavyweight grappler, who’s typically looking to get fights to the mat to hunt for submissions. He hasn’t looked great on the feet, so expect for him to struggle against legitimate competition when he’s unable to get fights to the mat. In his four UFC fights, he’s landed 5 of his 12 takedown attempts (41.7% accuracy), while no one has tried to take him down. He’s yet to land more than 49 significant strikes in a fight and only averages 4.05 SSL/min.
Ilir Latifi
16th UFC Fight (8-7)Now 40 years old, Latifi has wrestled his way to two straight victories and all three of his fights since moving up to Heavyweight have ended in ultra low-volume decisions. The first of those three ended in a loss to Derrick Lewis in Latifi’s Heavyweight debut, where Lewis finished ahead in significant strikes just 20-5, while Latifi landed three takedowns with nearly nine minutes of control time. The fact that Latifi was able to move up to Heavyweight and still throw a behemoth like Lewis around while absorbing several destructive blows was impressive in its own right, especially after he had been knocked out four times down at Light Heavyweight. Following that loss, Latifi didn’t step back inside the Octagon for 16 months. Latifi then narrowly avoided extending his losing streak to four in a close/questionable split-decision win over Tanner Boser, where Latifi was outlanded 45-10 in significant strikes but landed two takedowns with nearly seven minutes of control time. Boser almost finished Latifi in the second round but couldn’t quite get him out of there. Most recently, Latifi was able to take Alexei Oleynik down three times and control him for eight and a half minutes, while remaining out of danger and finishing ahead 38-28 in significant strikes. Following that win, Latifi said he wasn’t sure what the future would hold as it was the final fight on his deal and he wasn’t sure if he would get re-signed or continue to fight. He also said he competed with a staph infection but didn’t want to pull out for the third straight time. Apparently the UFC did opt to bring him back, which is somewhat surprising based on his age and how uneventful his last three fights have all been.
Now 16-8 as a pro, Latifi has six wins by KO/TKO, four submissions, and six decision victories. While he’s never been submitted, he’s been knocked out four times and has four decision losses. Four of his last five fights have gone the distance, with the one exception being a 2019 R2 KO loss in his final fight at Light Heavyweight, where he spent his entire career before moving up to Heavyweight for his last three matches. Latifi’s only early win since 2016 was a 2018 submission over Ovince St. Preux.
Overall, Latifi is a former Swedish National Greco-Roman wrestling champion and relies mostly on wrestling and control time to win fights these days. While his three Heavyweight fights have all gone the distance, he put up significant striking totals of just 38, 10, and 5 in those three matches (1.18 SSL/min), while only absorbing 2.07 SS/min. In those three fights, he was able to land 8 of his 16 takedown attempts, while defending the only takedown attempt against him. He also defended all six of the attempts against him in his 12 Light Heavyweight fights and he still holds a perfect 100% takedown defense. He racked up nearly 24 minutes of control time between those three Heavyweight fights and came into all of those matches with the same game plan of grinding out decision wins with his wrestling. Latifi had three straight fights canceled prior to his recent win, with him dropping out of the last two of those. So there’s always some concern whether or not he’ll actually make it to the Octagon and one of those fights was canceled on the day of the event when Latifi dropped out. So fingers crossed we don’t have any issues here.
Fight Prediction:
Nascimento will have a 4” height advantage and 7” reach advantage, in addition to being 10 years younger than the 40-year-old Latifi.
This will be the first time Nascimento has gone up against another grappler in the UFC, so it will be interesting to see his defensive wrestling finally tested. Neither of these two have ever been taken down, but no one has even tried to take Nascimento down, while Latifi has stuffed all seven of the attempts against him. Latifi is the more credentialed wrestler, although it is fair to wonder how much the 40-year-old has left in the tank at this stage in his career. With that said, we’re not sold on Nascimento and he’s only shown the ability to defeat one-dimensional strikers and low-level opponents. We expect Latifi to be the superior wrestler and to grind out another boring decision win.
Our favorite bet here is “Latifi DEC” at +400.
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DFS Implications:
Nascimento’s grappling-heavy style generally lends itself more towards the DraftKings scoring system opposed to FanDuel, although he’ll be facing the 100% takedown defense of former Swedish National Greco-Roman wrestling champion Ilir Latifi. That could force him to rely more on his striking or look for submissions off his back, while also limiting his wrestling upside. Nascimento has averaged 93 DraftKings points in his three UFC wins if we include the R2 TKO that was later overturned to a No Contest. After scoring 100 points in a second round submission in his UFC debut, he only scored 95 points in his R2 TKO win, and then 85 points in his recent grappling-heavy decision victory. He’s yet to beat anyone decent or face a fellow grappler, so it’s hard to have much confidence in him in this matchup, even if Latifi is old and a former Light Heavyweight. We expect to see extended periods of cage control and if anyone is going to be landing takedowns it will likely be Latifi. That will leave Nascimento reliant on landing a well timed finish to return value at his expensive price tag and no one has been able to finish Latifi since he moved up to Heavyweight. The only reason to play Nascimento is in the hope that Latifi has completely gone off a cliff at this stage in his career, which is always possible, but Heavyweights generally have a longer shelf life. We expect this to end in a low-volume decision and don’t have much interest in playing Nascimento. The odds imply Nascimento has a 64% chance to win, a 40% chance to land a finish, and a 21% chance it comes in round one.
Latifi has gone to three straight low-volume decisions since moving up to Heavyweight in 2020. He won the last two of those, but still only scored 83 and 64 DraftKings points in those victories. At this stage in his career, he’s typically just looking to hold opponents against the cage and/or lay on them for 15 minutes. That style of fighting has no chance of scoring well on FanDuel, but could still allow him to serve as a value play on DraftKings at his cheap price tag if we don’t see many other dogs win. No one has tried to take Nascimento down in the UFC, so it’s hard to know what his defensive wrestling will look like, but it’s probably somewhat decent since he also has a grappling background. Or maybe it’s not, we really don’t know since it’s never been tested. That at least creates some potential for Latifi to outperform expectations, but he still looks like a low-ceiling value play who most likely doesn’t score enough in a win to crack tournament winning lineups. The odds imply he has a 36% chance to win, an 18% chance to land a finish, and an 8% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #8
Orion Cosce
3rd UFC Fight (1-1)Ten months removed from his first UFC win, Cosce won a grappling-heavy decision over a one-dimensional striker in Mike “Blood Diamond” Mathetha. Cosce landed three of his eight takedown attempts with nine and a half minutes of control time, but got outlanded 63-25 in significant strikes and got hurt at multiple points in the fight. Prior to that win, Cosce suffered the first loss of his young career, which came in a R2 knockout in his 2021 UFC debut against Phil Rowe. Looking back one fight further, Cosce punched his ticket to the UFC with a third round TKO win on DWCS in August 2020, where he started slow but ended up outlasting his opponent, Matt Dixon, who gassed out midway through the fight.
Now 8-1 as a pro, Cosce has six wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and one decision victory. His only loss ended in a second round TKO in his UFC debut. While eight of Cosce’s nine pro fights have ended early, five of his last six matches have seen the second round, with four of those making it to round three. His last three KO/TKO wins all occurred in the third round, but all of those finishes came before he joined the UFC and while he finished all seven of his opponents before joining the organization, he hadn’t been facing much in the way of competition.
Overall, Cosce is a former state champion high school wrestler, and relies heavily on his grappling to win fights. He will look to throw bombs on the feet, but isn’t a very technical striker. He’s a BJJ brown belt, but only has one submission win in his career and is typically just looking for ground and pound on the mat. Between his two UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, Cosce has landed six takedowns in 15 attempts (40% accuracy), while his opponents have gotten him down three times on 11 attempts (72.7% defense). He only landed 25 and 22 significant strikes respectively in his two UFC fights and averages just 2.92 SSL/min and 3.53 SSA/min. Cosce also missed weight by 1.5 lb for his last fight, so he’ll be a guy to monitor at weigh-ins. He also said he was dealing with some immune system issues since his last fight, as he repeatedly got sick and had a tougher time consistently training.
UPDATE: Cosce missed weight by 1.5 lb and looked terrible on the scale!
Gilbert Urbina
2nd UFC Fight (0-1)Urbina will be making his return to the Octagon 630 days after he got submitted by Bryan Battle on the finale of The Ultimate Fighter. In fairness to Urbina, he took that fight on short notice after Tresean Gore dropped out. Urbina came out aggressive in the match and was able to take Battle down twice, but slowed down after the fast start and quickly got submitted once Battle took his back in round two. That’s Urbina’s only official pro fight since 2019, but he did go 1-1 in his first two fights on TUF in May 2021, with a R1 submission win over Michael Gillmore and a R2 KO loss to Tresean Gore. Just keep in mind, those two fights go down as exhibition matches and they won’t show up on his official pro record. Urbina’s only official win since 2017 came in a 2019 grappling-heavy decision with Combate Americas. Prior to that, he lost a decision to Sean Brady in a 2018 LFA fight, and the last time Urbina finished anybody (other than Gillmore on TUF) was in a 2017 R1 submission against a low-level opponent in Urbina’s first LFA fight.
Now 6-2 as a pro, Urbina has one win by TKO, two submissions, and three decision wins. His lone TKO win came in the first round of a 2014 match in his second pro fight against a 1-0 opponent who then never competed again. His two submission wins occurred in 2015 and 2017, both by rear-naked choke in the first two rounds against inexperienced opponents who never won another pro fight. Two of Urbina’s three decision victories came in his first three pro fights against dubious competition in ultra low-level organizations that used amateur style three-minute rounds, opposed to five. The only time he’s ever won a fight that lasted longer than nine minutes was in a 2019 decision win. He’s been submitted once, which came in the second round of his last fight. His only other official loss was a 2018 decision to a really tough Sean Brady in the LFA, but Urbina did get knocked out in the second round of a TUF fight by Tresean Gore, although everything but the finale on TUF goes does as an exhibition match and doesn’t show up on your official pro record. Urbina also landed a first round submission in his first fight on TUF, but it came against the worst fighter on the show in a highly submittable Micheal Gillmore who was filling in on two day’s notice. Urbina’s first four pro fights all took place at 170 lb, before he moved up to 185 lb for his LFA debut in 2017, where he won a decision. He then dropped back down to 170 lb in his loss to Brady, before winning a decision in a 2019 175 lb Catchweight match. All of his TUF fights were at 185 lb, but now he’ll be dropping back down to 170 lb, where he hasn’t won a fight since 2015.
Overall, Urbina is a tall fighter but doesn’t use his length especially well and is generally looking to grapple. He comes from a long line of losing TUF fighters, as both of his brothers also lost on the show. He likes to take his opponents’ backs both on the feet and the mat and look for rear-naked chokes, but has poor defensive wrestling and is prone to getting taken down and also reversed on the mat. His striking defense has looked suspect and Gore dropped him multiple times before knocking him out early in round two on TUF. Now 27 years old, Urbina will be dropping down to 170 lb for the first time since 2018, when he was just 22. At 6’3” he’s not a small guy, so who knows how tough the weight cut will be for him, but it will be important to monitor him closely on the scale.
Fight Prediction:
Urbina will have a 4” height and reach advantage.
This is a low-level fight with a lot of volatility. Neither guy has been especially active and it’s been nearly two years since Urbina competed, while Cosce hasn’t fought in 10 months and only has two fights since 2020. They both come in looking to wrestle, but Cosce is often looking for ground and pound on the mat and only has one career submission victory, while Urbina is always hunting for rear-naked chokes. Neither of their grappling has been especially impressive. Cosce will swing big looping bombs on the feet, while Urbina looks for kicks and flying knees, but hasn’t appeared especially dangerous with his striking. If you count Urbina’s loss to Tresean Gore on TUF, he’s been finished in the second round in each of his last two fights, and seems to start strong but then fade later on. Meanwhile Cosce’s last three knockouts all occurred in the third round. So at least on paper, this looks like another decent spot for Cosce to find a finish in the later rounds. However, we’ve yet to see either of these two land a finish in the UFC and their earlier career results should be taken with a grain of salt. It’s possible we just see them exchange positions on the ground for 15 minutes, but if it ends early look for it to come from either a Cosce knockout or an Urbina submission. The cut down to 170 lb for Urbina has the potential to negatively impact his chin and/or cardio, which adds to Cosce’s appeal. However, the line has moved in Urbina’s favor and the public apparently is not concerned about his ability to successfully drop back down to 170 lb. Considering Cosce missed weight for his last fight, it will be important to monitor both guys closely at weigh-ins. UPDATE: COSCE MISSED WEIGHT by 1.5 lb. It’s impossible to be confident in either of these two, but based on how terrible Cosce looked on the scale we’ll say Urbina submits him in the first two rounds.
Our favorite bet here is “Gilbert Urbina R1 or R2” at +460.
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DFS Implications:
Cosce is 10 months removed from his first UFC win, which came in a disappointing decision against a low-level one-dimensional striker. That was set up perfectly for Cosce to dominate on the mat, and while he did land three takedowns with nine and a half minutes of control time, he was only narrowly able to hang on to win a decision and nearly got finished earlier in the fight. He scored just 82 DraftKings points in the decision win, which is the only time he’s ever been to the judges in his short career. Prior to that, he suffered his first career loss in a R2 knockout in his UFC debut, so he’s yet to demonstrate a safe floor or a useful ceiling. However, he did land seven straight finishes prior to joining the UFC, albeit against a very low level of competition. That at least presents some theoretical upside, and his wrestling-heavy style has the potential to score decently on DraftKings even without a finish if he can be more active than he was in his last fight. Urbina’s takedown defense has been bad, which is also encouraging for Cosce’s scoring potential. We don’t know how the cut down to 170 lb will affect Urbina’s chin, but that could increase Cosce’s chances of landing a knockout and he swings with bad intentions. After failing to impress in his first two UFC, looking like shit on the scale, and now being overpriced on DraftKings following the line move, Cosce should definitely come in low-owned, which obviously adds to his tournament appeal, especially on this smaller slate. However, it’s incredibly hard to have any confidence in him. The odds imply he has a 52% chance to win, a 30% chance to land a finish, and a 16% chance it comes in round one.
Urbina’s grappling heavy fighting style lends itself more towards the DraftKings scoring system, but he does have the potential to land a submission and score well on both sites. He’s more of a grappler than a wrestler, so we’re not expecting huge takedown numbers from him as he’s fine just taking his opponent’s back on the feet without even going to the mat. Just keep in mind, the only opponent he’s submitted since 2017 was Michael Gillmore, who took that TUF fight on just two day’s notice and was the worst fighter on the show. Urbina’s striking and takedown defenses have both been poor, and his chin could look even worse after dropping down a weight class here. Perhaps his size advantage will help with his wrestling, but that remains to be seen. He also has the potential to come in with some ring rust after not fighting for nearly two years, and this guy has been a ghost since losing to Battle, so it’s unclear what he’s been up to. That adds a lot of uncertainty to this already volatile matchup. With the line moving sharply in Urbina’s favor, we expect him to be popular despite all of the uncertainty. That lowers his tournament appeal a little, but if he does find a finish or dominate the fight on the ground in a decision win then he’ll likely end up in winning lineups at his cheap price tag. Cosce also looked absolutely terrible on the scale as he missed weight, which adds to Urbina’s appeal. The odds imply Urbina has a 48% chance to win, a 32% chance to land a finish, and a 16% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #7
Karolina Kowalkiewicz
15th UFC Fight (7-7)Kowalkiewicz has now won two in a row after losing five straight fights just before that. Her five-fight skid was bookended by a pair of wins over Felice Herrig, while her most recent win came in a close/questionable decision over Silvana Gomez Juarez. After controlling Gomez Juarez on the mat in the first round, Kowalkiewicz got pieced up in the later rounds, but still went on to win a unanimous 29-28 decision, despite a massive amount of confusion with the scorecards as the commissioner frantically made a series of last minute handwritten written changes as he brought the scorecards into the Octagon for Buffer to read. Certainly one of the more bizarre and sketchy scenes you’ll see, especially in a close fight. Prior to that win, Kowalkiewicz landed her first early win in the UFC in a second round submission against Felice Herrig, who retired after the loss. That came just after Kowalkiewicz got submitted in the first round by Jessica Penne, following decision losses to Yan Xiaonan, Alexa Grasso, and Michelle Waterson-Gomez, as well as a R1 KO defeat at the hands of Jessica Andrade. Kowalkiewicz is still just 4-7 in her last 11 fights, after starting out 3-0 in the UFC. Twelve of Kowalkiewicz’s last 16 fights have gone the distance, with four of those being split. She has just one early win over that stretch, while she was finished in the first round three times, with two submissions and one knockout. Kowalkiewicz’s second most recent early win was a first round armbar all the way back in 2014.
Now 14-7 as a pro, Kowalkiewicz has one win by TKO, which came in the first round of her 2012 pro debut, three by submission, and 10 decisions. Three of her four career finishes came in her first five pro fights from 2012 to 2014, with two of those occurring while she was fighting up at 125 lb, before she dropped down to 115 lb in 2014. She’s been knocked out once, submitted twice, and has four decision losses. Her lone career KO loss came against Jessica Andrade in the first round of a 2018 fight.
Overall, Kowalkiewicz has a background in Muay Thai and has historically relied mostly on her striking, averaging a respectable 5.34 SSL/min (3rd most on the slate) and 5.55 SSA/min (also 3rd most on the slate). However, she’s been looking to grapple a little more recently and after only landing one takedown on seven attempts across her first 10 UFC fights, she’s landed three takedowns on six attempts in her last four matches. Looking at her entire 14 fight UFC career, she’s still only landed 4 of her 13 takedown attempts (30.8% accuracy), but those numbers have at least been improving. On the other side of things, she’s been taken down by her opponents 13 times on 52 attempts (75% defense). However, her defensive numbers are skewed by her first two UFC opponents combining to land just one of their 24 attempts. In her last 12 fights, her takedown defense has only been 57.1%. She also lost the last five fights where she got taken down even once. Kowalkiewicz will look for submissions on the mat, but has only completed one since 2014 and is typically looking to win close decisions. Her fight IQ is dubious at best, which was in full display when she dove head first into the guard of a one-dimensional grappler in Jessica Penne in Kowalkiewicz’s third most recent fight, which ended with Kowalkiewicz getting submitted.
Vanessa Demopoulos
5th UFC Fight (3-1)Coming off her third straight win, Demopoulos won a grappling-heavy decision over one-dimensional striker Maria Oliveira. Demopoulos landed two of her four takedown attempts in the match with eight minutes of control time, while also landing a knockdown in round two. Prior to that, she won a close/questionable split decision over Jinh Yu Frey, although arguably lost the first two rounds in that fight and was fortunate to get her hand raised. Looking back one fight further, Demopoulos was narrowly able to survive getting dropped in the first round before locking up an armbar against the highly submittable Silvana Gomez Juarez. Demopoulos made her UFC debut in August 2021 up a weight class in a terrible matchup against J.J. Aldrich and lost a decision, before rebounding with three straight wins. She originally attempted to punch her ticket to the UFC through DWCS in August 2020, but lost a smothering decision to Cory McKenna and was forced to return to the LFA. She then lost a decision to Loopy Godinez, but bounced back with a R1 TKO win that was good enough for the UFC to give her a shot.
Now 9-4 as a pro, Demopoulos has one TKO win (R1 2021), four submissions, and four decision victories. Three of her four submission wins ended in round one armbars, with the other ending in a R4 inverted triangle choke. She’s never been finished, with all four of her career losses going the distance. Three of her four UFC fights have gone the distance, and three of her eight career decisions have been split/majority (2-1).
Overall, Demopoulos is a BJJ black belt and relies mostly on her grappling to win fights. While she doesn’t mind mixing it up on the feet, she’s a sloppy striker and tends to be pretty hittable. While her grappling is adequate, her wrestling is still a work in progress and between her four UFC fights and her DWCS appearance, she’s only landed three of her 18 takedown attempts (16.7% accuracy). On the other side of things, her opponents have gotten her down on two of their four attempts (50% defense). In fairness to her, she’s gone up against several opponents with really solid takedown defenses and when she finally got an easier matchup in her last fight she was able to land 50% of her attempts. Demopoulos had been training at Fight Ready in Arizona, but recently moved to Colorado and joined Factory X this past January. She said the team at Fight Ready had some sort of disagreement with her manager and told her to either find a new manager or find a new gym. She chose the latter.
UPDATE: Demopoulos missed weight by 1.5 lb and did not look great on the scale!
Fight Prediction:
Kowalkiewicz will have a 1” height advantage and 5” reach advantage, while Demopoulos is three years younger than the 37-year-old Kowalkiewicz.
Kowalkiewicz has been mixing in more grappling recently, but that may not be a good idea here as she takes on a BJJ black belt in Demopoulos, who’s most comfortable on the mat, even off her back. Kowalkiewicz is a more technical striker than Demopoulos and should hold the advantage on the feet, but it’s not as if she’s dominating fights in that department. Demopoulos will have the luxury of not having to worry about getting taken down, so she can be as reckless as she wants to be, especially since Kowalkiewicz doesn’t have much in the way of power to deter her. It remains to be seen what changes we’ll see to Demopoulos’ game now that she’s training at Factory X, but at the very least there shouldn’t be any issues with her cardio and she should be able to push a high pace after training at elevation. While Demopoulos isn’t the most dangerous grappler in the division, she’s fully capable of throwing up an armbar if Kowalkiewicz foolishly looks to grapple with her. She’s also aggressive enough that a TKO finish is possible if she gets Kowalkiewicz in a bad position and just unloads on her. We’d be much more surprised to see Kowalkiewicz find a finish, and the most likely outcome is for this fight to go the distance and end in a close decision. In a pure striking battle we would give the slight advantage to Kowalkiewicz, but when you factor in Demopoulos’ grappling we’ll say she gets the job done. It’s possible Demopoulos finds a finish, but more likely she’ll win a close decision. Considering 38% of Demopoulos’ career decisions have been split/majority as well as 29% of Kowalkiewicz’s, it won’t be surprising to see another split here.
Our favorite bet here is Demopoulos’ ML at +116.
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DFS Implications:
Kowalkiewicz has only topped 90 DraftKings points once in 14 UFC appearances, which was when she landed a 2022 second round submission over a soon-to-be retired Felice Herrig and scored 113 points. Her other six UFC wins all went the distance, where she averaged a respectable but unspectacular 82 DraftKings points. She scored 80-90 points in all of her last three decision victories, but that only keeps her in the value play discussion when she’s priced as a cheap underdog and not in this situation where she’s the favorite. She hasn’t knocked anybody out since her 2012 pro debut and only has the one submission win since 2014. She’s also going against a BJJ black belt who’s never been finished, so it’s unlikely Kowalkiewicz can end this one early. That leaves Kowalkiewicz reliant on putting up a career performance in a decision win to score enough to be useful. Working in her favor, Demopoulos is aggressive and has a poor 44% striking defense, so if Kowalkiewicz can keep this fight standing and turn it into a brawl we could see a ton of volume landed. However, Demopoulos should be looking to get it to the mat, which will make it tougher for Kowalkiewicz to land the amount of volume she’ll need to score well. So we don’t really see Kowalkiewicz scoring enough to be useful, but her low projected ownership does slightly add to her tournament appeal. The odds imply she has a 55% chance to win, a 13% chance to land a finish, and a 6% chance it comes in round one.
Demopoulos’ aggressive fighting style lends itself well towards uptempo high scoring fights, although she would generally prefer to hunt for submissions on the mat then trade strikes on the feet. Her takedown accuracy has been bad (16.7%), but that can partially be attributed to who she had been facing early on and she was able to land two of her four attempts in her last fight. She also just switched camps from Fight Ready to Factory X, so it’s possible she’s improved some things or at least added new wrinkles to her game. She also could come in with a chip on her shoulder after the team at Fight Ready apparently told her to find a new manager or a new gym. Kowalkiewicz is now 37 years old and averages 5.55 SSA/min (3rd most on the slate) and her 75% takedown defense has dropped down to 57% in her last 12 fights. That all bodes well for Demopoulos’ scoring potential, and at her cheap price tag she doesn’t need to put up a huge score to be useful. She just scored a career best 100 DraftKings points in a decision win, but that was also one of the best matchups she could ever ask for. Her previous decision victory was only good for 70 points, showing a wide range of potential scoring outcomes. When you combine her recent scoring success with her cheap price tag and then add in the line moving in her favor, we expect Demopoulos to be a popular underdog, which lowers her tournament appeal some, but she looks like a solid low-risk option. The odds imply she has a 45% chance to win, a 20% chance to land a finish, and a 10% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #6
Viacheslav Borshchev
4th UFC Fight (1-2)Borshchev has now been dominated on the mat in back-to-back decision losses, after knocking out his previous four opponents in the first two rounds, including a first round knockout in his January 2022 UFC debut against Dakota Bush. Following that win, he got taken down 11 times by Marc Diakiese and controlled for 12 and a half minutes in a smothering loss where very few strikes were thrown. Then most recently, Borshchev got taken down nine times by Mike Davis and controlled for eight minutes, despite Davis slowing down late in the fight.
Now 6-3 as a pro, Borshchev has five wins by KO/TKO and one decision victory. Three of those knockouts came in round one, with the other two ending in round two. He’s never been finished, with all three of his losses going the distance.
Overall, Borshchev is a one-dimensional striker and former Russian Kickboxing champion with literally hundreds of kickboxing matches on his resume. He’s still relatively new to MMA, as he only turned pro in 2019 and his grappling—or lack thereof—is clearly a massive weakness. He’s a kickboxing coach at Team Alpha Male, and claims he’s been working on improving his defensive grappling, but that work hasn’t translated to the Octagon as he’s been taken down 24 times on 35 attempts (31.4% defense) between his three UFC fights and his DWCS match. He’s never attempted a takedown of his own and offers nothing in terms of offensive grappling from what he’s shown. While Borshchev’s appearance is somewhat unimposing, he’s a solid striker who does a great job of ripping shots to the body of his opponents, frequently targeting the liver.
Maheshate
3rd UFC Fight (1-1)Looking to bounce back from his first UFC loss in a unanimous 30-27 decision, Maheshate got taken six times and controlled for six minutes by Rafa Garcia. While the fight stayed on the feet in round one, Garcia dominated Maheshate on the mat in the later rounds and exposed his non-existent ground game after getting the side of his head badly split open early in round two. Prior to that loss, Maheshate had won seven straight, with his most recent win ending in a 74 second R1 knockout in his UFC debut against Steve Garcia. Looking back one fight further, Maheshate punched his ticket to the UFC with a decision win on DWCS in late 2021. Three of his last five fights went the distance, while the other two ended in quick first round knockouts.
Now 9-2 as a pro, Maheshate has four wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and four decision victories. All four of his knockouts occurred in the first two rounds, with two ending in the opening 74 seconds of round one and two ending in the opening 69 seconds of round two. His lone submission win came in the second round of his second pro fight back in 2019. He’s never been finished, with both of his losses ending in decisions. Nine of his 11 pro fights have seen the second round, with six going the distance. Maheshate fought at 170 lb just before going on DWCS, but the rest of his career has been spent at 155 lb. However, he missed weight by 2.5 lb for his last fight, and a move up in weight for the 23-year-old 6’0” fighter is always possible if he continues to struggle to make 155 lb. Prior to joining the UFC, he hadn’t faced much in terms of competition, as none of his opponents before going on DWCS had winning records.
Overall, Maheshate looks to be a pure striker who started out boxing as a young teenager. He claims to have briefly wrestled as well, before transitioning to MMA when he was 17. Still just 23 years old, he only turned pro in June 2019, when he was 20. He’s shown a solid chin and looks like a patient striker who will pick his spots while trying to remain defensively sound. We did see him absorb several heavy shots early in his DWCS fight, but he was able to weather the storm and win the later rounds. After getting outwrestled in his last match where he got taken down six times on 11 attempts (45.5% defense), now he’ll face another pure striker. We’ve yet to see him attempt a takedown of his own in his last three fights. After missing weight by 2.5 lb for his last fight, he’ll be a guy to monitor closely on the scale.
Fight Prediction:
Maheshate will have a 1” height advantage and 2” reach advantage. He’s also eight years younger than the 31-year-old Borshchev.
Likely fighting for his job, Borshchev very well may be the worst grappler on the roster, possibly on the planet, but the UFC mercifully matched him up with another one-dimensional striker here. This should be an exciting striking battle, but you do have to wonder if either of them will look to throw a curveball and attack the terrible defensive wrestling of the other. While neither of them has even considered shooting for a takedown going back to their DWCS fights, you never know what their teams have been working on after we saw each of these two fighters lose grappling-heavy decisions in their most recent fights. Nevertheless, we’d still be surprised to see a ton of grappling. Maheshate has a lot of power in his striking, but Borshchev is the more experienced and technical striker, and should be the busier of the two as he hunts to shut Maheshate down with body shots. Neither guy has ever been finished, but that should get tested here, as they’re both dangerous strikers. It’s one thing to have a solid chin, but it’s another to eat clean shots to the liver, and Borshchev is great at digging to the body of his opponents and finding that off switch. We like Borshchev’s chances of landing a knockout in the first two rounds, although it won’t be that surprising to see this go the distance. When you have someone in Borshchev’s situation who’s fighting for his job, sometimes we do see a more conservative approach where the focus is getting the win at all costs, even if it means putting on a less exciting fight. At the same time, this could be his last opportunity to showcase his striking in the UFC, so he could just leave it all out there. Just keep in mind, both scenarios are possible. Either way, we like Borshchev to win.
Our favorite bet here is “Viacheslav Borshchev R1 or R2 KO” at +250.
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DFS Implications:
Borshchev is a one-dimensional kickboxer who has landed knockouts in the first two rounds in five of his six pro wins. He notched a first round knockout in his UFC debut that was good for 112 DraftKings points, but then got smothered on the mat for three rounds in each of his last two fights, where his opponents returned DraftKings scores of 119 and 123. So targeting his fights has been a DFS goldmine, however, now he’ll face another one-dimensional striker for the first time in the UFC. That should remove the potential for him to get dominated on the mat again and give him plenty of opportunities to land a knockout. Working against him, Maheshate has never been finished in his short career, but he also hasn’t been tested a ton. Borshchev throws violent body shots and does a great job of targeting his opponent’s liver. And while Borshchev doesn’t have a ton of MMA experience, he had an extensive kickboxing career and should be the much more technical striker as he faces a young 23-year-old opponent. After getting dominated in his last two matches, this looks like a decent buy-low spot on Borshchev, but he will need to hand Maheshate the first early loss of his career to return value. The odds imply he has a 59% chance to win, a 42% chance to land a finish, and a 24% chance it comes in round one.
Maheshate is also a pure striker who showed his grappling limitations in a recent smothering decent loss. However, prior to that he showed off his power as he knocked out Steve Garcia in just 74 seconds and scored 113 DraftKings points as the underdog in the fight. He’s still really young and green at just 23 years old and only four years into his pro career, but he’s looked durable and powerful in his recent fights. However, he’s now facing a dangerous kickboxer who does a great job of digging body shots and we don’t know how Maheshate will react to those, even if he does have a decent chin. Neither guy has ever been finished in this matchup and they both rely entirely on their striking, which presents a clear path for how this fight busts if it goes the distance. We saw Maheshate fight to a low-volume decision on DWCS, where he only would have scored 52 DraftKings points and 49 points on FanDuel. So even at his cheaper price tag, Maheshate appears reliant on becoming the first fighter to ever knock Borshchev out to crack tournament winning lineups. The odds imply he has a 41% chance to win, a 22% chance to land a finish, and a 10% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #5
Carlos Diego Ferreira
14th UFC Fight (8-5)It’s now been a year and a half since Ferreira last competed after he got finished by Mateusz Gamrot in the second round of a December 2021 match. That was Ferreira’s third straight loss and second straight time getting finished in a R2 TKO. The last time he won a fight was in January 2020 when he submitted Anthony Pettis in the second round. In fairness to Ferreira, his recent three losses all came against elite grapplers in Mateusz Gamrot, Gregor Gillespie, and Beneil Dariush. Ferreira had been scheduled to face Drakkar Klose in July 2022, but ended up withdrawing due to injury and sitting out for another 10 months. Ferreira also withdrew from a fight due to an injury just before his loss to Gamrot and then got injured in the Gamrot fight to force the second round TKO stoppage, so father time may be catching up with the 38-year-old at this stage in his career as his body is no longer holding up. He also missed weight by a ridiculous 4.5 lb for his second most recent fight and overall it doesn’t appear that his body is holding up well in the late stages of his career.
Now 17-5 as a pro, Ferreira has three TKO wins, seven submissions, and seven decision victories. However, while 7 of his 17 pro wins have ended in submissions, he’s only landed one submission in his last 12 matches, with his second most recent submission win coming all the way back in his 2014 UFC debut. Three of his last four early wins came via TKO, and all 10 of his career finishes have come in the first two rounds, with four in round one and six in round two. On the other side of things, he has three KO/TKO losses, with one in round one and the last two in round two. His other two defeats both went the distance. After only getting finished once in his first twenty pro fights, he’s now been finished in each of his last two matches. Eight of his 22 pro fights have been stopped in the second round (6-2). To Ferreira’s credit, he’s only been defeated by top-level opponents in Mateusz Gamrot, Gregor Gillespie, Beneil Dariush (twice), and Dustin Poirier.
Overall, Ferreira is a 3rd degree BJJ black belt and very dangerous on the ground, both in top position and off his back. However, he’s had a tougher time getting fights to the ground and is not the most aggressive or effective wrestler. In 13 UFC fights, he’s only landed 6 of his 25 takedown attempts (24% accuracy). While he tried to take down 9 of his 13 opponents, he was only successful against three of them and one of those was in his 2014 UFC debut. He failed to take down 10 of his last 12 opponents and the only opponent he’s taken down since 2018 was Anthony Pettis (60% takedown defense). However, he was able to submit two of the three opponents that he did successfully get down. On the other side of things, his opponents took him down on 22 of their 60 attempts (63.3% defense). Ferreira is also a decent striker, although all three of his TKO wins in the UFC came against opponents with durability concerns and the last fighter he knocked out was a terrible Kyle Nelson in 2018. Ferreira has missed weight at multiple points in his career and at 38 years old and coming off a long layoff he’s definitely a guy to keep an eye on during weigh-ins.
Michael Johnson
28th UFC Fight (13-14)Coming off just his second victory in his last seven fights, Johnson won a decision over Marc Diakiese, who was coming off a pair of dominant wrestling performances. Johnson did a great job of keeping the fight standing as he stuffed all six of Diakiese’s takedown attempts, while outlanding Diakiese 83-55 in significant strikes and easily cruising to a win. Johnson is one scorecard away from being on a three-fight winning streak, with his only loss in his last three matches coming in a split decision against Jamie Mullarkey. Leading up to that close loss, Johnson knocked out a washed up Alan Patrick in the second round of a 2022 match. That’s Johnson’s only early win since he knocked out Dustin Poirier in 2016 and three of Johnson’s last four victories ended in decisions. Since that win over Poirier, Johnson has gone just 4-8, but has never shied away from tough matchups.
Now 21-18 as a pro, Johnson has nine wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and 10 decisions. He’s been knocked out twice, submitted nine times, and has seven decision losses. His last 12 fights have all made it out of the first round, with eight seeing round three, and six going the distance. While 11 of his 21 career wins came early, he only has two finishes since 2013 and only one since 2016. Johnson has spent most of his career at 155 lb, but moved down to 145 lb in 2018, where he went 2-2 before moving back up to 155 lb in 2019. Since moving back up, he’s gone just 2-4, with two of those fights ending in the second round (1-1) and four going the distance (1-3). Two of his last four and four of his last eight decisions have been split/majority, with him losing three of those four. All 11 of his early wins have come in the first two rounds, with eight in round one and three in round two. However, three of his last four finishes came by R2 KO.
Overall, Johnson relies almost entirely on his striking despite the fact that he wrestled in college. He’s only landed 10 takedowns in 27 UFC fights and just one in his last seven matches. However, he does have a solid 80% takedown defense and he’s only been taken down a total of 7 times on 38 opponent attempts in his last 11 fights. He’s been vulnerable to having his rangy limbs attacked by submissions through leg locks and kimuras. Johnson has had such a bizarre career that it’s hard to know what to expect out of him. He finds ways to lose fights he’s supposed to win and win fights he’s supposed to lose, although a lot of that can probably be attributed to his life and preparation outside of the Octagon, and he’s said he made a lot of poor choices earlier in his career. He seems a little more focussed on being a professional at this stage, although he also recently became a realtor so fighting isn’t getting his full focus.
Fight Prediction:
Johnson will have a 1” height advantage, but Ferreira will have a 1” reach advantage. Johnson is two years younger than the 38-year-old Ferreira.
Just like his last match, Johnson will need to come in prepared to defend takedowns, which has the potential to slow down the striking pace. As long as Johnson doesn’t overextend his striking combinations and fall into a takedown, he’s got solid defensive wrestling and Ferreira has just a 24% takedown accuracy. So while Johnson has been prone to getting submitted throughout his career, as long as he doesn’t make any mental mistakes, he should be able to keep this fight standing. And in a pure striking battle, Johnson will have the advantage as he’s much quicker with his hands and also has more power. Ferreira’s recent injury history is somewhat concerning for his ability to go three rounds, but his grappling threat will make it tougher for Johnson to get overly aggressive looking for a finish and we like Johnson to win a close, lower volume decision.
Our favorite bet here is “Ferreira/Johnson FGTD” at +150.
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DFS Implications:
Ferreira is now 38- years old, hasn’t fought in a year and a half, has been battling injuries, and lost his last three fights. Despite being a high-level grappler, he’s only landed six takedowns in 13 UFC fights and has never shown the ability to score well in a decision, averaging just 74 DraftKings points in his three UFC decision wins. While he’s very dangerous on the ground and Johnson has been prone to getting submitted, Ferreira struggles to get fights to the mat and has only been able to take down two of his last 12 opponents, while Johnson has a solid 80% takedown defense. That makes it hard to have much confidence in Ferreira getting this fight to the ground and he appears outgunned on the feet. Both guys are in their late 30s, which adds some volatility to this matchup, but we don’t love Ferreira’s chances of finding the finish he needs to score well here. And at his high price tag, even if he does land a finish he still has the potential to get priced out of tournament winning lineups. The odds imply Ferreira has a 58% chance to win, a 40% chance to land a finish, and a 22% chance it comes in round one.
Johnson has been an early KO or bust play throughout his career, with the one exception being a 2013 shellacking of Joe Lauzon where Johnson set career highs in both knockdowns and takedowns, landing two of each in the lopsided decision win that was good for 109 DraftKings points. In Johnson’s other seven UFC decision victories, he averaged just 65 DraftKings points, failing to top 76 points in any of those. He’s also only finished one opponent since 2016, which was a completely washed up Alan Patrick who hasn’t won a fight since 2018. Three of Johnson’s last four wins have come in low scoring decisions and his most recent victory was only good for 64 points. He’ll need to be mindful of the grappling threat of Ferreira in this matchup, so we don’t expect to see a ton of striking volume, and Johnson would have to be crazy to look for a takedown. That leaves him reliant on landing an early knockout to score well and even some of his second round knockouts have returned unimpressive scores of 89 and 87 points, although his most recent was good for 103 points. Overall, both guys are capable of finishing the other in this matchup, but there’s a good chance it ends in a lower scoring decision. The odds imply Johnson has a 42% chance to win, a 22% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #4
Joaquin Buckley
10th UFC Fight (5-4)Buckley has dropped two in a row and is coming off a second round knockout loss against Chris Curtis, which convinced Buckley to drop down to 170 lb for the first time in the UFC after fighting his first nine UFC fights at 185 lb. At just 5’10”, he was always undersized at 185 lb and often came in under the 186 lb limit by multiple pounds. He recently said he was fighting at his natural weight and didn’t even have to cut down, which adds up when you see where he had been weighing in. He did start his career at 170 lb, going 8-2 at the weight class in his first 10 fights, before he moved up to 185 lb in 2019 when he joined the LFA. He then stayed at 185 lb when he came into the UFC and after starting out 5-2 with the organization he never had a real reason to drop back down to 170 lb until his recent two fight skid. His first five UFC fights all ended in knockouts (3-2), while two of his last four went the distance. Despite seven of his nine UFC fights ending in knockouts, only one of those finishes occurred in the first round, which was a loss to Alessio Di Chirico. All four of Buckley’s UFC finishes came in the later rounds, with three ending in round two and one in round three. He also got knocked out in the third round of his short notice UFC debut against Kevin Holland and then knocked out in the second round of his recent fight against Chris Curtis. Following that loss, he’s actually been training with Curtis and Sean Strickland at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas. Just before losing to Curtis, he dropped a decision to Nassourdine Imavov, after winning three in a row.
Now 15-6 as a pro, Buckley has 11 wins by KO/TKO and four decisions. Four of his knockout wins occurred in round one, five ended in round two, and two came in round three. He’s also been knocked out four times himself and has two decision losses. Two of his knockout losses occurred in round one, one ended in round two, and the other occurred in round three. When Buckley was previously competing at 170 lb from 2014 to 2018 three of his eight wins went the distance, with his other five ending in knockouts. He has only been knocked out once at 170 lb (R1 2016), with his other loss going the distance. His last three 170 lb fights all ended with the judges (2-1).
Overall, Buckley is a power puncher who relies mostly on his striking, but will mix in occasional takedown attempts. In his nine UFC fights, he’s landed 7 of his 23 takedown attempts (30.4% accuracy), while his opponents have gotten him down on 7 of their 21 attempts (66.7% defense). The only time he ever landed more than a single takedown in a fight was in a 2022 decision win over Abdul Razak Alhassan, where Buckley randomly landed five takedowns on eight attempts. He’s never sniffed a submission and doesn’t look dangerous on the ground. He’s also never landed more than 51 significant strikes in a UFC fight and only averages 3.87 SSL/min and 3.53 SSA/min. With Buckley moving down a weight class, it will be important to monitor him closely on the scale.
Andre Fialho
6th UFC Fight (2-3)Looking to bounce back from a pair of late-round knockout losses, Fialho recently got finished in the third round by a 38-year-old Muslim Salikhov after getting knocked out by Jake Matthews in round two just before that. Matthews notably hadn’t knocked anybody out since 2015 going into that November 2022 match. Fialho made his short notice UFC debut in January 2022 when he lost a decision to Michel Pereira, but bounced back with a first round knockout win over Miguel Baeza in April. Then just three weeks later he landed another first round knockout against a debuting Cameron VanCamp. That breakneck pace appeared to catch up with him at that point as he then got knocked out in June by Matthews and November by Salikhov. Fialho fought four times in 2021, winning all four by knockout, and then five times in 2022, with four of those also ending in knockouts (2-2). So eight of his last nine fights have ended in knockouts, with him landing the first six of those but getting finished in the last two.
Now 16-6 as a pro, Fialho has 13 wins by KO, one by submission (2014), and two decision victories. Twelve of his 14 finishes occurred in round one, with the other two ending in the first half of round two. Fialho’s last six wins have all come by KO/TKO, with the last five ending in round one. The last time he won a decision was in 2018 and he’s lost the only two decisions he’s been to since. His other four career losses all ended in knockouts, and all against fighters who are now in the UFC. Prior to joining the UFC, he got knocked out by Chidi Njokuani in just 21 seconds in a 2016 Bellator fight, before suffering a late third round KO loss to Chris Curtis in the PFL in 2019. Then he most recently got knocked out in the second and third rounds of his last two fights.
Overall, Fialho is essentially a one-dimensional boxer, but at 29 years old he still has time to round out his skillset. He’s got good hands, but he can be a little heavy on his lead leg and has looked prone to getting that leg chewed up. He’s most dangerous in the opening five minutes and tends to fade down the stretch in longer fights. He has a background in boxing and trains out of Sanford MMA. He’s a BJJ purple belt, and he’s not much of a submission threat with just one win by submission on his record, which came in his second pro fight back in 2014. He doesn’t throw a ton of volume, averaging just 3.17 SSL/min, but absorbs significantly more at 6.22 SSA/min (2nd most on the slate). His forward pressure, heavy hands, dubious striking defense, and suspect chin typically result in his fights ending in knockouts, whether it’s for him or his opponent. He doesn’t wear damage very well and it looked like his brain shut off before his body did in each of his last two knockout losses. While he hasn’t even attempted a takedown in his five UFC fights, his opponents have gotten him down twice on seven attempts (71.4% defense). Only two of his five opponents even tried to take him down, with each of them landing one of their attempts.
Fight Prediction:
Fialho will have a 2” height advantage, but Buckley will have a 2” reach advantage.
Despite Buckley moving down a weight class, Fialho is still the taller fighter and Buckley probably should have been fighting at 170 lb all along. That alleviates some of the concerns with moving down in weight and it doesn’t seem like Buckley is having to kill himself to make 170 lb. With that said, the move does still add some uncertainty and it’s been five years since he last competed at 170 lb. His chin already hasn’t been great, so if the weight cut does play a factor then we could see him really struggle to take a punch. However, Fialho is even less durable than Buckley and both of these two have been knocked out four times in the past and are one punch away from a free sandwhich. Buckley has had the better cardio of the two, although the weight cut has the potential to impact that as well. Historically, Fialho has been the most dangerous in the first round, while the majority of Buckley’s finishes have occurred in the later rounds, most often in round two. So at least on paper, this looks pretty cut and dry. Fialho will likely need to land another first round knockout to win, while it sets up perfectly for Buckley to land a knockout in the later rounds. However, the one other unknown with Buckley’s move in weight is what effect it will have on his power and his last three fights at 170 lb did all go the distance. With that said, Fialho’s poor chin and questionable cardio reduce the chances that this fight makes it 15 minutes and we like someone to get knocked out here. We don’t have the most confidence in Buckley, especially with the weight move, but we’ll say he knocks Fialho out in round two.
Our favorite bet here is “Joaquin Buckley R2 or R3 KO” at +370.
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DFS Implications:
Buckley has landed knockouts in four of his five UFC wins, although he’s yet to finish a UFC opponent in the first round. When you combine his tendency to land knockouts later in fights with his lower striking volume and general lack of grappling, it’s no surprise that he’s averaged “just” 95 DraftKings points in his five UFC wins. The only two times he topped the century mark on DraftKings were in a pair of second round knockouts that each included two knockdowns. His other second round KO win scored 98 points, while his third round knockout and lone decision victory both scored exactly 80 points. The only reason he even scored that well in a decision was because he randomly landed five takedowns, despite having a total of two takedowns landed in his other eight UFC matches. At his high price tag on this slate, Buckley appears reliant on landing either a first round knockout or a second round finish with multiple knockdowns. The last time he knocked anybody out in round one was 2019, two years before he joined the UFC. Now he’s dropping down to 170 lb for the first time in the UFC, which adds a lot of uncertainty to the mix. However, Buckley does get a favorable matchup here when it comes to landing a knockout, as Fialho has been knocked out in each of his last two fights and four times in his career. The odds imply Buckley has a 66% chance to win, a 46% chance to land a finish, and a 26% chance it comes in round one.
Fialho is your quintessential R1 KO or bust play with both of his UFC wins ending in first round knockouts that scored 107 and 113 DraftKings points. He’s 0-3 in UFC fights that made it past the first round and got knocked out in the later rounds in each of his last two losses. He’s about as durable as a wet paper bag and has the cardio of a sprinter. His early success in the UFC has resulted in him being popular despite all of his shortcomings and now he’s the third cheapest fighter on the card. Despite his recent two early losses, we expect him to be somewhat popular once again, although we should see his ownership come down some from past fights. This isn’t a terrible matchup for him, as he takes on an opponent who’s also been knocked out four times and is dropping down a weight class. That move adds a lot of uncertainty with Buckley, specifically with how he’ll take a punch. However, it should be an easier cut for Buckley than most as he had been fighting at his natural weight previously and not cutting any. The odds imply Fialho has a 34% chance to win, a 21% chance to land a finish, and a 10% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #3
Loopy Godinez
8th UFC Fight (4-3)Just six weeks removed from a close split-decision win over Cynthia Calvillo, Godinez is stepping in on short notice (again), which has not benefited her so far in the UFC. All three of her UFC losses came in short notice fights, so it’s puzzling why she continues to take them. Godinez got outlanded in significant strikes by Calvillo 104-87 and got taken down once while failing to land any takedowns of her own, so she appeared fortunate to even get her hand raised. Prior to that win, Godinez lost a close decision to Angela Hill in a short notice fight where Godinez was coming off a hip injury. Just before that, Godinez won a pair of wrestling-heavy decisions, where she absolutely dominated Ariane Carnelossi and Loma Lookboonmee on the mat, landing 13 takedowns between the two fights. Godinez has gone the distance in her last five and nine of her last 10 fights, with the one exception being a 2021 first round submission win over Silvana Gomez Juarez. Godinez made her short notice UFC debut against Jessica Penne earlier in 2021 and despite finishing ahead in significant strikes and takedowns, somehow lost a terrible split decision. Godinez bounced back with the win over Gomez Juarez, but then foolishly took a fight up a weight class just a week later and lost another short notice decision to Luana Carolina.
Now 9-3 as a pro, Godinez has one TKO win, one by submission, and seven decision victories. Both of her early wins occurred in the first round, with one coming in her second pro fight and the other in her second UFC fight. All three of her losses have ended in close decisions, with one of those being a questionable split result against Jessica Penne in Godinez’s UFC debut, another coming against Luana Carolina, where Godinez was fighting up a weight class just seven days after submitting Silvana Gomez Juarez, and the third on short notice against Angela Hill in front of Hill’s home crowd. Her last loss was at a 120 lb Catchweight, since it was on short notice, and the loss before that was at 125 lb, also on short notice. However, she’s 4-1 in the UFC at 115 lb and got robbed in the one loss.
Overall, Godinez is a solid wrestler, and a decent boxer. She’s landed 24 takedowns on 55 attempts in her seven UFC fights (43.6% accuracy), but her takedowns have been sporadic and she only landed one in her last two fights after completing 13 in her two matches prior to that. On the other side of things, she’s only been taken down on 4 of 18 opponent attempts (77.8% defense), although four of the five opponents to try and take her down landed one of their attempts. Her striking numbers are lower at 3.42 SSL/min and 3.18 SSA/min, but only because she’s found so much wrestling success. We’ve seen far less grappling in her last two fights, where she averaged 5.97 SSL/min and 6.30 SSA/min. All of her striking battles have been very close and we only see her dominate opponents when she’s really able to get her wrestling going.
Emily Ducote
3rd UFC Fight (1-1)Ducote had originally been scheduled to face Polyana Viana on April 29th, but Viana asked for the fight to be pushed back three weeks and then dropped out altogether. Godinez was announced as the replacement two weeks out, with the fight being moved from 115 lb to a 120 lb Catchweight. After winning a one-sided decision in her UFC debut against Jessica Penne, Ducote got massively outlanded by Angela Hill (182-71 in significant strikes) in her recent decision loss. Ducote was able to lean on her leg kicks against Penne, as she landed a ridiculous 51 leg strikes that Penne never had an answer for. However, Ducote only landed four leg kicks against Hill and served as a punching bag for most of that fight. Prior to making her UFC debut, Ducote landed a pair of knockouts in back-to-back Strawweight championship wins with Invicta.
Now 12-7 as a pro, Ducote has three wins by KO/TKO, four submissions, and five decision victories. All three of her KO/TKO wins occurred in the first two rounds over her last seven fights. Three of her four submission wins occurred in rounds two and three, with her only first round submission ending in a 2017 rear-naked choke. She’s never been knocked out, but was submitted once in the 5th round of a 2017 Bellator Flyweight title fight. Ducote followed that up with two more losses in Bellator at 125 lb, before leaving the organization and dropping back down to 115 lb in 2019, where she’s since gone 6-2. She started her career at 115 lb in 2015, but moved up to 125 lb in 2016 and four of her seven career losses came at 125 lb. Outside of her one early loss, Ducote also has six decision defeats and is just 5-6 with the judges in her career. Three of her last five wins have come by KO/TKO, after she failed to land any knockouts in her first 12 pro fights.
Overall, Ducote is a Taekwondo black belt and a patient counter striker. She wrestled in both high-school and college and is also a BJJ black belt who will look for armbars off her back. However, she hasn’t mixed in much offensive wrestling lately and has only taken down one of her last seven opponents, while not even attempting a takedown in five of those seven fights. She’s only attempted two takedowns in the UFC, failing to land either of them, but she was able to stuff all eight of the attempts against her in those two matches and we’ve yet to see her on the mat in the UFC. She averages 6.23 SSL/min and 8.17 SSA/min, both the most on this slate.
Fight Prediction:
Both fighters are 5’2” but Ducote will have a 2” reach advantage.
This is an interesting matchup where Ducote appears well equipped to defend takedowns if Godinez looks to wrestle and also has the ability to hunt for submissions if the fight does hit the mat. Both ladies are decent strikers, but Ducote looks to have the power advantage as well, in addition to being the busier striker so far in the UFC. When you add in the fact that Godinez took this fight on short notice and has struggled in short notice opportunities in the past, it’s pretty tempting to take the underdog in this matchup. However, the market disagrees and the line has moved sharply in Godinez’s favor throughout the week. We expect Ducote to force Godinez into a close striking battle that could go either way with the judges, but based on Godinez’s record in short notice fights and the plus money you can get on Ducote, we’ll say Ducote gets the win, most likely in a close decision, but with a slight chance she can find a finish.
Our favorite bet here is Ducote’s ML at +130.
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DFS Implications:
Godinez has averaged 102 DraftKings points in her four UFC wins, despite three of those going the distance. However, she only scored 66 DraftKings points in her recent split-decision win over Cynthia Calvillo, which took place just six weeks ago. Godinez is now stepping into this matchup on short notice and on a quick turnaround, which are both red flags. Godinez put up huge DraftKings scores of 129 and 127 in two of her four wins, but that required her to dominate in the wrestling exchanges and now she’s facing a BJJ black belt with a 100% takedown defense so far in the UFC. We don’t see Godinez finding a ton of wrestling success in this matchup and even if she does land a takedown she’ll be at risk of getting armbarred. And while Ducote just absorbed an other-worldly 182 significant strikes in her last fight, we don’t see Godinez landing nearly that many strikes. That will make it tough for Godinez to score well enough to return value as the favorite and we’re not very excited about playing her here. The one thing she does have going for her is that she doesn’t project to be very highly owned, but it looks like that’s for good reason. The odds imply she has a 59% chance to win, a 13% chance to land a finish, and a 6% chance it comes in round one.
Ducote hasn’t shown much of an interest in utilizing her wrestling background for offensive purposes, which leaves her reliant on striking and finishes to score well in DFS. She was able to land 116 significant strikes in her UFC debut, but still only scored 77 DraftKings points in the decision win. That came against a one-dimensional grappler in Jessica Penne, who’s extremely hittable, and we saw Ducote struggle mightily in her next match when she took on a striker in Angela Hill, who outlanded Ducote 182-71 in significant strikes. Sure Ducote landed a pair of knockouts just before joining the UFC, but let's not forget who she was facing there. The first of them was against UFC washout Danielle Taylor, who’s lost four straight and is just 2-7 in her last nine fights, and the other was against Alesha Zappitella, who’s lost her last two and is just 4-4 in her last eight matches. Ducate also lost a 2019 split decision to UFC fighter Kanako Murata, who was able to take Ducote down seven times in the fight. However, Murata is a really solid wrestler and Ducote has only been taken down one time in her other six most recent fights. The fact that Ducote hardly looked to wrestle against Angela Hill, failing on her only two takedown attempts, isn’t encouraging for her wrestling potential moving forward and she’ll be reliant on landing finishes to really score well. However, at her cheaper price tag in this matchup she could potentially serve as a value play in a high-volume decision win, but it would require there not to be many high scoring underdogs on the card. The fact that Godinez took the fight on short notice and fought just six weeks ago adds to Ducote’s appeal somewhat, but she likely still needs a finish to be useful. The odds imply she has a 41% chance to win, a 17% chance to land a finish, and an 8% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #2
Anthony Hernandez
7th UFC Fight (4-2)Breaking in a new six-fight contract following three straight victories, Hernandez recently became the first fighter to ever submit Marc-Andre Barriault. Hernandez smothered Barriault for the entire fight, taking him down eight times with over eight minutes in control time, before submitting him midway through round three. Both fighters suffered injuries in the fight, with Barriault dealing with a rib issue and Hernandez hurting his thumb. That’s the second straight fight where Hernandez landed eight takedowns, notching the same total in his second most recent fight in a decision win over Josh Fremd, who in fairness, was making his short notice UFC debut. That was only the second decision Hernandez had been to and he rarely requires the judges. The only other time he required the scorecards was in a 2018 five-round LFA title fight victory against Brendan Allen. Prior to beating Fremd, Hernandez took off 14 months after pulling off a massive upset in a submission win over Rodolfo Vieira in February 2021.
Now 10-2 as a pro, Hernandez has one win by KO, seven by submission, and two decision victories. His lone knockout win came 51 seconds into his 2014 pro debut and his last seven finishes have all ended in submissions. All four of his submission victories prior to joining the UFC occurred in round one, while all three of his UFC submissions came in the later rounds, with two in round two and one in round three. Both of his losses also ended early, with a second round submission in his 2019 UFC debut and a 39 second R1 KO loss to Kevin Holland two fights later in 2020. However, after starting just 1-2 in the UFC he’s now won three straight. While 10 of his 12 pro fights have ended early, five of his six UFC fights have made it out of round one. Just before joining the UFC he also knocked Jordan Wright out in the first round, but the results were overturned to a No Contest when Hernandez tested positive for THC.
Overall, Hernandez is a BJJ brown belt and relies heavily on his grappling, while doing a tremendous job of weaponizing his cardio. He’s also not helpless on the feet and averages a respectable 4.03 SSL/min and 3.50 SSA/min. While he failed to attempt a takedown in three of his first four UFC matches, he has still landed 22 takedowns on 34 attempts (64.7% accuracy) in his six UFC fights. He’s also been taken down six times himself on 18 opponent attempts (66.7% defense). Hernandez will be breaking in a brand new six-fight contract here after getting a pay raise.
Edmen Shahbazyan
9th UFC Fight (5-3)Coming off his first win since 2019, Shahbazyan landed a late second round TKO against Dalcha Lungiambula after losing three straight fights. Prior to that win, Shahbazyan moved to Xtreme Couture, after spending the first part of his career at Glendale Fighting Club. Leading up to that major life change, Shahbazyan suffered a R2 TKO loss to Nassourdine Imavov, a decision loss to Jack Hermansson, and a R3 TKO loss to Derek Brunson. All three of those losses came on the mat and Shahbazyan has really struggled with his ground game. Prior to the string of losses, Shahbazyan started his UFC career with a decision win over Darren Stewart followed by three straight first round wins and six of his last seven fights have ended early.
Now 12-3 as a pro, Shahbazyan has 10 wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and one decision victory. The first 10 finishes of his career ended in round one, while his most recent ended in round two. He has two late-round ground and pound TKO losses and one decision defeat, with all of those losses coming in his last four fights. Ten of his first 11 pro fights ended in round one, but his last four have all made it to the later rounds, with two seeing round three, and one going the distance.
Overall, Shahbazyan is extremely dangerous early on in fights, but tends to gas later on in matches. He’s really struggled on the mat, but has been training with a new team since 2022, so perhaps they’ve cleaned some things up and he did defend all four of the takedowns attempted against him in his last fight. He’s also still just 25 years old so he has plenty of time to improve. Between his eight UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, Shahbazyan has landed 10 takedowns on 21 attempts (37% accuracy). However, after going 8 for 21 in his UFC debut, he’s gone just 2 for 6 in his last seven fights, so his numbers are skewed from one outlier performance. On the other side of things, his opponents have gotten him down 8 times on 23 attempts (65.2% defense). Shahbazyan is a Shotokan Karate black belt and is a powerful striker, especially early on in fights, but his biggest weaknesses have been cardio and defensive wrestling, which is far from ideal in this next matchup.
Fight Prediction:
Shahbazyan will have a 2” height advantage, but Hernandez will have a 1” reach advantage. Hernandez is four years older than the 25-year-old Shahbazyan.
Stylistically, this looks like one of the worst possible matchups Shahbazyan could have asked for as he goes up against a relentless wrestler with seemingly never ending cardio. That will test Shahbazyan’s biggest two weaknesses and leaves him reliant on landing an early hail mary knockout or submission to win the fight. Look for Hernandez to put it on him from the start with relentless takedown attempts as he pushes a pace that Shahbazyan will have zero chance of keeping up with. While Shahbazyan has never been submitted, Hernandez is rarely looking for ground and pound finishes and prefers to choke opponents out. Once Shahbazyan’s gas tank is drained, we don’t see him successfully fending off too many submission attempts and we like Hernandez to lock up another late round submission, most likely in round two.
Our favorite bet here is “Hernandez/Shahbazyan Fight Ends in SUB” at +175.
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DFS Implications:
Hernandez does an exceptional job of wearing out his opponents with his wrestling and will now face a fighter in Shahbazyan who has struggled with both his cardio and his defensive wrestling. Honestly the matchup seems almost too good to be true and Hernandez has averaged an insane 117 DraftKings points in his four UFC wins and 125 points on FanDuel. Despite his grappling-heavy style, Hernandez has shown the ability to put up huge scores on both sites as he puts up big takedown numbers and rarely requires the judges. Even his lone decision victory was good for 117 DraftKings points and 112 points on FanDuel. As long as Hernandez can avoid getting finished, he should put up another big score, likely with another late finish. However, he won’t go overlooked by the field and we expect him to be one of the most popular fighters on the slate. So there is some merit to considering ways he fails when building tournament lineups, but he’s easily the best play on the slate in terms of pure scoring potential. The odds imply Hernandez has a 66% chance to win, a 43% chance to land a finish, and a 23% chance it comes in round one.
Shahbazyan is coming off the first finish of his career to come beyond the first round, but has historically slowed down later in fights, leaving him reliant on landing early finishes to win and score well. While his last match was somewhat slower paced and he was still able to have the cardio to land a finish late in round two, Hernandez is a much more uptempo fighter and we expect Shahbazyan to slow down soon in this match. He’ll also have limited opportunities to find a knockout as he’ll constantly be defending takedowns. There’s always a slight chance he could lock up a guillotine, but the chances are unlikely. While we’d be surprised to see Shahbazyan find the finish he needs to win and score well, it’s certainly not impossible and he would be a great leverage play in tournaments if it does happen. The odds imply Shahbazyan has a 34% chance to win, a 20% chance to land a finish, and a 10% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #1
Mackenzie Dern
11th UFC Fight (7-3)This fight had originally been scheduled to go three rounds on last week’s card, but got promoted to the main event here after Julianna Pena dropped out against Amanda Nunes on June 10th and Irene Aldana was promoted from the main event here to a title shot on that card.
Looking to bounce back from a five-round majority decision loss to Yan Xiaonan, Dern’s last three fights have all gone the distance (1-2), with the last two of those being split (1-1). Prior to her loss to Yan, Dern won a split decision over Tecia Torres, where Dern got outlanded in the first round, yet two of the three judges still scored the round for Dern. Had one more judge scored that round for Torres, Dern would be on a three-fight losing streak, as she lost a five-round decision to Marina Rodriguez just before that win. After submitting three of her first five opponents in the UFC, Dern’s only early win in her last five fights was a 2021 R1 submission over Nina Nunes, who was coming off a two year layoff, just had a baby, and then retired after her next fight.
Now 12-3 as a pro, Dern has seven wins by submission and five decision victories. Six of her seven submission wins came in the first round, and her only career fight to make it past the first round and not end in a decision was a 2017 third round armbar victory. She’s never been finished, with all three of her losses going the distance. All of her UFC fights have ended in either first round submissions (4-0) or decisions (3-3), with three of those decisions being split (2-1).
This will be the third five-round fight of Dern’s career, with both of her previous two ending in decision losses over her last three fights. The first came against a one-dimensional Muay Thai striker in Marina Rodriguez and Dern lost a five-round decision. The second came against another one-dimensional striker in Yan Xiaonan and Dern once again lost a decision. Both of those losses came in the smaller cage at the Apex, and Dern said she had been looking forward to fighting in front of a live crowd last week before this fight was moved from Charlotte back to the Apex.
Overall, Dern has improved her striking over the course of her UFC career, but still relies mostly on her grappling. She’s landed just 5 of her 44 takedown attempts (11.4% accuracy). On the other side of things, only three of her opponents have notched takedown attempts against her, landing three of their five attempts (40% defense). While Dern’s takedown accuracy is terrible, she has such a large bag of tricks to entangle herself with her opponents that she often doesn't rely on traditional takedowns to engage in grappling. Whether that’s pulling guard, grabbing a limb, or pretending to slip on a banana peel and hoping her opponent will join her on the mat, Dern generally does a good job of finding ways to get fights to the ground. As a high level BJJ black belt and ADCC world champion, once Dern gets opponents down she’s exceptional at finishing fights. Interestingly, three of her four UFC submission wins came in fights where she failed to land an official takedown, while three of the four fights where she did land a takedown went the distance. While Dern had a lot of success submitting lower level opponents early in her UFC career, her finishing abilities have been far less effective as she’s begun facing tougher ranked opponents. In addition to not having much time to prepare for the additional rounds in this fight, Dern recently talked about how her ongoing divorce has been really hard and how her head coach was busy helping other fighters for a lot of this camp. Dern also said she’s been trying to add some muscle, which made her a little nervous about this weight cut.
Angela Hill
23rd UFC Fight (10-12)After going just 1-5 over a six fight stretch from 2020 to 2022 with three split-decision losses, Hill has now won two in a row and is coming off a dominant decision win over Emily Ducote. Hill outlanded Ducote 182-71 in significant strikes, while also stuffing both of her takedown attempts, as she cruised to a unanimous 30-27 victory. Prior to that, Hill won a close decision over Loopy Godinez. Leading up to her pair of recent wins, Hill faced a gauntlet of tough opponents in Virna Jandiroba, Amanda Lemos, and Tecia Torres and lost decisions in all three.
Now 15-12 as a pro, Hill has five wins by KO/TKO and 10 decision victories. Three of her five knockouts occurred in her first six pro fights, with two of those coming in Invicta. Her only two early wins in her last 21 fights came in a 2019 R3 TKO victory via doctor stoppage and a 2020 R2 TKO against a helpless Hannah Cifers. Since that January 2020 finish of Cifers, Hill has fought to nine straight decisions (4-5). She has never been knocked out, but she’s been submitted in the first round twice (2015 & 2019) and has 10 decision losses. She’s been to five split decisions in her career, losing the last four of those and has never won a split decision in the UFC. Eighteen of her 22 UFC fights have gone the distance (8-10).
This will be the 4th five-round fight of Hill’s career, but just her second in the UFC. Her first two five-round fights were with Invicta back in 2016 and Hill won both by decision, with one of those being split. Her only five-round fight in the UFC ended in a 2020 split-decision loss to Michelle Waterson-Gomez, which should have gone Hill’s way.
Overall, Hill has always been a decent striker, although she’s not much of a finishing threat and relies more on volume to outland her way to decision wins. She averages 5.68 SSL/min and 4.97 SSA/min. To her credit, she’s been improving her grappling in recent years. In her first 16 UFC fights, Hill landed just six total takedowns, while she’s now matched that number in her last six fights. She has a 77% career takedown defense and just looking at her last 11 fights, she’s been taken down 11 times on 55 attempts (80% defense). No one has ever taken her down more than three times in any of her 22 UFC fights, and only two of her last 17 opponents have gotten her down more than once. Hill has won five of the last six fights where she wasn’t taken down, with the one exception being the close split-decision loss to Amanda Lemos.
Fight Prediction:
Dern will have a 1” height advantage, while Hill will have a 1” reach advantage. Dern is eight years younger than the 38-year-old Hill.
This is your classic grappler versus striker matchup, where Hill will need to keep the fight standing at all costs, while Dern will be doing whatever she can to get it to the mat. On paper, Hill’s 77% takedown defense looks great against the 11% takedown accuracy of Dern, but it’s important to keep in mind that Dern can force opponents to engage in grappling exchanges even without landing a takedown. With that said, Hill’s defensive wrestling and grappling have both improved over the years, and while she got taken down three times and controlled for seven minutes by Virna Jandiroba in her last loss, she was able to escape multiple submission attempts. Dern isn’t nearly as good of a wrestler as Jandiroba, but is a more dangerous grappler when fights do hit the mat. So Hill should have an easier time of keeping this next fight standing, but will be at a greater risk of getting submitted if she does end up on the ground. Hill has Dern easily outclassed on the feet, but the grappling threat of Dern will likely result in Hill coming in with a more cautious approach, especially early on. On the flipside, Dern will be able to completely let her hands go and be as wild as she wants, as she will have non concern about Hill taking her down. That has the potential to close the gap some on the feet, but could also result in Dern getting cracked if she comes out too aggressively. At some point in this fight, Dern will probably figure out a way to force a grappling exchange or two, and that’s where the fight will most likely be decided. If Hill can avoid getting submitted, we like her chances of winning a close decision. The one wildcard in this matchup will be cardio, as this fight was changed from three rounds to five with only a couple of weeks to prepare. With that said, they’ve both shown the ability to go five rounds in the past and we’re not overly concerned with either of them.
Our favorite bet here is Hill’s ML at +160.
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DFS Implications:
Dern has averaged 88 DraftKings points in her seven UFC wins, and if we break that down further she’s averaged 103 DraftKings points in her four first round submission victories but just 67 in her three decision wins. Two of her last three fights ended in five-round decision losses. While she only scored 49 DraftKings points and 40 points on FanDuel in the first of those, she was able to score 94 DraftKings points in the last as she landed nearly three times as many total strikes (224 vs. 80). However, she still only landed 61 significant strikes and still only scored 59 points on FanDuel. So had that recent majority decision loss gone her way, she would have put up 124 DraftKings points and 79 points on FanDuel. Just keep in mind, that’s the only time she’s ever sniffed a usable score with the judges and it required her landing an unusually high number of total strikes. Only once has Dern topped 106 DraftKings points, which came in a late first round submission win over Nina Nunes where Dern finished with four minutes of control time. Her other three first round submission wins in the UFC scored 102, 92, and 106 DraftKings points. The only time she ever landed a finish beyond the first round in her career was in 2017, when she won by third round submission in an Invicta fight. She only averages 3.02 SSL/min and in 10 UFC appearances, she has only landed 5 of her 44 takedown attempts (11.4% accuracy). She often resorts to jumping guard or dragging opponents to the mat by a limb, which doesn’t score points in DFS and makes it tougher for her to put up really big scores. As one of the more expensive fighters on the slate, she could easily get priced out of winning lineups even if she does find the first round submission victory that she’s historically needed to score decently. The odds imply Dern has a 61% chance to win, a 35% chance to land a finish, and a 13% chance it comes in round one.
Hill is coming off a career-best 182 significant strikes landed, where she scored 104 DraftKings points and 129 points on FanDuel in a three-round decision win over Emily Ducote. That’s the second most DraftKings points Hill has scored in 22 UFC appearances and only the third time she topped 86 points. We’ve only seen her in one other five-round UFC fight, which ended in a split decision against Michelle Waterson-Gomez that arguably should have gone Hill’s way. Hill landed 131 significant strikes while successfully defending all but one of Waterson’s 18 takedown attempts in that fight and scored 59 DraftKings points and 79 points on FanDuel in the questionable loss. If the decision had gone her way, she would have scored 89 DraftKings points and 99 points on FanDuel. At Hill’s cheap price tag in this next match, a similar performance would keep her squarely in the value play discussion, but she could also easily get left out of winning tournament lineups if we see multiple other high scoring underdogs. So it’s not a win-and-your-in type of situation and we’ve seen multiple cheap five-round female underdogs win in the past and still get left out of winning tournament lineups, including Yan Xiaonan in the last Dern main event, where Yan was priced identically to Hill here at $7,100 and didn’t crack the winning lineup on either site, scoring 90 points on DraftKings and 88 on FanDuel. The threat of Dern’s takedowns should force Hill to fight a more tactical gameplan, which will make it tougher for her to keep as high of a striking pace. The other factor to consider here is this fight was changed from three rounds to five with only a couple of weeks to prepare, so it’s possible one or both of them paces themselves a little more to assure they have the cardio to go five rounds. And while it’s always remotely possible Hill slices Dern open with an elbow and forces a doctor stoppage, the chances of Hill finishing Dern as very small. So we’re treating her as nothing more than a value play option, but we do like her chances of winning a decision as long as she can avoid getting submitted. The odds imply Hill has a 39% chance to win, an 11% chance to land a finish, and a 3% chance it comes in round one.
Good luck to everyone this week, we hope you win big! Tag us on Twitter @dfs_mma with your winnings so we can see how you did!
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- Anthony Hernandez OVER 3 TDs
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