The Sheet

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Fighter Notes:

Fight #12

Martin Buday

5th UFC Fight (4-0)

Buday recently extended his winning streak to 12 with a first round kimura submission win over a terrible Josh Parisian. That was Buday’s first finish in the UFC, after his previous three victories all ended in decisions. The most recent of those decision victories came against a cardiovascularly challenged Jake Collier, after Buday won a questionable split-decision over Lukasz Brzeski, where Buday got outlanded 118-66 in significant strikes with no takedowns, knockdows, or appreciable control time accrued by either guy. Clearly the judges thought Buday was doing more damage, as he got considerably outlanded in every round. Prior to that, he won a third round technical decision over Chris Barnett in his UFC debut, where the fight was stopped in round three following an illegal shot from Buday, but it went to the scorecards and ended in a technical decision, opposed to being a DQ win for Barnett. Just before that, Buday punched his ticket to the UFC with a first round TKO win on DWCS in 2021.

Now 13-1 as a pro, Buday has seven wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and four decision victories. Six of his finishes ended in round one with the two occurring in round two, although five of his last seven fights made it out of the first round. His only career loss occurred in his second pro fight in a 2017 decision against a stud Heavyweight grappler in Juan Espino. Buday has only seen the third round four times in his career, with all of those fights ending with the judges.

Overall, Buday is primarily a striker but is also a BJJ brown belt and actually started off training in Jiu-Jitsu before transitioning to MMA. We saw some of that in a September 2019 submission win where he landed two takedowns and finished his opponent early in round two with a kimura and then he landed another takedown followed by a kimura finish in his last fight. However his takedown attempts have been very sporadic and between his four UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, he only attempted two takedowns, landing one of them. Over that same stretch, his opponents only tried to take him down once, which he was able to stuff. So there’s only been one takedown landed in any of those fights and he quickly locked up a kimura after landing it. While he isn’t an overly impressive striker, he finds ways to win and does a good job of landing damage out of the clinch, where he likes to throw heavy knees. He’s a big Heavyweight who has to cut down to make 265 lb and he relies on his size to help him win ugly fights. Buday doesn’t look like any sort of threat to make a real run in the UFC, but he should be able to find success against other low level Heavyweights, which is all the UFC has been giving him so far.

Shamil Gaziev

1st UFC Fight (0-0)

Three months removed from a first round submission win on DWCS, Gaziev is entering the UFC with an undefeated record, although he only turned pro three years ago and has fought a lot of dubious competition. He landed a quick knockdown in the opening seconds of his DWCS fight, but then had his back taken on the mat before reversing the position and working his way to a rear naked choke midway through the first round. Despite that fight ending so quickly, Gaziev was exhausted in his post fight interview. Prior to that, Gaziev landed a first round knockout against former UFC fighter Darko Stosic, a name that seemingly adds some credibility to Gaziev’s record, at least until you remember that Stosic went 1-3 in the UFC at LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT, and is severely undersized when coming up at Heavyweight. Gaziev landed a knockout 46 seconds into round two just before that, which was the second longest fight of Gaziev’s career. His only fight to make it past the 5:46 mark came just before that in a split decision win where Gaziev started strong before nearly dying of exhaustion and limping his way to the judges through desperation lay and pray. He could barely stand up as they read the scorecards in that fight and nearly got submitted via kimura in the second round.

Now 11-0 as a pro, Gaziev has seven KO/TKO wins, three submissions, and one decision victory. He has five first round knockouts and two in the opening minute of round two. All three of his submission wins ended in first round rear naked chokes.

Overall, Gaziev was born in Dagestan, where he took the road less traveled and became part of the national volleyball team. He then got recruited to MMA by the famous Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov. Gaziev started training in MMA when he was 15 years old and stuck with it until he was 19, but then stepped away from the sport for the next decade, before returning to it when he was 29 and then turned pro a year later in late 2020. He’s spent a little bit of time training with Ciryl Gane, although you wouldn’t guess it by watching him fight. Gaziev has some of the worst cardio you’ll see and begins to fade after the opening minutes of fights. By the middle of the second round he becomes essentially useless. While he does have good power in his hands and okay wrestling, he’ll never make it very far in the UFC unless he improves his cardio and he’ll be a sitting duck in the back half of fights when he’s unable to land an early finish. It won’t take long for Gaziev’s fraudulent undefeated record to get exposed at the UFC level.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 6’4”, but Gaziev will have a 1” reach advantage, while Buday is a year younger than the 33-year-old Gaziev.

This fight appears pretty straight forward when you consider Gaziev’s very limited gas tank. To pull off the upset, Gaziev will need to become the first fighter to ever finish Buday and he’ll need to get it done in under a round and a half before his cardio goes off a cliff. Don’t be surprised if we already see Gaziev begin to fade midway through round one and this guy’s cardio is next level bad. While Buday isn’t any type of world beater, he’s well rounded, durable, and has shown the ability to go three hard rounds. Gaziev will likely be looking to wrestle, and Buday is a BJJ brown belt who loves to look for kimuras. We almost saw Gaziev get submitted via kimura in his lone trip to the judges, although after Buday finished his last opponent by kimura it almost seems too obvious that he would complete another one here. Buday also has no problem working out of the clinch and Gaziev has a tendency to put himself there after he begins to fatigue. Buday will be the one doing more damage in those clinch exchanges and even has the ability to finish opponents with knees from that position. It would be pretty shocking to see Gaziev survive three full rounds unless Buday somehow also gasses out, meaning that Buday should be able to find a finish at some point, despite the fact he hasn’t been a very potent finisher at the UFC level. Both a submission or TKO are in play and we kind of like it to come in round two after Gaziev is completely gassed.

Our favorite bet here is “Martin Buday ML” at -135.

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DFS Implications:

Buday is coming off his first early win in the UFC, where he scored 119 DraftKings points in a R1 submission over a terrible Josh Parisian. Buday’s previous three UFC victories all ended in decisions, where he averaged 77 DraftKings points. He scored decently in two of those (82 & 91 points), but only scored 57 points in the other. So he’s shown some potential even in fights where he can’t find a finish, but his floor hasn’t always been there. He only attempted one takedown in his four UFC matches, but he is a BJJ brown belt and does have a ground game when he chooses to use it and he showed that in his last fight as he locked up a kimura. Now he’s facing an opponent who’s often looking to wrestle, so that grappling could come in handy. The biggest reason to get excited about Buday here is that Gaziev, which loosely translates in Russian to “Gas is on E”, has some of the worst cardio we’ve seen in a while. So as long as Buday doesn't get finished early on, he should be looking at a teed up finish of his own as Gaziev predictably fades. Now we did see Buday fail to capitalize in a similar situation against an exhausted Jake Collier, but even Collier has better cardio than Gaziev. And Gaziev’s tendency to shoot for desperation takedowns after he gasses could result in Buday ending up in top position on the mat in a golden opportunity to rack up ground and pound and find a finish. At Buday’s reasonable price tag, it’s possible he could still score enough even in a decision to be useful, especially on DraftKings where control time and clinch strikes are worth something. The odds imply Buday has a 56% chance to win, a 27% chance to land a finish, and a 14% chance it comes in round one.

Gaziev has the type of record that will get some people excited about playing him as he’s 11-0 with 10 finishes coming into his UFC debut. He has heavy hands and is often looking to wrestle, all of which are great for DFS. However, none of that matters if he completely gasses out and he has some of the worst cardio we’ve ever seen. That has been largely masked by his ability to land quick finishes on the regional scene against a low level of competition, but he won’t be able to hide it for long in the UFC and they better get the oxygen tanks ready in the back for after his fight. While Gaziev’s finishing ability at least gives him a high theoretical ceiling, Buday has been very durable and has never been put away early in his career. Buday is also a BJJ brown belt and shouldn’t be helpless on the mat if Gaziev takes him down. So this doesn’t look like a great spot for Gaziev to land the finish he needs to win and if this fight makes it past the opening minute or two of round two, Gaziev will turn into a pumpkin. We’re treating him as a R1 finish or bust play who will likely be over-owned relative to his chances of finding the quick finish he needs to win. The odds imply Gaziev has a 44% chance to win, a 32% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #11

Andre Fili

21st UFC Fight (10-9, NC)

Looking to rebound from a close, back and forth decision loss to Nathaniel Wood, Fili has a knack for making fights close and four of his last eight decisions have been split (3-1). He’s basically traded wins and losses over the course of his entire UFC career. He’s never lost two fights in a row, but he’s also never won more than two in a row in his entire 20-fight UFC career. Here are his W/L results in the UFC beginning with the most recent: L, W, L, NC, L, W, L, W, W, L, W, W, L, W, L, W, L, W, L, W. While it’s hard to fully explain his constantly inconsistent results, a big part of it is that every time he wins a fight the UFC gives him a really tough opponent, but then they dial it back every time he’s coming off a loss. His record becomes more understandable when you look at some of the guys he’s lost to, including Max Holloway, Yair Rodriguez, Calvin Kattar, Michael Johnson, Sodiq Yusuff, Bryce Mitchell, Joanderson Brito, and Nathaniel Wood. Just before he lost to Wood, Fili won a decision over Bill Algeo, after getting knocked out by Joanderson Brito in just 41 seconds. Fili was putting on a career performance against Daniel Pineda just before that loss to Brito, but an accidental eye poke stopped the fight in round two and resulted in a No Contest, just as it appeared Fili was going to find a finish. Not counting that No Contest, five of Fili’s last six fights went the distance (2-3), with the one exception being the knockout loss to Brito. The last time Fili finished anybody was in 2019 when he knocked out Sheymon Moraes. Fili’s second most recent finish was all the way back in 2015 when he knocked out Gabriel Benitez, with both of those knockouts occurring in round one. Fili’s second most recent early loss was also a while back, in a 2016 R2 KO against Yair Rodriguez. Since then, Fili has fought 14 times, with 11 of those going the distance (6-5), two ending in first round knockouts (1-1), and one resulting in a No Contest.

Now 22-10 as a pro, Fili has nine wins by KO/TKO, three submissions, and 10 decision victories. He’s been knocked out three times, submitted twice, and has five decision defeats. Fili hasn’t submitted anybody since 2012 and his last four finishes all came via KO/TKO. Eleven of his 12 career finishes occurred in the first two rounds, with seven in round one and four in round two. All three of his early wins in the UFC have come by knockout in six minutes or less, with the last two ending in round one.

Overall, Fili is a versatile veteran with both solid wrestling and striking. He can also seamlessly work out of both the orthodox and southpaw stances, making him a tough guy to prepare for. He doesn’t land a ton of striking volume (3.83 SSL/min) and not counting his No Contest, he actually finished behind in significant strikes in his last six fights. In his last 10 fights, Fili landed 12 of his 22 takedown attempts (54.5% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 8 of their 28 attempts (71.4% defense), with seven of those opponent takedowns coming from Bryce Mitchell, who had 13 attempts in their match. The only other opponent to get Fili down in his last 10 fights was Nathaniel Wood, who landed 1 of his 2 attempts. In fairness, five of Fili’s last 10 opponents didn’t even try to take him down. Fili has been a longtime member of Team Alpha Male dating back to 2009 when he turned pro.

Lucas Almeida

3rd UFC Fight (1-1)

Also looking to bounce back from a loss, Almeida was submitted by Pat Sabatini in the second round of his last fight. Sabatini was able to dominate Almeida on the mat for basically the entire fight and nearly finished him late in round one with ground and pound. However, Almeida was saved by the bell, at least temporarily, before Sabatini immediately got the fight back to the ground in round two and easily worked to a submission. Following that loss, Almeida had been booked to face William Gomis in September, but ended up pulling out due to an injury. Fight cancellations have been an issue for Almeida and four of his last five booked opponents fell through. Prior to losing to Sabatini he had been scheduled to face Hakeem Dawodu, Andre Fili, and Zubaira Tukhugov, but all three of those opponents dropped out. Now the UFC put the Fili matchup back together. Almeida landed a third round knockout in his UFC debut against Michael Trizano, but he did face some early adversity in that match, as he got dropped in the first round and was hurt badly. However, Almeida landed a knockdown of his own in round two and then another in round three before forcing a stoppage through ground and pound. Leading up to his debut, Almeida landed a first round submission on the Brazilian regional scene just three weeks after suffering his first career loss in a decision on DWCS to Daniel Zellhuber. It had been 23 months since Almeida had competed leading up to that loss, but he showed no signs of ring rust as he came out ultra aggressively and landed 52 significant strikes in the first round alone. However, we did see his pace slow in the later rounds, where he landed a combined 44 significant strikes.

Now 14-2 as a pro, Almeida has a 100% finishing rate with nine wins by KO/TKO and five submissions. He has eight first round wins, three in round two, two in round three, and another in round five. While 15 of his 16 pro fights ended early, five of his last six matches made it out of the first round, with four of those seeing a third round. His last three knockout wins all occurred in the final round, with one of those occurring in the fifth round and the other two in round three. However, 12 of his 16 pro fights ended in the first two rounds. He’s coming off the first early loss of his career, which ended in a second round submission, with his only other defeat going the distance. Almeida has fought anywhere from 145 lb to 170 lb in the past, but since 2017 he had mostly been fighting at 155 lb until he dropped back down to 145 lb for his UFC debut, where he previously hadn’t competed since 2016. He’s pretty tall and probably cuts a lot of weight.

Overall, Almeida is an aggressive finisher who throws all of his strikes with fight-ending intentions. He holds black belts in kickboxing, Muay Thai, and BJJ, but relies mostly on his striking to win fights. He rarely looks to land any takedowns, although did lock up a first round guillotine in his second most recent fight. Between his two UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, Almeida didn’t attempt any takedowns, while his opponents took him down on three of their five attempts (40% defense). He also got put on his back at multiple points in a 2019 Jungle Fight match, although still went on to land a violent third round knockout via flying knee. Nevertheless, his poor defensive wrestling has been a liability for him.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 5’11”, but Fili will have a 3” reach advantage. Despite having 18 more UFC fights than Almeida, Fili is somehow just a year older.

Fili has been a master of successfully bouncing back from losses for his entire career and despite his 22-10 pro record, he’s never lost two fights in a row. He trains at Team Alpha Male and we expect them to come in with a good game plan, which should include a good amount of wrestling to attack Almeida where he’s the weakest. Not that Fili is a dominant wrestler, but he’s really well-rounded and is fully capable of winning this fight on the ground. We have seen Fili get knocked down in the first round in two of his last three and three of his last six fights, and Almeida throws with some heat, so things could be dicey on feet, but that’s just all the more reason that Fili should be looking to wrestle. If for some reason he doesn’t look to take Almeida down, this will be a fun striking battle where either one of them could knock out the other, but we like Fili to come in with a smart game plan and win the fight on the ground. While Almeida looked very prone to getting finished on the ground in his last fight, that was also against a really high-level grappler/wrestler in Sabatini and Fili is less likely to find a finish, although it’s certainly not impossible. Fili by decision is our pick though.

Our favorite bet here is “Andre Fili ML” at -165.

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DFS Implications:

Fili has averaged 90 DraftKings points in his 10 UFC fights, with six of his last seven victories going the distance. This will be his 21st UFC fight, but he only has three early wins with the organization and two of those occurred in 2013 and 2015. His only other UFC finish was a 2019 R1 KO and it’s been four and a half years since he put anyone away early. He also only scored 68, 77, and 69 DraftKings points respectively in his last three decision wins. While none of that should get you excited about playing him, that’s why the field won’t be clicking his name either. Yes, he’ll either need a finish or a dominant grappling performance to score well, but this is an excellent matchup both of those to happen. Almeida has shown terrible defensive wrestling and also got dropped in the first round of his second most recent fight. Almeida is also averaging 5.29 SSA/min and was somehow 40% owned in his recent loss, which both add to Fili’s tournament appeal. To Almeida’s credit, he is a dangerous finisher, and Fili has been knocked down in the first round in three of his last six fights, which makes it tough to trust Fili’s floor. However, he looks like a solid tournament play and at his reasonable price tag he doesn't need to put up a slate-breaking score to end up in winning lineups. The odds imply Fili has a 60% chance to win, a 34% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.

Almeida is an aggressive brawler with heavy hands and a 100% finishing rate. He nearly got knocked out in the first round of his UFC debut, but narrowly hung on and bounced back with a late round knockout of his own that was good for 103 DraftKings points with the help of a pair of knockdowns. He then got absolutely dominated on the mat in his last fight and suffered the first early loss of his career. That showed a gaping hole in his defensive wrestling that all future opponents should look to attack. That will make life tough on Almeida anytime he faces an opponent who can grapple, and while Fili isn’t the best wrestler in the world, he’s got a decent ground game. We’re expecting Fili to fight smart and try to get this fight to the ground, which would limit Almeida’s opportunities of finding a finish. However, Almeida’s capable of both knocking opponents out or submitting them, and even with limited opportunities he’s still always live for a finish. That makes it tough to completely fade him and we’ll more so be looking to target his fights, as whoever wins should score well. The odds imply Almeida has a 40% chance to win, a 29% chance to land a finish, and a 14% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #10

Tagir Ulanbekov

5th UFC Fight (3-1)

Ulanbekov is 13 months removed from a first round submission win over Nate Maness, who was moving down to 125 lb for the first time as a pro. Ulanbekov took Maness down early in the fight and then locked up a guillotine as Maness tried to return to his feet in the quick 131 second match. Prior to that, Ulanbekov lost a close split decision to Tim Elliott, who pulled out every dirty trick in his bag to narrowly secure the victory. That snapped a five-fight winning streak for Ulanbekov, who won a pair of decisions in his first two UFC fights against tough opponents in Bruno Silva and Allan Nascimento.

Now 14-2 as a pro, Ulanbekov has one win by TKO, seven submissions, and six decision victories. Both of his losses went the distance, with one of those coming earlier in his career in a five-round split decision against Zhalgas Zhumagulov. While he’s coming off a first round submission win, his previous 11 fights all made it out of the first round, with nine of those seeing the third round and seven going the distance.

Overall, Ulanbekov is a wrestler from Dagestan who mostly relies on takedowns and control to win fights, but does also have some submission skills. He only averages 3.35 SSL/min and 3.29 SSA/min, but attempts a high number of takedowns. In his four UFC fights, he landed 12 of his 28 takedown attempts (42.9% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 7 of their 18 attempts (61.1% defense). All three of his UFC decisions were close, competitive grappling matches against talented opponents with experience on the mat, while he faced a striker in his last match and quickly locked up a submission. He does have the ability to compete on the feet, but he generally does so just to set up takedowns. He’s extremely skinny, which leaves him prone to getting his lead leg beat up, which is just all the more reason for him to get fights to the mat early and often.

Cody Durden

9th UFC Fight (5-2-1)

Quietly on a four-fight winning streak after starting out 1-2-1 in the UFC, Durden recently notched his biggest win to date when he won a decision over Jake Hadley. Durden landed four of his six takedowns in that fight and finished with seven and a half minutes of control time, while also stuffing all three of Hadley’s attempts. Durden also showed improvements to his striking in that fight and finished ahead in significant strikes 38-26. However, Hadley was able to reverse a submission attempt in the second round and then locked in an attempt of his own with a deep armbar that looked like it was going to force a tap. However, Durden was barely able to tough it out and survive the round and then went on to win round three as well. Prior to that win, Durden won a wrestling-heavy decision over Charles Johnson, who Durden took down 11 times on 18 attempts with nine and a half minutes of control time. That fight was very similar to Durden’s previous decision win, where he landed 4 of his 8 takedown attempts with 12 and a half minutes of control time against UFC newcomer Carlos Mota. Just before that, Durden landed a 68 second TKO against J.P. Buys, who went 0-4 in the UFC. Durden’s only loss in his last six fights came in a 58 second submission against a debuting Muhammad Mokaev. That came just after Durden won another wrestling-heavy decision, that time against Aoriqileng, who Durden took down five times on 10 attempts with over five and a half minutes of control time. Durden had a rocky start to his UFC career, with a draw against Chris Gutierrez in his 2020 debut, followed by a R1 submission loss to Jimmy Flick via Flying Triangle in his next fight.

Now 16-4-1 as a pro, Durden has six wins by KO/TKO, five more by submission, and five decision victories. While he’s never been knocked out, he’s been submitted in three of his four losses and also has one decision defeat. All three of his submission losses ended in the first two rounds, with his last two both coming in the first three and a half minutes of fights. Only 8 of his 21 pro fights made it to the third round, but five of his eight UFC fights went the distance. Nine of Durden’s 11 finishes occurred in the first round, while he also has one in each of the later rounds. His UFC debut took place at 135 lb before Durden dropped down to 125 lb, where he’s stayed since. He mostly competed at 135 lb before he joined the UFC, losing his only pre-UFC 125 lb fight in a 2017 decision, leaving him 5-3 at 125 lb in his career, with five of those fights going the distance (4-1) and three ending in round one (1-2).

Overall, Durden is a former state champion high school wrestler who relies heavily on his wrestling, but did show the ability to find a finish with his striking alone against a terrible J.P. Buys, although that’s not saying much considering how fragile Buys is. Durden has been prone to getting submitted and nearly got finished in his last fight yet again. In his eight UFC fights, he landed 29 takedowns on 58 attempts (50% accuracy), while getting taken down twice himself on 10 opponent attempts (80% defense). Durden has looked fatigued late in fights in the past, but has also shown the ability to continue to wrestle even when he’s visibly tired. He doesn’t land much striking volume, averaging just 3.13 SSL/min, and has never landed more than 60 significant strikes in a fight.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 5’7” but Ulanbekov will have a 3” reach advantage.

We get a pair of wrestlers squaring off here, so it will be interesting to see if that results in more of a striking battle or if they decide to find out who has the better ground game. It’s very rare to see either of them abandon their ground game, so we’d be surprised if this turned into a pure striking battle, but we could get more striking exchanges than your typical Durden fight. Ulanbekov has a decent submission game and Durden has been prone to getting choked out, so if anyone finds a finish, it will likely be Ulanbekov by submission. However, if that doesn't happen, then this likely ends in a close, low-volume decision that could go either way. Ulanbekov looks to have better cardio and also has a better shot at landing a finish, which is enough for us to take him to win, but it wouldn’t be shocking to see Durden pull off another upset and he’s been a slight underdog in each of his last three wins. We expect Ulanbekov will have some opportunities to lock up a choke in this fight, and we’ll say he’s able to force a tap and secure his second straight submission victory.

Our favorite bet here is “Tagir Ulanbekov SUB” at +350.

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DFS Implications:

Ulanbekov’s wrestling-heavy attack leaves him with a higher floor on DraftKings than on FanDuel, and he scored 93 and 85 DraftKings points in two decision wins, but just 60 and 78 points on FanDuel. However, he doesn’t land many ground strikes and is more so looking for submissions, which makes it tough for him to put up a really big score on either site without a finish. He did land his first UFC finish in his last match when he submitted Nate Maness in the first round and scored 100 DraftKings points and 113 points on FanDuel. Now he’s facing an opponent in Durden who’s been prone to getting submitted, so Ulanbekov should have a shot at locking up his second straight finish. However, Durden is also a relentless wrestler, so the chances of Ulanbekov just dominating this fight on the mat and scoring well in a decision are lower. And considering he only has one TKO win in his career, we’re looking at Ulanbekov as a submission or bust play. The odds imply Ulanbekov has a 61% chance to win, a 24% chance to land a finish, and a 13% chance it comes in round one.

Durden has averaged 101 DraftKings points in his five UFC wins, despite four of those going the distance. He scored a slate-breaking 129 points in his second most recent victory, where he landed a career best 11 takedowns, more than doubling his previous high, although only scored 84 and 86 points respectively in his other two most recent decision wins. The key difference between those matchups is that he was facing a striker when he scored 129 points and was facing fellow grapplers in his lower scoring wins. So you should generally temper expectations with him when he’s facing grapplers and hammer him when he’s going up against pure strikers. He’s facing a fellow wrestler here, meaning we’re less likely to see a scoring explosion from Durden. With that said, if we end up getting some wild scrambles on the mat or periods of chain wrestling, it’s not impossible that Durden could still go off. And at his cheaper price tag, he may not need to put up a huge score to end up in winning lineups. However, he has been prone to getting submitted, and Ulanbekov has seven submission wins on his record, including a guillotine in his last fight, which leaves Durden with an uncertain floor and the potential to get finished at any point in this match. The odds imply Durden has a 39% chance to win, a 13% chance to land a finish, and a 6% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #9

Casey O'Neill

6th UFC Fight (4-1)

Looking to bounce back from her first career loss, O'Neill lost a decision to former title challenger Jennifer Maia. O'Neill was just 10 months removed from knee surgery in that fight, which may have played a factor in her lack of wrestling. O'Neill curiously only attempted one failed takedown in the fight and got outlanded 145-137 in significant strikes on the feet. That was obviously a big step up in competition for O'Neill, after she won an even high volume decision over a half-retired Roxanne Modafferi in her previous fight, where O'Neill finished ahead in significant strikes 229-120, but failed to land either of her takedown attempts. Leading up to that decision win, O'Neill finished her first three UFC opponents on the mat, beginning with a second round TKO against Shana Dobson in her February 2021 UFC debut. She then choked out BJJ black belt Lara Procopio in the third round of her next fight, before landing another second round ground and pound TKO, this time against Antonina Shevchenko. Dobson and Procopio were both cut from the UFC following those losses to O'Neill.

Now 9-1 as a pro, O'Neill has three wins by KO/TKO (all in R2), two submissions (R1 & R3), and four decision victories. Her only career loss ended in a decision and she’s never been finished. Her last eight fights all made it past the first round, but four of her last five wins ended early. O'Neill started her pro career at 115 lb, but moved up to 125 lb in 2020 for her fourth pro fight, where she’s stayed since. While two of her three 115 lb fights went the distance, four of her seven 125 lb matches ended early.

Overall, O'Neill is an aggressive junkyard dog who puts a pace on her opponents that generally melts them in the later rounds and she leads the slate in striking volume at 8.77 SSL/min. While she’s faced some adversity in the first round of fights and still needs to improve her technique and striking defense, what she lacks in experience she makes up for in tenacity. She’s still just 26 years old and should be improving all the time, and she spent some time training in Thailand for this next fight. She’s nasty on the mat both with her ground and pound and submissions, but has been content with keeping fights standing in her last couple of matches. Looking at her five UFC fights as a whole, she landed 8 of her 19 takedown attempts (42.1% accuracy), while her opponents got her down on 4 of their 14 attempts (71.4% defense). However, she failed to land any of her three takedown attempts in her last two fights, after landing 8 of her 16 attempts in her first three matches. Perhaps those were just matchup specific gameplans, but we should find out in this next fight. O'Neill’s father is a former fighter and the owner of Eternal MMA, which is the Australian promotion O'Neill fought her first four fights under and where she became the Strawweight Champion, so she’s been around fighting her whole life. While she mostly grew up in Australia, she was born in Scotland, so it had to be tough suffering her first career loss in somewhat of a homecoming as her last fight was in London. Between the location of the fight, her undefeated record, facing a former title challenger, and also trying to come back maybe a little too quickly from knee surgery, there was a lot of pressure on O'Neill in that last match, but now she’ll get to fight in Vegas, where she’s currently living.

Ariane Lipski

11th UFC Fight (5-5)

Coming off a split-decision upset win over a dangerous grappler in Melissa Gatto, Lipski did a great job of stuffing all seven of Gatto’s takedown attempts, while also landing her lone attempt. Gatto did finish ahead in significant strikes 85-66 and in total strikes 100-81, while also leading in control time, but clearly the judges thought Lipski was landing the more impactful blows. Just before that, Lipski pulled off another upset, that time over JJ Aldrich. Lipski came in as a sizable +280 underdog, yet dominated the fight as she cruised to a unanimous 30-27 decision. Aldrich looked lost in the fight and got outlanded in significant strikes 101-49 by Lipski, who also stuffed all 12 of Aldrich’s takedown attempts, while landing both of her own attempts. Leading up to those two decision wins, Lipski suffered a 65 second R1 TKO loss to Priscila Cachoeira, after winning a decision over a terrible Mandy Bohm. The Lipski/Cachoeira fight was originally scheduled to take place at 125 lb, but Lipski missed weight by 2.5 lb and then wasn’t medically cleared. It was bumped back a week and moved up to 135 lb, but Lipski’s struggles making weight the week before carried over into the fight. That was the only time in her career that Lipski had competed at 135 lb, while Cachoeira seems to think all of her fights are at 135 lb based on how often she misses the 125 lb limit. Lipski won a decision against a terrible Mandy Bohm just before that loss, after getting finished via second round ground and pound in back-to-back fights in 2020 and 2021.

Now 16-8 as a pro, Lipski has six wins by KO/TKO, three submissions, and seven decision victories. While 9 of her 16 career wins have come early, Lipski only has one finish since 2017 and five of her last six wins went the distance, with the one exception being a 2020 R1 kneebar submission victory—her only finish in the UFC. She has four TKO losses and four decision defeats. All four of her early losses ended in the first two rounds, and she was finished in her last three losses.

Overall, Lipski is a good striker and is capable of looking for submissions on the mat. Her biggest issue early in her UFC career had been her defensive wrestling and she looked lost everytime she ended up on her back, often getting finished with ground and pound. However, she’s been working with Amanda Nunes for the last few years and the improvements she’s made over that time have completely transformed her grappling game. Looking at her entire 10-fight UFC career, Lipski landed 4 of her 8 takedown attempts (50% accuracy), while she got taken down by her opponents on 8 of 37 opponent attempts (78.4% defense). Those numbers are all really solid, but the key is comparing her numbers over her last four matches to earlier in her career. Lipski started training at American Top Team in 2020, where Nunes was also training, but it wasn’t until later in 2021 that the work she was putting in with Nunes really started to show. In her last four fights she successfully defended all 23 of the takedown attempts against her, after she got taken down 8 times on 14 attempts (42.9% defense) in her first six UFC matches. Nunes opened her own gym, Lioness Studio, and Lipski stuck with her and has been training there alongside Nunes, who seems to have turned into one of Lipski’s biggest supporters.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 5’6”, but O'Neill will have a 2” reach advantage, while being three years younger than the 29-year-old Lipski.

This is a good test for both of these fighters. A couple of years ago we would have been drooling over this matchup for O'Neill, who came into the UFC as basically a ground and pound specialist, while Lipski went through a stretch where she was getting beat up and finished by everyone on the mat. However, the landscape has changed drastically for both of them, and O'Neill hasn’t landed a takedown in either of her last two fights on just three attempts, while Lipski has successfully defended all 23 of the attempts against her over her last four outings. It remains to be seen if O'Neill will look to wrestle more here than in her last two matches, but even if that is part of her gameplan she may have a tougher time getting Lipski down. And on the feet, Lipski looks like the more refined striker, while O'Neill relies on sheer volume and tenacity. So if O'Neill can’t get the fight to the ground, she may need to just turn this into a brawl to get her hand raised in a decision. Lipski has won back-to-back fights as the underdog, so she’s no stranger to an upset, however, we’ve also seen her get dropped before and she has four TKO losses on her record. So it’s possible that O'Neill can finish her even without landing a takedown if she catches her with something clean. O'Neill is always looking to push the pace and she’s been in two straight high-volume striking battles, which is likely what we’ll see again here if Lipski’s takedown defense continues to hold up. However, even the threat of a takedown could benefit O'Neill, as Lipski will at least have to respect that an attempt could come at any time. O'Neill’s output is way higher than Lipski’s (8.77 SSL/min vs. 3.94 SSL/min) and she’s also been more durable—although also hasn’t faced many dangerous strikers. O'Neill tends to get hit a lot, which could eventually catch up with her if she doesn’t improve in that area, although Lipski hasn’t knocked anybody out since 2016. We’ve yet to see O'Neill finish anybody on the feet in the UFC, so the most likely outcome is that this ends in a close, high-volume decision that could go either way. We’re tempted to take the dog shot on Lipski, but we’re not sure how she’ll handle the pressure and pace of O'Neill, which when combined with O'Neill’s wrestling threat is enough for us to stick with her on this one.

Our favorite bet here is “Fight Ends in Split Decision” at +400.

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DFS Implications:

O'Neill has averaged a blistering 126 DraftKings points in her four UFC victories, with scores of 122, 131, 110, and 140. The last three of those scores came in late-round finishes, but she was still able to score 122 points through sheer striking volume in her lone decision win. However, that also came against a half-retired Roxanne Modafferi. O'Neill then blew out her knee in training and rushed back 10 months later only to suffer her first career loss in a decision against Jennifer Maia, which ended in another high-volume decision. However, even if O'Neill had won there, she still only would have scored 85 DraftKings points, showing there are ways she fails. And while O'Neill came into the UFC constantly looking for takedowns and ground and pound, as she’s worked on her striking, she’s begun looking for far fewer takedowns, failing to land any in her last two matches, on just three attempts. And while O'Neill has been looking for far fewer takedowns, Lipski has made drastic improvements to her defensive wrestling since she started training with Amanda Nunes, defending all 23 of the attempts against her in her last four matches. All of that is concerning for O'Neill’s scoring ceiling, and we can’t rely on her setting striking records every time to score well. Lipski is a good striker and not a punching bag like Roxanne Modafferi, so O'Neill will likely either need a finish or to find a good amount of wrestling success to really score well. She always has a huge ceiling, but winning alone may not be enough here for her to crack tournament winning lineups. However, her uptempo striking does provide her with a solid scoring floor, which when combined with her high ceiling and projected ownership makes her a good option in low-risk contests. The odds imply O'Neill has a 63% chance to win, a 26% chance to land a finish, and a 13% chance it comes in round one.

Lipski has averaged 89 DraftKings points in her five UFC victories, although is coming off the lowest scoring win of her career. While she only scored 66 DraftKings points in that decision victory, it was against a dangerous grappler who was constantly looking to take Lipski down, which made it tough for Lipski to really fill up the stat sheet. She has shown the ability to score well even in decisions in the past, although typically only against low-level opponents. While her upset win over J.J. Aldrich was impressive, she still only scored 83 DraftKings points in that decision victory, after putting up DraftKings totals of 102 and 99 in her first two UFC decision wins. Considering Lipski only has one early win in the UFC, she’s typically reliant on filling up the stat sheet to score well and this looks like a pretty good matchup to achieve that. In O'Neill’s last two fights her opponents landed a combined 265 significant strikes against her, while O'Neill landed 366 significant strikes of her own in those two fights. That’s encouraging for both fighters in this matchup and if Lipski’s much improved takedown defense continues to hold up, we could see this turn into a real barn burner. At Lipski’s cheap price tag, she’ll have a good shot at serving as a value play if she can pull off the upset, even if it goes the distance. The odds imply Lipski has a 37% chance to win, a 13% chance to land a finish, and a 6% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #8

Cody Garbrandt

14th UFC Fight (8-5)

Coming off a painfully boring decision win over Trevin Jones, Garbrandt narrowly secured just his second win in his last seven fights, but it required him not actually fighting to do so. In one of the worst “fights” of 2023, Garbrandt danced around the outside of the Octagon for most of the match and almost got knocked out when Jones finally landed something late in the match. Garbrandt finished ahead just 26-20 in significant strikes in a complete snoozer, while Joe Rogan jerked him off from the broadcast booth. Here were the significant striking totals for Garbrandt-Jones in each round: 17-7, 5-2, and 4-11. Simply amazing. Just before that win, Garbrandt made the foolish decision to move down to 125 lb for the first time, where he got knocked out by Kai Kara-France in the first round. That loss resulted in him immediately returning to 135 lb, where he previously won the Bantamweight belt back in 2016 against Dominick Cruz. Since that 2016 win, Garbrandt has gone 2-5, with four of those five losses ending in knockouts. His only early win since 2016 was a 2020 R2 KO against a now retired Raphael Assuncao.

Now 13-5 as a pro, Garbrandt has 10 wins by KO/TKO and three decision victories. He’s also been knocked out four times and has one decision loss. Ten of his 18 career fights ended in R1 KOs (7-3), three ended in R2 KOs (2-1) and one ended in a third round KO (1-0). While five of his last six fights ended in knockouts in the first two rounds (1-4), two of his last three matches went the distance.

Overall, Garbrandt had a background in amateur boxing as well as some experience playing football and wrestling in high school. He has historically relied mostly on his striking and has only taken three of his last 11 opponents down, but did land two takedowns in his last fight as he looked for ways to avoid getting punched in the face. He also shot for 10 takedowns in his 2021 five-round decision loss to Font, completing three of those. Looking at his 13 UFC fights, Garbrandt landed 10 of his 29 takedown attempts (34.5% accuracy), while he’s only been taken down on 3 of 14 opponent attempts (78.6% defense). For most of his UFC career, he’s been largely content with duking things out on the feet, with his most valuable attribute being his speed. While he does have decent power, it has gotten him into trouble more often than not, thinking he can simply overwhelm his opponents with blitzes of strikes. His combination of speed, power and a fragile chin make for low-volume fights with more anticipation than actual time spent trading and he only averages 3.00 SSL/min and 3.89 SSA/min. He’s never landed more than 68 significant strikes in a fight and that came in his five-round decision win. After spending his career at Team Alpha Male in California, Garbrandt followed his ex-wife and son to Vegas before his last fight and he’s now training at Xtreme Couture. Garbrandt has only fought once in the last two years, so he hasn’t been very active lately.

Brian Kelleher

16th UFC Fight (8-7)

Kelleher had neck surgery earlier this year after getting pulled from an April matchup after a medical condition was discovered that needed to be addressed before he could get cleared to fight again. At 37 years old, the possibility of retiring instead of undergoing surgery was discussed, but he ultimately decided he wanted to keep fighting, despite the fact that he’s coming into the final fight on his contract. The surgery took place in May and Kelleher said he was cleared two or three months ago to resume fighting. It’s been 18 months since Kelleher actually competed and that fight was short lived as he got submitted by Mario Bautista in just 147 seconds. That was Kelleher’s second straight first round rear-naked choke submission loss, after Umar Nurmagomedov put him away just before that. When you see who Kelleher’s seven UFC losses were against, it’s not surprising he needed neck surgery. Here is every fighter who has defeated Kelleher in the UFC: Mario Bautista, Umar Nurmagomedov, Ricky Simon, Cody Stamann, Montel Jackson, John Lineker, and Marlon Vera. This man’s agent should be in prison. While Kelleher’s losses have come against elite competition, his wins have been against a bunch of bums, with his last four victories coming against Kevin Croom, Domingo Pilarte, Ray Rodriguez, and Hunter Azure, none of whom are still in the UFC. The last time Kelleher finished anybody was in 2020. When he submitted Ray Rodriguez, who stepped in on extremely short notice. Kelleher’s last two wins both ended in wrestling-heavy decisions.

Now 24-13 as a pro, Kelleher has eight wins by KO/TKO, 10 submissions, and six decision victories. The only time he’s ever been knocked out came in the third round of a 2018 match against a heavy-handed John Lineker. While it’s rare to see Kelleher get knocked out, he’s been submitted eight times in his career despite being a BJJ brown belt. He also has five decision losses. Eight of his 10 submission wins and seven of his eight submission losses occurred in the first round, while he also landed one submission in each of the later rounds, and has been submitted once in round two as well. His last six and 7 of his 10 submission victories ended in guillotines, which he’s nicknamed the Boomatine since it’s basically his go to move. He also had three wins by rear-naked choke earlier in his career. Kelleher has gone back and forth between 135 lb and 145 lb throughout his career and he’s 5-4 at 135 lb in the UFC and 3-3 at 145 lb.

Overall, Kelleher is a 37-year-old journeyman who’s fairly well rounded with good wrestling, a dangerous guillotine, and okay striking. However, while he’s decent everywhere, he’s not exceptional anywhere and now he’s coming off neck surgery and a year and a half removed from his last fight. He’s shown the ability to handle business against low-level opponents, but he’s been steamrolled when facing the top guys. It’s hard to know how he’ll look following his surgery and time away, but he’ll have to hit the ground running as this is the last fight of his deal. He’s always been a company man who stays active and is willing to fight basically anyone at either 135 lb or 145 lb, so maybe they’ll keep him around even in a loss but you never know. In his 15 UFC fights, Kelleher landed 15 of his 35 takedown attempts (42.9% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 14 of their 35 attempts (60% defense). While Kelleher failed to land more than a single takedown in any of his first 11 UFC fights, going just 6 for 24 (25% accuracy) on his attempts in those 11 fights, he landed a combined nine takedowns on 11 attempts (81.8% accuracy) in his last two wins, showing way more dedication towards his wrestling. He also has a dangerous left hook, which is what he used to knock out Hunter Azure in his last KO win, which came back in May 2020 in Kelleher’s first UFC fight up at 145 lb. The last time Kelleher knocked anybody out at 135 lb was in 2017. All of Kelleher’s recent losses notably came against guys with really good wrestling, so we’ll see how he does against more of a striker here.

Fight Prediction:

Garbrandt will have a 2” height advantage, but Kelleher will have a 1” reach advantage. While Garbrandt is technically five years younger than the 37-year-old Kelleher, his chin is 150.

Where to even begin on this matchup? On one side of things, we have a 37-year-old coming off neck surgery and an 18 month layoff and on the other we have an even more decrepit fighter in the chinless Cody Garbrandt. We have no idea how durable Kelleher is after surgery, but Garbrandt looks about as durable as a taped together china set. Kelleher came in looking to wrestle in each of his last two wins, but Garbrandt does have a 78% takedown defense for what it’s worth. Garbrandt is the quicker fighter, and he showed in his last match that he has no problem evading contact for 15 minutes. The larger Octagon on this card will just aid in his ability to evade, if he comes in with a similar game plan. (Insert Name) has the power to knock Garbrandt out, and Kelleher is also always live to lock up a guillotine, although Garbrandt has never been submitted to his credit. We could also see Kelleher win a decision through his wrestling, so he has multiple paths to victory. However, his neck surgery adds some volatility to an already volatile matchup, and we have no way of knowing how he’ll look out there. However, Garbrandt is beyond washed up and we’ll happily take plus money against him every time we can get it. So give us the old guy with the fused together neck and we’ll say Kelleher either knocks Garbrandt out or out wrestles his way to a decision win.

Our favorite bet here is “Brian Kelleher ML” at +170.

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DFS Implications:

Garbrandt has averaged 93 DraftKings points in his eight UFC wins, but hasn’t topped 88 points since 2016 and is nothing more than a R1 KO or bust option in DFS. He scored just 56 points in his last decision and even that seemed generous. His second most recent win was a knockout in the closing second of round two, which is basically ideal timing, yet it only scored 88 DraftKings points.He only averages 3.00 SSL/min and rarely lands many takedowns, while he’s also never submitted anybody. So there just aren’t very many ways for him to score well. However, he is facing a 37-year-old opponent who’s coming off neck surgery and a year and a half layoff, which obviously adds some volatility to the mix, although Kelleher has only been knocked out once in his career. The only other reason to consider playing Garbrandt in tournaments is his low ownership, but it’s still really tough to get excited about playing an expensive, washed-up fighter with no chin and only one way to score well. The odds imply Garbrandt has a 62% chance to win, a 34% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.

Kelleher consistently scores well when he wins, averaging 105 DraftKings points in his eight UFC victories, with at least 91 in all of those. His last two wins both came in wrestling-heavy decisions, and if that trend continues he has a safer floor on DraftKings. However, five of his eight UFC wins ended early and he has a solid ceiling on all platforms, especially against a glass-chinned opponent like Garbrandt. However, Garbrandt showed a willingness to evade and ruin fights in his last outing, which is concerning for the scoring potential on both sides of this one, especially in the larger Octagon at T-Mobile Arena. Nevertheless, that’s more of a floor concern, and Kelleher still has multiple ways to score well if he can force Garbrandt to engage or tack him down and get him to the mat. However, there are also clear red flags with Kelleher, as he’s coming off neck surgery, hasn’t fought in 18 months, and was submitted in the first round in each of his last two matches. So ultimately this is a volatile fight and it’s tougher to know what we can expect from the 37-year-old Kelleher at this stage of his career. The odds imply Kelleher has a 38% chance to win, a 22% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #7

Irene Aldana

13th UFC Fight (7-5)

Looking to bounce back from a title fight loss to Amanda Nunes, Aldana was never able to get going in that match and had to have been disappointed with her performance. Aldana got outlanded by Nunes 142-41 in significant strikes and Nunes also took her town six times and controlled her for seven minutes after the fight started a bit slow. Prior to that loss, Aldana landed a pair of knockouts against Macy Chiasson and Yana Santos, after losing a five-round decision to Holly Holm in 2020. The finish of Chiasson was pretty bizarre as Aldana finished her with an upkick to the liver. Aldana nearly locked up an armbar in the opening five minutes, which was enough to win her the round, but Chiasson won round two on all of the scorecards and it was a close fight leading up to the finish. Chiasson was able to take Aldana down three times, but Aldana consistently looked for submissions on the ground. That fight notably took place at a 140 lb Catchweight after Chiasson realized she could not make 135 lb. Aldana checked in at 137.5 lb for the match, while Chiasson weighed 139.5 lb. Prior to that win, Aldana had back-to-back tough weigh-ins, missing weight by 3.5 lb for her previous fight all the way back in July 2021, after looking rough on the scale but making weight in a five-round decision loss to Holly Holm in October 2020. Leading up to that loss to Holm, Aldana landed another knockout, that time against Ketlen Vieira in the first round.

Now 14-6 as a pro, Aldana has eight wins by KO/TKO, three submissions, and three decision victories. She’s been knocked out twice (R3 2013 & R4 2015), and has four decision losses. All nine of Aldana’s fights prior to joining the UFC ended early (7-2), while eight of her 12 UFC fights went the distance (3-5), with three of those being split (1-2). However, after six of her first seven UFC fights made it to the judges, three of her last five ended early.

Overall, Aldana is a good boxer with heavy hands who relies mostly on her striking to win fights. However, she will look for submissions, even if she’s only completed one since 2015, which was in 2019. However, she nearly locked up an armbar in her second most recent fight and finished the match with two official submission attempts.In her 12 UFC matches, Aldana only landed two of her four takedown attempts (50% accuracy), with all of those attempts coming in her first four UFC fights, and she hasn’t even looked for a takedown in her last eight matches. On the other side of things, her opponents got her down 16 times on 66 attempts (75.8% defense). However, after only getting taken down twice on 31 attempts (93.5% defense) in her first eight UFC fights, she’s been taken down 14 times on 35 attempts (60% defense) in her last four matches as she’s faced tougher competition. She averages a healthy 4.86 SSA/min and 5.71 SSA/min, although she’s only topped 83 significant strikes landed in one of her last eight fights.

Karol Rosa

9th UFC Fight (6-2)

Rosa is dropping back down to 135 lb after her last two fights were both at 145 lb. Rosa stepped into the most recent of those 145 lb fights on short notice and won a split decision over Yana Santos, despite finishing behind in significant strikes 95-66, in total strikes 151-117, and in control time 3:53-0:41. It was not an impressive performance. Prior to that, Rosa lost a low-volume decision loss to Norma Dumont, where Rosa was moving up to 145 lb for the first time in the UFC. In a painfully slow paced match, Rosa only landed single digit significant striking totals in each the first two rounds, before picking up the pace some in round three and knocking Dumont down late in the fight. However, it was too little, too late and Dumont had already won the first two rounds to get her hand raised by the judges. Dumont finished ahead just 35-33 in significant strikes. It was surprising to see Rosa move up a weight class, considering she was coming off a win and had only lost once in six Octagon appearances at 135 lb. Just before losing to Dumont, Rosa won a majority decision win over an aging Lina Lansberg, although did notably get dropped by Lansberg in the fight. That came just after Rosa suffered her first UFC loss in a smothering decision defeat against another aging fighter in Sara McMann. Leading up to that loss, Rosa had won six straight fights after getting submitted by Melissa Gatto before they joined the UFC. All eight of Rosa’s UFC fights have gone the distance and the last time she finished an opponent was in a 2019 R3 TKO just before joining the organization.

Now 17-5 as a pro, Rosa has four wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and 11 decision victories. She’s never been knocked out, but has been submitted twice, and has three decision losses. Both of her submission losses came in 2018, one of those was against Melissa Gatto, who’s now in the UFC, and the other was against Larissa Pacheco, who had just been released by the UFC. While all eight of Rosa’s UFC fights have gone the distance, her seven fights just before joining the UFC all ended early (5-2). However, only two of her 22 pro fights ended in the first round and only one of her last 19.

Overall, Rosa had historically been a high-volume striker (5.43 SSL/min), although you wouldn’t guess it by watching her recent fights. After landing 120 or more significant strikes in three of her first four UFC fights, she failed to land more than 66 significant strikes in any of her last four outings with totals of just 66, 33, 54, and 26. We’re not sure what happened to her, but she’s looked terrible and out of shape in her recent fights. While Rosa has shown the ability to wrestle offensively, she really struggled with her defensive wrestling against a powerful McMann in her second most recent loss and then struggled with being controlled along the fence in her last defeat. In her eight UFC fights, Rosa landed 11 of her 23 takedown attempts (47.8% accuracy), while her opponents got her down on 6 of their 19 attempts (68.4% defense). The only fighter to get her down more than once was former Olympic wrestler Sara McMann, who landed four takedowns on six attempts in a decision win over Rosa. Maybe moving back down to 135 lb will kick Rosa back into gear, or maybe cutting the additional weight will just deplete her further. She’s definitely someone to monitor closely on the scale.

Fight Prediction:

Aldana will have a 4” height advantage and 1” reach advantage, while Rosa is seven years younger than the 35-year-old Aldana.

Rosa has really fallen off lately and it’s hard to pinpoint the reasons for that. She’s still only 28 years old and looked to be a promising young prospect and then just started turning out one bad performance after the next. Maybe she was just having issues with her weight, which forced her to move up to 145 lb or maybe there was another underlying issue, we really don’t know. But she’s moving back down to 135 lb here and facing a really tough test in Aldana, who’s easily the most dangerous finisher that Rosa has ever faced. While Rosa has never been knocked out, she has been knocked down by far less dangerous opponents than Aldana. Rosa has also been submitted twice and Aldana could finish her that way as well. Aldana’s last three wins all ended in knockouts and Rosa cutting an additional 10 lb could leave her chin compromised if the cut doesn’t go smoothly. While Rosa has fought to eight straight decisions and no one has ever been finished in one of her UFC fights, we actually like Aldana’s chances of ending this early, and both a knockout or a submission are in play.

Our favorite bet here is “Aldana ITD” at +320.

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DFS Implications:

Aldana has averaged 91 DraftKings in her seven UFC wins, but failed to top 80 points in four of her last six victories, leaving her as a boom or bust option The two times she’s really scored well were in a pair of first round knockouts, while she only scored 74 and 79 respective DraftKings points in her two third round finishes. So there is the potential for her to find a finish and still not score enough to be useful, but she still has a high ceiling. Her last three wins all ended in knockouts, with two of those coming in round one. It may not be the best matchup for Aldana to find a finish, but that’s why she’ll end up being so low owned and it’s not like Rosa has looked good as of late. When you combine her low ownership and high scoring ceiling, Aldana makes for a great high-risk play on this smaller slate where we’re looking for ways to create unique lineups. The odds imply Aldana has a 61% chance to win, a 22% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

Rosa has averaged 100 DraftKings points in her six UFC wins, but hasn’t been at all impressive lately. She’s just 2-2 in her last four fights and both of her wins came in split decisions against older opponents. She scored a career worst 73 DraftKings points in her last win, and after taking her last two fights up at 145 lb, now she’s moving back down to 135 lb. While we do think that’s the right move for her long term, we also don’t know how her body will initially react to cutting the additional weight and it’s been 14 months since she made 135 lb. Maybe it will go fine, but it also has the ability to affect her cardio or chin. She’s also facing a step up in competition as she takes on a heavy-handed Irene Aldana who just competed for the belt. If Rosa’s chin is even remotely affected by the weight cut then this could be a short day in the office for Rosa. Aldana also has the ability to submit Rosa, so unlike most of Rosa’s fights, this is not a spot where we can trust her floor. And Aldana is dangerous enough that Rosa will have to be careful in the striking exchanges and can’t throw recklessly, which could make it tougher for her to land a ton of volume. Maybe she’ll come in with a more grappling-heavy gameplan, which would score better on DraftKings than FanDuel, but that remains to be seen. Rosa will need to show she can regain her past form before we’re willing to trust her again and she failed to top 66 significant strikes landed in any of her last four matches, after landing 120 or more in three of her first four UFC fights. The odds imply Rosa has a 39% chance to win, a 9% chance to land a finish, and a 4% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #6

Dustin Jacoby

13th UFC Fight (7-4-1)

Jacoby recently snapped a two-fight losing streak with a quick first round TKO win over Kennedy Nzechukwu. Prior to that, he suffered back-to-back losses for the first time since 2015, when he lost a pair of decisions to Azamat Murzakanov and Khalil Rountree. In fairness to Jacoby, we thought he beat Rountree, as he outstruck him in every round and finished ahead 120-85 in significant strikes with no other stats accrued by either fighter. However, there was no question that Murzakanov won the next fight and Jacoby got hurt in each of the first two rounds in that fight. Jacoby had gone 8-0-1 leading up to the pair of losses, with his third most recent MMA loss coming all the way back in 2015. However, he did step away from MMA following a pair of losses in 2014 and 2015 to focus on kickboxing, before returning to MMA in 2019 and working his way back into the UFC with a 2020 decision win on DWCS. Jacoby originally joined the UFC in 2011 at just 23 years old, but was cut in 2012 after an 0-2 start. Following his departure, he went 6-3 in MMA fights outside of the UFC, and also competed in Glory Kickboxing for several years. Jacoby's last 12 fights all ended in either first round knockout wins (4) or decisions (5-2-1) and the last time he landed two knockouts in a row was all the way back in 2012.

Now 19-7-1 as a pro, Jacoby has 12 wins by KO/TKO, one submission (R1 2011), and six decision victories. He’s been knocked out once (R2 2014), submitted twice (R3 2012 & R2 2015), and has four decision losses. Jacoby’s last 14 wins all either ended in R1 KOs or decisions. The only time he’s landed a finish beyond the first round in his career was a 2011 R2 TKO by doctor stoppage. His other 18 wins have all ended in either decisions (6) or first round finishes (12). While he lost the last two decisions he went to, he was 6-0-1 in his previous seven. In Jacoby’s initial stint with the UFC he fought at 185 lb, however, he moved up to 205 lb in 2014.

Overall, Jacoby is a high-level kickboxer who averages a healthy 5.46 SSL/min and 4.02 SSA/min. He’s never landed more than one takedown in a UFC fight and doesn’t really add a whole lot when it comes to grappling, but will occasionally look to mix it up with a takedown attempt. Between his 12 UFC fights and his DWCS match, he landed 4 of his 16 takedown attempts (25% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 17 of their 45 attempts (62.2% defense). None of his last six opponents got him down more than once. The last time anybody finished Jacoby was in 2015 and he’s been really durable.

Alonzo Menifield

12th UFC Fight (7-3-1)

Menifield’s last two fights were both against Jimmy Crute and after their first matchup ended in a draw, the two decided to immediately run it back. In the far less eventful rematch, the first round played out largely in the clinch, before Menifield locked up a guillotine as Crute shot for a takedown in round two. Menifield was nearly able to knock Crute out in their first fight, but per usual, he slowed down after the first round and went into survival mode late in the fight. Prior to his two fights against Crute, Menifield notched a pair of first round knockouts against a washed up Misha Cirkunov and a fraudulent Askar Mozharov, after losing a close/questionable decision to William Knight. Menifield has impressively gone 5-1-1, after suffering back-to-back losses in 2020, and is a point deduction and a close decision away from being on a seven-fight winning streak.

Now 14-3-1 as a pro, Menifield has 10 KO/TKO wins, three submissions, and one decision victory. He’s been knocked out once, with his other two losses both going the distance. Ten of his 13 early wins occurred in round one, with the other two ending in the first half of round two. His one early loss also ended in round two. All four of the decisions he’s been to in his career have come in his last nine fights, after his first nine pro matches all ended early. Menifield is just 1-3-1 in fights that have lasted longer than seven minutes.

Overall, Menifield came into the UFC as a one-dimensional power puncher with cardio concerns, but has been trying to mix in a little more wrestling lately and fighting more methodically. He failed to land a takedown on four attempts in his first four UFC fights, but has landed four on seven attempts in his last seven matches. Looking at his entire 10-fight UFC career along with his two DWCS appearances, he landed 4 of his 13 takedown attempts (30.8% accuracy), while getting taken down by his opponents 11 times on 44 attempts (75% defense). Menifield is a former college, CFL and Arena League football player, and while he has solid power, we typically see him slow down later in fights and he carries a ton of muscle. He only averages 3.82 SSL/min and and 3.09 SSA/min has only landed more than 56 significant strikes once in his career, which is when he landed 93 in a decision win over a washed up Ed Herman.

Fight Prediction:

Jacoby will have a 3” height advantage, but both fighters share a 76” reach. Jacoby is a year younger than the 36-year-old Menifield.

Both of these two are dangerous strikers, and Menifield has also made improvements to his wrestling and grappling over the years. However, he still has pretty suspect cardio, which should allow Jacoby to easily win the later rounds of this match and could even open the door for Jacoby to land a rare late finish. Historically, Jacoby’s fights almost always end in either first round knockout wins or decisions, which has been the case in his last 12 fights, where he landed four first round knockouts and fought to eight decisions (5-2-1). Menifield has only been knocked out once in his career, which was late in the second round of a 2020 match against Ovince St. Preux. Jacoby is also really durable and the larger Octagon on this card will make it easier for him to control the distance and pick Menifield apart from the outside. If Menifield completely gasses out, then maybe Jacoby finishes him late, but we like Jacoby to win a decision here.

Our favorite bet here is “Dustin Jacoby DEC” at +180.

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DFS Implications:

Jacoby consistently either finishes opponents in the first round or fights to decisions and only one of his 12 career early wins came beyond the opening five minutes. In his four UFC first round finishes, he averaged 109 DraftKings points, but in his three decision victories he averaged just 75 points. While his last two wins both ended in first round knockouts, his other four most recent fights all went the distance (2-2). The only time he’s ever been finished in the UFC was in a 2012 R3 guillotine in his first stint with the organization when he was still fighting down at 185 lb. Since returning in 2020, his only two losses both went the distance and he’s been pretty durable, even if we did see him get dropped in his second most recent match. While he’ll occasionally mix in takedowns, he’s never landed more than one in a fight and relies on his striking and knockouts to score well. He hasn’t landed two knockouts in a row since 2012 and Menifield has only been knocked out once in his career, neither of which are overly encouraging for Jacoby’s chances of landing the knockout here that he needs to score well. However, Menifield does have suspect cardio, increasing the chances that Jacoby could land a rare late round knockout. However, at Jacoby’s expensive price tag we don’t see him returning value in a decision and even a late round knockout may not be enough if this turns into a lower volume fight, as many of Menifield matches do. The odds imply Jacoby has a 72% chance to win, a 39% chance to land a finish, and a 21% chance it comes in round one.

Menifield has averaged 99 DraftKings points in his seven UFC wins, with five of those ending in the first round. He’s coming off his first UFC finish to come outside of the first round, which was a second round guillotine that only scored 82 DraftKings points. His one other UFC win to come beyond the opening five minutes was a 2021 decision over a washed up Ed Herman that was only good for 74 points. Therefore, Menifield has been a R1 or bust DFS play throughout his career and typically slows down later in fights. Now he’s facing a really durable, high-level kickboxer in Jacoby who has only been knocked out once in his career, which was all the way back in 2014. And while Menifield has been mixing in more wrestling lately, he doesn’t have the cardio to sustain that style of fight for three rounds, making it a dangerous approach for him when facing an opponent that he won’t easily be able to get out of there. Menifield’s cheap price tag does widen the range of acceptable scoring outcomes for him, but this may be the toughest matchup of his career and he looks like nothing more than a hail mary R1 KO or bust option who will be owned significantly higher than his chances of achieving that. The odds imply Menifield has a 28% chance to win, a 19% chance to land a finish, and a 9% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #5

Bryce Mitchell

9th UFC Fight (7-1)

Emmett had originally been scheduled to fight Giga Chikadze here, but Chikadze dropped out and Mitchell was announced as the replacement on December 6th, 10 days before the event.

Mitchell recently bounced back from the first loss of his career with a decision win over Dan Ige. It was far from Mitchell’s best performance and Ige was the one doing all the damage in the fight, as he mangled Mitchell’s eye to the point that it looked like the fight might get stopped in round two when the ref called in the doctor. Mitchell had some good takedowns in the fight, but finished with “just” seven and a half minutes of control time on five takedowns landed, and he didn’t land much in the way of ground and pound, finishing with just 37 total strikes. Compare that to his previous two decision wins, where he respectively finished with control time totals of 11:28 and 10:12 and striking totals of 182 and 100. Mitchell just seemed a little off for the second straight fight in what looked like a decent matchup for him considering we’ve seen Ige get dominated on the mat in the past. Prior to that win, Mitchell had been scheduled to fight Movsar Evloev in May, but ended up dropping out less than a week before the fight due to a back injury, so perhaps he still hadn’t fully recovered. Before that fight got canceled, Mitchell tasted defeat for the first time as a pro (not counting TUF), when he got submitted in the second round by an incredibly dangerous Ilia Topuria. Mitchell was able to land one of his nine takedown attempts, but ultimately was no match for Topuria, who had him outclassed both on the feet and the mat. Mitchell claimed he came into that fight sick, which couldn’t have helped things, but healthy or not it was a terrible matchup for him. Leading up to that loss, Mitchell won his first six UFC fights, with five of those wins going the distance. Mitchell’s only finish in the UFC came in a 2019 first round twister submission against a helpless Matt Sayles. Mitchell made his way into the UFC through The Ultimate Fighter in 2018. Despite getting submitted by Brad Katona in his second fight on the show, in a fight that technically goes down as an exhibition match and doesn’t count towards Mitchell’s pro record, the UFC still gave Mitchell a shot later that year and he never looked back.

Now 16-1 as a pro, Mitchell has nine submission victories and seven decision wins. Eight of his nine submissions ended in the first round, with the other ending in round two. After starting his career with eight straight submissions, seven of his last eight wins went the distance. His only official pro loss was the second round submission against Ilia Topuria, although Mitchell was also submitted in the third round on The Ultimate Fighter in 2018 by Brad Katona, in what counts as an exhibition match.

Overall, Mitchell is a BJJ black belt and a relentless wrestler who grinds opponents out on the mat while occasionally looking to lock up submissions, often going for the rare twister. In his eight UFC fights, Mitchell landed 24 takedowns on 58 attempts (41.4% accuracy), while getting taken down himself 8 times on 12 opponent attempts (33.3% defense). Mitchell has shown some minor improvements to his striking but is still pretty green on the feet. However, he’s still just 29 years old and has plenty of time to improve. But as of now, he pretty much just uses his striking to set up his wrestling. He only averages 2.34 SSL/min and 1.64 SSA/min and has never landed more than 46 significant strikes in a UFC fight or absorbed more than 51.

Josh Emmett

14th UFC Fight (9-4)

Now 38 years old and on a two fight losing streak, Emmett is six months removed from a five-round beatdown, suffered at the hands of Ilia Topuria, who’s now preparing for his first title shot. While Emmett’s toughness was on full display, it was one-way traffic from start to finish and one judge even awarded Topuria an extremely rare 50-42 decision victory. Topuria curiously didn’t attempt a takedown until the fifth round, when he secured the win by landing all three of his attempts in the final round. Prior to that, Emmett was submitted in the second round of an interim Featherweight title fight against Yair Rodriguez. Emmett is fortunate not to be on a three (or even four) fight losing streak, and just before getting submitted by Yair, Emmett stole a five-round split decision against Calvin Kattar, after narrowly winning a three-round decision over Dan Ige. Kattar outlanded Emmett 130-107 in significant strikes in the pure striking battle with no takedowns landed by either fighter. Chris Lee criminally scored R4 for Emmett, despite Kattar landing twice as many strikes in the round, and that ultimately turned the decision in Emmett’s favor. And in his win over Ige just before that, Emmett started strong but got hurt by Ige in round two to make the fight even going into the third. Ige was announced as a -295 favorite on the live line going into the final five minutes and finished the round slightly ahead in striking, but all three judges scored the lackluster round for Emmett and awarded him the decision. That was Emmett’s first fight back after suffering a knee injury in a decision win over Shane Burgos in June 2020. Emmett then dealt with multiple complications after having surgery resulting in a year and a half layoff. The last time Emmett finished anybody was in 2019, when he knocked out Mirsad Bektic in the first round.

Now 18-4 as a pro, Emmett has six wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and 10 decision victories. He’s been knocked out once (2018 R2), submitted once (2023 R2), and has two decision losses (2017 & 2023). Both of Emmett’s submission wins occurred in the first round of fights earlier in his career (2013 & 2015), prior to joining the UFC. Four of his six knockouts also occurred in the first round, while the other two came in round three. Eleven of his 13 UFC fights made it to the second round, with nine seeing round three, and eight going the distance. Emmett turned pro in 2011 at 145 lb, but moved up to 155 lb in 2014 for his 5th pro fight. He stayed at 155 lb until 2017, when he dropped back down to 145 lb for his 4th UFC match. After starting his UFC career 2-1 in three decisions at 155 lb, he’s since gone 7-3 at 145 lb, with four of those 145 lb fights ending in knockouts (3-1), five ending in decisions (4-1), and one ending in a submission loss.

Overall, Emmett is a former college wrestler but relies mostly on his striking to win fights. He loads up with most of his shots and has a ton of power, as he’s currently tied for the all time Featherweight knockdown record at 11. However, after landing at least one knockdown in each of his first seven UFC Featherweight fights, he failed to land one in any of his last three matches. In his 13 UFC fights, Emmett has landed 11 of his 29 takedown attempts (37.9% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 8 of their 15 attempts (46.7% defense). However, most of the those takedowns came in his three UFC fights at 155 lb and in his 10 fights since dropping down to 145 lb he’s only landed 3 of his 14 takedown attempts (21.4% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 4 of their 8 attempts (50% defense). Seven of his last nine opponents didn’t even try to take him down, while he got taken down three times in the 5th round of his last fight, after he was already badly hurt. So it’s hard to truly evaluate how good his takedown defense actually is right now. At 38 years old, it’s unclear how much longer Emmett plans to continue fighting and his best days are likely behind him. He still has power in his hands, but he’s basically a one-trick pony who just looks to land heavy haymakers.

Fight Prediction:

Mitchell will have a 4” height advantage, but both fighters share a 70” reach. Mitchell is nine years younger than the 38-year-old Emmett.

Due to a late opponent change, Emmett went from facing the most one-dimensional striker in the Featherweight division to squaring off against a relentless one-dimensional wrestler. This may be the most drastic stylistic change we’ve ever seen caused by a late replacement. It will be fascinating to see how Emmett adjusts to that change with so little time to prepare. Emmett does have a wrestling background, but is very rarely looking to grapple. Emmett’s takedown defense has so rarely been tested that it’s hard to really know how good it is at this point in his career, which is somewhat unfortunate considering it will likely be the deciding factor in this fight. Since dropping down to 145 lb, only three of Emmett’s last 10 opponents tried to take him down, with the last two of them finding success. However, Topuria didn’t even try to take him down until late in the 5th round when Emmett was hurt and desperate for a knockout. The only other fighter to try and take Emmett down in his last nine matches was Dan Ige, who only landed one of his four attempts and couldn’t control Emmett on the mat when he did get him down. So while Emmett’s takedown defense looks really bad on paper at just 46%, we’re not so sure that’s a fair representation of his actual ability to defend takedowns. He has a good forward-leaning, wrestling-style stance with a low center of gravity that should make it tougher to get him down, or even get on the inside when you have to respect the power he possesses. He showed a good sprawl against Ige and trains at Team Alpha Male with Andre Fili, who fought Bryce Mitchell a few years back. So while this matchup was put together on short notice, Emmett’s team has already had to prepare for Mitchell in the past.

Considering Mitchell stepped into this fight on just a week and a half’s notice, it remains to be seen if his cardio will hold up as well as normal for his three rounds of grueling wrestling. We thought Mitchell looked bad in each of his last two matches and that last match was less than three months ago, so he hasn’t had a ton of time to make improvements and he also doesn't really have the high-level system in place around him to really grow as a fighter. So he basically is who he is, which is a one-dimensional wrestler who can find success smothering the opposition on the mat when he’s facing someone that doesn’t have great wrestling, but will likely struggle as he climbs the ranks and faces more well rounded competition. Emmett’s last two fights were for the interim title and a top contender spot, so he’s been right up there towards the top and we kind of like his chances of either knocking Mitchell out or at least doing enough with his striking and takedown defense to win a decision. However, it’s hard to be supremely confident in a 38-year-old fighter on a losing streak against a relentless wrestler, and the short notice nature of this matchup adds some inherent volatility. Nevertheless, Emmett’s the pick and we’ll say he gets it done in a third round knockout.

Our favorite bet here is “Josh Emmett ML” at +187.

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DFS Implications:

Mitchell has been a tail of two bibles and lately you never know which version is going to show up. Are we going to get the old testament fire and brimstone version of Mitchell that hates the world and attacks his opponents like a rabid dog or are we going to get new testament Mitchell that comes in much more passively and wants to peacefully pray with his opponents after matches? The latter is what we got in his last outing and the difference it made on the stat sheet was startling. After landing 182 total strikes against Barboza, Mitchell only landed 37 against Ige. He was also much less aggressive with his takedown attempts in that last fight, which resulted in him taking a ton of damage. He’ll face another powerful striker here and if he allows the fight to remain standing, he’ll run the risk of getting knocked out. In his seven UFC wins, Mitchell averaged 90 DraftKings points, with three scores of 108 or more, but four of 88 or fewer. So he’s been kind of a boom or bust option who needs to either lock up a submission or completely dominate fights on the mat from start to finish. He was only able to control Ige for half the fight in his most recent win, and despite landing five takedowns, Mitchell only scored 81 DraftKings points there. However, in his two previous decision wins he scored 124 and 113 points respectively. So the ceiling is definitely there, but it’s far from a guarantee that he’ll hit it. The fact that he took this fight on short notice is definitely concerning for his ability to wrestle for 15 hard minutes and we’re also not convinced that Emmett’s takedown defense is as bad as it looks on paper (46%). Emmett also has a ton of power and throws everything with fight-ending intentions, meaning Mitchell will be at risk of getting knocked out whenever this fight is on the feet. Emmett has also gone 10-2 with the judges in his career and we’ve seen multiple close decisions go his way in the past, so the judges appear to like him when rounds are tight. At Mitchell’s expensive price tag, he’ll either need a submission or 15 straight minutes of dominance on the ground to return value on DraftKings and is reliant on a finish to get there on FanDuel. The odds imply Mitchell has a 66% chance to win, a 23% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

Emmett is known for his devastating power, but seems to be slowing down some at 38 years old and hasn’t knocked anybody out since 2019. He lost his last two fights and his previous three wins all ended in close decisions. He had pretty serious knee surgery in 2020, which is always concerning for a fighter in their late 30’s. However, he definitely still has knockout power and he’s been fighting the guys at the top of the division, whereas he’ll now get a step down in competition against an opponent who is filling in on short notice. That’s not to say this is an easy matchup, but Emmett will have a massive striking advantage if he can keep the fight standing. He throws every strike like he’s trying to punch through a brick wall, and is always live for a knockout, even if he hasn’t landed one in over four years. Emmett has shown a very wide range of potential scoring outcomes in his wins, totaling anywhere from 52 to 114 points in his five UFC decision wins and anywhere from 64 to 113 in his three UFC knockouts. That makes him a tougher guy to peg down. He’s tied for the all time Featherweight knockdown record at 11, which has helped him to score well at times even in decisions. However, he failed to knock down any of his last three opponents, and predicting knockdowns is tough. There’s also the clear potential for him to get taken down and controlled in this fight, lowering his chances of really scoring well with either a late finish or in a decision. So for him to really go off he’ll likely need an early knockout and the last time he landed a third round knockout he only scored 64 DraftKings points. At his cheap price tag, it’s possible he could serve as a value play in a longer fight, but that will likely require the other cheap options on the slate to lose. The odds imply Emmett has a 34% chance to win, a 19% chance to land a finish, and a 9% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #4

Paddy Pimblett

5th UFC Fight (4-0)

A year removed from a controversial decision win over Jared Gordon, Pimblett had to undergo ankle surgery following the close/questionable win due to an injury he sustained in the fight. It’s impossible to know what impact if any that injury had on him during the fight, but that is something to consider. He said he had to have complete ligament reconstruction and was out for three months while he recovered. During his year away from fighting he also got married and is now expecting twins, so it’s been an eventful year for him. Prior to facing Gordon, Pimblett finished his first three UFC opponents. He landed a first round KO win in his September 2021 UFC debut, although he faced some adversity in that fight as he absorbed several big punches from Luigi Vendramini early on. Pimblett kept his chin high and his hands low. He also got taken down a minute into the fight, but was able to return to his feet relatively quickly. Pimblett found his timing late in the round, and once he smelled blood, he really turned it on late and landed a knockout in the final minute of the round. He then landed a first round submission win over Rodrigo Vargas, although got taken down and controlled for half a round before finding the finish. Both Vendramini and Vargas were cut following those losses. Pimblett then took on a one-dimensional grappler in Jordan Leavitt and landed another submission win, this time in the second round. Those last two finishes both took place in front of Pimblett’s home UK crowd, while his debut and decision over Gordon were both in Vegas, with his debut being at the Apex and his last fight in front of large US crowd for the first time at T-Mobile Arena, where this next fight will also be.

Now 20-3 as a pro, Pimblett has six wins by KO, nine submissions, and five decision victores. He’s never been knocked out, with his only early loss ending in a 2013 first round submission in his fifth pro fight against a suspect Cameron Else, who has since gone 0-2 in the UFC and was finished in the first six minutes in each of those losses. Since that early loss, Pimblett has gone 16-2 with both of those more recent losses ending in five-round decisions in Cage Warriors Championship fights. The first of those was in a 145 lb fight against another fighter who went on to join the UFC in Nad Narimani. Following that 2017 loss, Pimblett moved up to 155 lb, where he won his next fight in a 2018 second round armbar submission. He then lost a 2018 five-round decision to Soren Bak for the vacant Cage Warriors Lightweight belt before bouncing back again with a pair of first round finishes leading up to his UFC debut. Pimblett actually started his career all the way down at 135 lb back in 2012 when he was just 17 years old. After going 6-1 at 135 lb, he moved up to 145 lb in 2014 in his eighth pro fight. He then went 7-1 in his next eight fights at 145 lb, before moving up to 155 lb in 2018 when he was 23 years old, where he’s since gone 7-1, with six of those seven wins coming in under eight minutes and the one loss ending in a five-round decision. Pimblett easily could have lost another five-round decision to Julian Erosa back in 2016, but squeaked out the win, so he’s often struggled in five-round fights. Had the judges not ruled that decision in his favor, he’d be 0-3 in five-round decisions and 1-3 in Cage Warriors title fights, as he landed a first round KO to win the belt just before facing Erosa. Of his 15 early wins, 11 have ended in round one with the other four occurring in round two. All six of his career knockouts came in the first round, while his submission wins were split pretty evenly across the first two rounds. Pimblett has struggled in fights that have made it past the eight minute mark and cardio is one potential concern with him.

Overall, Pimblett is a UFC marketing tool and they’re financially motivated to aid in his success. That means they have to carefully select his opponents, because his game has more holes in it than swiss cheese. He has terrible striking defense and he keeps his chin high up in the air, he only has about two rounds of cardio, he’s been prone to getting controlled, and his wrestling isn’t very good. Basically, he’s all offense with no defense. He’s got pretty good grappling, decent power, and has been durable to this point, as he’s never been knocked out. However, he puts on a ton of weight in between fights and it’s just a matter of time until the extreme weight cutting catches up with his chin. He’s very undisciplined both inside and out of the Octagon, which is a disaster waiting to happen. He comes into every fight looking for a quick finish, which can be a successful strategy against low-level opponents, but we saw in his last fight that when he can’t end things early he’ll wilt down the stretch. Two of his three UFC finishes came in front of his home UK crowd and he really thrives in that environment, but when he fought in front of a US crowd for the first time in his last match he looked much worse. That was also the first time he fought a decent opponent in the UFC and injured his ankle during the fight, so in fairness, there were multiple factors in play. In his four UFC fights, he landed just 2 of his 8 takedown attempts, while his opponents got him down on 7 of their 16 attempts. All three of the opponents who tried to take him down were successful, and he got taken down three times in each of his last two matches. After a year away and coming off serious ankle surgery, it will be interesting to see how Pimblett looks, but he claims he wants a war here.

Tony Ferguson

23rd UFC Fight (15-7)

Coming in sideways to the end of his career, the 39-year-old Ferguson has dropped six straight and has been finished in each of his last three matches. The most recent of those losses ended in a late third round submission against Bobby Green, who hadn’t submitted anybody else in the last decade. Ten months prior to that loss against Green, Ferguson tried moving up to 170 lb for the first time since his 2011 UFC debut and was submitted in the fourth round by Nate Diaz in a matchup that got put together on just a day’s notice after Chimaev missed weight so badly that the UFC was forced to shuffle all of the main card matchups. Ferguson returned to 155 lb following that loss. Leading up to those two submission losses, Ferguson got violently knocked out by Michael Chandler in the opening seconds of round two in a 2022 match. That came just after Ferguson got smothered on the mat in back-to-back three-round decision losses to Beneil Dariush and Charles Oliveira, following a life shortening beating from Justin Gaethje in a 2020 R5 TKO defeat. It’s now been four and a half years since Ferguson won a fight and in his last five losses he only won a single round on the scorecards, which was round one against Chandler.

Now 25-9 as a pro, Ferguson has 12 wins by KO/TKO, eight submissions, and five decision victories. He’s been knocked out twice, submitted three times, and has four decision losses. His last 13 fights all made it past the first round, with eight seeing a third round and four going the distance. Ferguson started his career at 170 lb before moving down to 155 lb in 2011, following his UFC debut. All but two of his UFC fights have been at 155 lb.

Overall, Ferguson is a shell of his past self and we’ve seen him get dominated both on the feet and the mat during his current losing streak. His body has taken insane abuse, and his once legendary durability is finally giving out. While he’s a 10th planet jiu-jitsu black belt with a background in wrestling and a dangerous submission threat, he’s only landed one takedown in his last 13 fights (1 for 11 on his attempts). Over that same stretch, his opponents got him down on 14 of their 33 attempts (57.6% defense) and the last five opponents who tried to take Ferguson down were all successful. He has a career 66% takedown defense, but over his current six-fight losing streak, that has dropped all the way down to just 30%. Desperate to rekindle the magic, Ferguson has been doing these intensive training sessions with David Goggins and went back to his old gym at Classic Fight Team for the first time since 2015. It’s just getting kind of sad at this point with Ferguson and hopefully either the UFC forces his hand or someone close to him talks some sense into him about retiring in the very near future.

Fight Prediction:

Ferguson will have a 1” height advantage and 3” reach advantage, while Pimblett is 11 years younger than the 39-year-old Ferguson.

While Pimblett has called this a lose lose situation for him, it looks like a win win for the UFC. If Pimblett wins, they can use Ferguson’s name to continue building Pimblett up and if Ferguson wins, he can either go out on a win or they can use that momentum to sell another big name fight or two of his. They would presumably prefer to build Pimblett up at his young age, but it’s not terrible for them either way. The Paddy Pimblett hype train is already getting pretty shaky on the rails after he could barely get by Jared Gordon. And Pimblett’s partner in crime, Molly McCann, looks about done, while their biggest backer was Barstool Sports, which recently tanked after losing their betting platform following a split with Penn Entertainment, who then partnered with ESPN to open ESPN Bet. It does seem like the UFC is trying to build Pimblett and McCann back up following poor performances from each of them, as they’ve thrown McCann a bone in a rematch against Diana Belbita coming up in February and are giving Pimblett a big name on a six fight losing streak, who’s coming off back-to-back submission losses. And considering how much Ferguson has struggled to defend takedowns lately, Pimblett would have to be a stone moron not to try and get this fight to the ground, where he’s been the most dangerous. If you want to get hammered during the fight, drink every time you hear “power is the last thing to go,” but that cliched statement does carry some truth to it and Pimblett’s terrible striking defense always leaves open the potential for him to get knocked out. It won’t be shocking if Pimblett initially tests Ferguson on the feet and only resorts to his grappling after getting hit a few times, but we do expect him to eventually get the fight to the mat and submit Ferguson, we’ll say in an early second round rear-naked choke.

Our favorite bet here is “Paddy Pimblett SUB” at +275.

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DFS Implications:

Pimblett has scored progressively fewer DraftKings points in each of his four UFC wins, as he’s slowly faced a step up in competition. Despite finishing three of those four opponents, he’s only averaged 92 DraftKings points and only scored 63 points in his recent decision that most people thought he lost. Prior to that, he scored 88 points in a second round submission win over Jordan Leavitt, following a 98 point performance in a first round submission victory. The only time he really scored well was in a near-ideal late first round knockout in his UFC debut, where he put up 119 points. Pimblett’s reckless uptempo striking combined with his grappling does create the potential for DFS success, but we’ve also seen him get controlled for periods of time which has capped his scoring ceiling in recent fights. Fortunately for him in this matchup, Ferguson rarely controls his opponents and amazingly has just 37 seconds of combined control time over his last 11 fights. And while Ferguson averages 4.26 SSA/min in his career, that number has jumped to 6.96 SSA/min in his last three fights. We’ve also seen Ferguson’s 66% career takedown defense plunge to just 30% over his current six-fight losing streak and Bobby Green just scored 108 DraftKings points against Ferguson in a late third round submission. So Pimblett has a lot going for him in this matchup and after he looked terrible in his last fight and is now the third most expensive fighter on the card his ownership could come in a little lower than in the past, where he hovered around 40% owned in all of his last three matches. A concern with Pimblett is that his cardio has looked bad, which lowers his chances of scoring well in a decision and likely leaves him reliant on landing a finish in the first two rounds. He also has poor striking defense, and even though he’s never been knocked out, the potential for that to happen is always there, which leaves him with a somewhat shaky floor. He’s also coming off a year layoff and ankle surgery, and his current form remains to be seen. That leaves him as a high-risk play and even if he’s lower owned than in past fights, he’ll still be pretty popular. The odds imply Pimblett has a 72% chance to win, a 44% chance to land a finish, and a 24% chance it comes in round one.

Ferguson has lost six straight fights and is now 39 years old. His last win was against Donald Cerrone all the way back in 2019 and betting against him has been a very profitable endeavor that we’ve capitalized on in six straight matches. However, he will be getting a pretty large step down in competition here, so if he was ever going to win another fight, this could be the time. With that said, he would likely have to land a hail mary knockout to make that happen and Pimblett has never been knocked out. So before you get too excited, realize we are indeed betting against Ferguson for the seventh straight time here. Ferguson has been submitted in two straight fights, and the grappling exchanges are where Pimblett is the most dangerous. In addition to Ferguson’s takedown defense failing him over his current losing streak, he’s also been absorbing way more damage and has become a complete defensive liability. He does have better cardio than Pimblett, so if he can win one of the first two rounds and survive the opening 10 minutes, he would have the opportunity to win round three and get his hand raised in a decision. Just keep in mind, he only averaged 66 DraftKings in his three previous three-round UFC decision wins. He’s only landed one takedown in his last 13 fights, leaving him reliant on putting up a huge striking total if he wants to score well with the judges. At his cheap price tag, it’s not impossible he could serve as a value play in a decision win, but he would likely need a slate where very few other underdogs win for that to happen, so we’re calling him a finish or bust option. The odds imply Ferguson has a 28% chance to win, a 17% chance to land a finish, and a 8% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #3

Shavkat Rakhmonov

6th UFC Fight (5-0)

Coming off a late third round submission win over Geoff Neal, Rakhmonov kept both his undefeated record and 100% finishing rate intact. Neal didn’t make it easy for Rakhmonov and stuffed all four of his takedown attempts, but ultimately Rakhmonov was just too much for him. Rakhmonov hurt Neal badly late in the fifth round and then locked up some sort of modified standing rear-naked choke in the final minute of the fight. Neal notably missed weight by 4 lb for that fight, after also withdrawing from the same matchup just two months prior. Cancellations have been an issue for Rakhmonov and following that win over Neal he had been scheduled to face Kelvin Gastelum in September, but Gastelumd dropped out. Rakhmonov also had three opponents fall through for his 2020 UFC debut before finally taking on the fourth opponent the UFC matched him up against veteran in Alex Oliveira, who Rakhmonov submitted with 20 seconds left in the first round. Then he faced another longtime veteran in Michel Prazeres, who had previously never been finished in 30 pro fights, and Rakhmonov submitted him in the middle of round two. Next, Rakhmonov took on an up-and-comer Carlston Harris, who had landed five straight finishes of his own with both of his UFC wins coming in round one, and Rakhmonov knocked him out in the final minute of round one with a spinning hook kick. Then leading up to his win over Neal, Rakhmonov dominated Neal Magny on the mat and submitted him in the closing seconds of round two.

Now 17-0 as a pro, Rakhmonov has eight wins by KO/TKO and nine submissions. Six of his knockouts occurred in round one, one ended in round two, and one came in round three. He has three first round submissions, five in round two, and one in round three, with six of his last seven submission victories ending in the later rounds. Amazingly, five of Rakhmonov’s last six finishes occurred in the final minute of rounds. At some point you have to acknowledge that as being more than just a coincidence and credit his clock awareness and ability to push for finishes. The only two times Rakhmonov has been to the third round in his career were in his recent submission win over Neal and a 2018 KZMMAF Welterweight title fight that ended in a third round knockout. His last four fights prior to joining the UFC were all title fights in the KZMMAF and M-1 organizations.

Overall, Rakhmonov is incredibly dangerous anywhere a fight can go and is unfairly well rounded. His massive size allows him to strike from range, but it’s a risky proposition closing the distance on him, as he throws vicious knees, elbows, and uppercuts from the clinch. He’ll also look for takedowns and has the ability to completely dominate opponents on the mat. And despite how lethal his offense is, he doesn’t get reckless with his approach and is very calculated, sporting an elite 59% striking accuracy. In his five UFC fights, he landed 4 of his 12 takedown attempts (33.3% accuracy), while stuffing all five of the attempts by his opponents. While he failed to land any of his four takedown attempts in his last fight against the elite 87% takedown defense of Neal, Rakhmonov took down each of his three previous opponents. Rakhmonov is just a win or two away from a title shot, so this will be a huge fight for him.

Stephen Thompson

20th UFC Fight (12-6-1)

This is what happens when you piss Dana White off. You get matched up with the scariest opponent he can find. Thompson had been booked to fight Michel Pereira back in July in a featured fight on the UFC 291 card in Salt Lake City, which was notably already a small 12-fight PPV card. However, Pereira missed weight by 3 lb and then Thompson refused to fight him after the miss, even with a negotiated purse. Then Thompson publicly complained that he didn’t get paid his show money, which turned into an ongoing dispute. White also publicly complained about guys wanting to get paid not to fight and seemed very irritated that Thompson forced the fight cancellation and screwed up an already unsized PPV card, directly impacting the UFC’s PPV sales. So not only did Dana avoid paying Thompson, he also gave him a terrible matchup. In fairness, everyone in the top five is a grappler and a bad matchup for Thompson, who said he wanted a guy ranked ahead of him, so maybe a bad matchup was inevitable. However, they could have given him a lower ranked striker if they wanted to. Anyways, that’s our take with the matchup narrative we have going on here.

After getting smothered on the mat for three rounds in back-to-back decision losses to Belal Muhammad and Gilbert Burns, Thompson bounced back with a R4 corner stoppage TKO win over Kevin Holland in his last match. Thompson somehow convinced Holland to agree not to grapple in the fight—at least early on—which is the equivalent of showing up to a gunfight with a knife and convincing your opponent that neither of you are allowed to use bullets. To make matters worse, Holland broke his hand early in the fight, which resulted in him being unable to defend himself the longer the fight went. Once Holland was clearly hurt and unable to strike in round four we did see him try and fail to land a handful of takedowns. He also basically fell into a couple of takedowns early in the fight but immediately relinquished the position so they don’t even really count. That was Thompson’s first finish since 2016 and 9 of his last 11 fights have gone the distance. The only other one to end early was a 2019 R2 KO loss to Anthony Pettis, which is the only time Thompson has been finished in his career. You have to go all the way back to 2020 to find Thompson’s second most recent win, which ended in a five-round decision against Geoff Neal.

Now 17-6-1 as a pro, Thompson has eight wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and eight decision victories. His lone submission victory occurred in 2010 in his third pro fight. The only time he’s ever been finished was in a 2019 KO, with his other five losses all going the distance. Thompson is just 3-4 in his last seven fights and only 4-5-1 in his last 10. All four of those wins were against strikers.

Overall, Thompson is a high-level karate-style striker who’s very elusive and light on his feet. He averages 4.20 SSL/min and 3.04 SSA/min and is very elusive as he glides around the Octagon. His unique, word-class karate style is incredibly tough to prepare for, and we often see opponents bring in Raymond Daniels to try and mimic Thompson’s approach during training. However, Thompson offers very little when it comes to grappling. After landing five takedowns on nine attempts in his first seven UFC fights, Thompson failed to land a takedown in his last 12 matches on just three attempts. On the other side of things, in his 19 UFC fights his opponents took him down 19 times on 53 attempts (64.2% defense). The majority of those takedowns occurred in his last three matches, where he was taken down a combined 12 times on 21 attempts, after only three of his first 16 UFC opponents were able to get him to the mat. Thompson has gone 1-4-1 in UFC fights where he was taken down even once, with the one win coming against Holland, who literally refused to do anything with the two takedowns he landed. Before turning pro in MMA, Thompson impressively went 57-0 as a kickboxer with 40 knockouts.

Fight Prediction:

Rakhmonov will have a 1” height advantage and 2” reach advantage, while also being 11 years younger than the 40-year-old Thompson.

While Thompson’s striking looked great in his last fight, he didn’t really have to worry about getting taken down in that fight and was also going against an injured opponent for most of the match. Prior to win, we saw what happens when Thompson faces a grappler, in not one, but two consecutive smothering losses. Rakhmonov is not coming into this matchup to be buddies with Thompson and high five him every 30 seconds or to take part in a joint striking exhibition. Rakhmonov is coming in to kill and make his case for why he deserves the next title shot. That doesn’t mean Rakhmonov won’t test his striking against Thompson’s, but unless he lands a quick knockout, he’ll 100% be looking to take Thompson down and hand him the first submission loss of his career. While Thompson has historically been really tough to finish, he hasn’t faced a ton of dangerous submission threats outside of an undersized Gilbert Burns, who only has one submission win since moving up to 170 lb. We like Rakhmonov’s chances to become the first fighter to submit Thompson, a stat that the UFC will then use to market Rakhmonov as they build him up for his inevitable title shot. Rakhmonov by second round submission is the pick.

Our favorite bet here is “Shavkat Rakhmonov R2 or R3 SUB” at +380.

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DFS Implications:

Rakhmonov remains undefeated with a 100% finishing rate, and has looked dominant since joining the UFC in 2020. He’s only been past the second round twice in 17 pro fights, and is dangerous everywhere a fight can go. He averaged 104 DraftKings points in his five UFC wins, returning DraftKings totals of 98, 111, 112, 98, 100 in those fights. While his scoring floor has been rock solid, his ceiling has often underwhelmed with three scores of 100 or less. As the most expensive fighter on the card that is somewhat concerning, especially as he faces an opponent who has never been submitted and only knocked out once. However, we’ve seen Thompson struggle on the mat in recent fights and he’s now 40 years old, while Rakhmonov will be looking for a statement finish to stake his case for the next title shot. Belal Muhammad scored a career best 132 DraftKings points in a smothering decision win over Thompson, and there’s no reason to think that Rakhmonov can’t explode here given his massive grappling advantage. Rakhmonov has also been amazingly effective landing finishes late in rounds, which is great when it comes to his DFS scoring potential. His last three and five of last six wins ended in the final minute of rounds. However, that also brings up an argument that he’s due for some regression when it comes to the timing of his finishes, which could also lower his scoring floor if he ever gets a finish early in the second or third round. Regardless, Rakhmonov looks like a solid play in all contest types, but especially low-risk contests where his floor is more important than his ceiling. He will still need to outscore the other expensive options to avoid getting priced out of winning tournament lineups as the most expensive fighter on the card. The odds imply Rakhmonov has an 82% chance to win, a 57% chance to land a finish, and a 26% chance it comes in round one.

Thompson has averaged 99 DraftKings points in his 12 UFC wins, but only has one finish since 2016 and his recent scores have been bolstered in five-round fights. In his four three-round decision wins, Thompson only averaged 78 DraftKings points, with scores of 96, 68, 67, and 82. He’s generally been reliant on landing knockouts to score well and the only time he topped 82 DraftKings points in a three-round decision was in a high-volume striking battle against Vicente Luque in 2019 where no takedowns were attempted. Thompson won’t have that same luxury here, as Rakhmonov has looked to take all five of his UFC opponents down. Rakhmonov also averages just 2.61 SSA/min and we don’t see Thompson landing the number of strikes necessary to score well in a decision. Thompson’s only stoppage win since 2016 came in the fourth round against Kevin Holland due to an arm injury that resulted in Holland’s corner throwing in the towel before the start of the fifth round. That leaves the 40-year-old Thompson as an unlikely candidate to finish the undefeated Rakhmonov. Thompson is the cheapest fighter on the card, so it’s not impossible that he could serve as a value play even without a huge score, but we don’t have a ton of interest in playing him. The odds imply Thompson has an 18% chance to win, a 7% chance to land a finish, and a 3% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #2

Alexandre Pantoja

12th UFC Fight (8-3)

Pantoja will be stepping into his first title defense after winning the belt against Brandon Moreno back in July in a decision that should not have been split. One judge amazingly scored the last four rounds for Moreno, while the other two scored rounds one, three, and five for Pantoja. It seemed clear that Pantoja won those rounds and we also thought he did enough in round four to win a 49-46 decision, although that round was closer. Pantoja finished the fight with six takedowns landed on 11 attempts, with eight and half minutes of control time. Striking was pretty close, with Moreno finishing slightly ahead, although Pantoja dropped him in the first round. Ultimately the decision went the right way, but it was much closer than it should have been. That was Pantoja’s fourth straight win following a 2020 decision loss to Askar Askarov. He bounced back from that loss with a decision victory over Manel Kape, followed by a second round submission victory over Brandon Royval and a first round submission win over Alex Perez to then secure a title shot. However, he did have to wait on the sidelines for a year until the seemingly never ending Moreno/Figueiredo saga finally came to a close. Pantoja has gone 8-2 in his last 10 matches, and a year before he lost to Askarov he dropped a decision to the former Flyweight champ in Deiveson Figueiredo. Unlike some guys on this card, Pantoja had to scratch and claw his way to the top. Including his fights on TUF, Pantoja has three wins over the #1 ranked contender in Brandon Moreno (one on TUF), and also defeated #2 ranked Brandon Royval, #4 ranked Kai Kara-France (on TUF), #6 ranked Manel Kape, #7 ranked Alex Perez, and #9 ranked Matt Schnell. The only three fighters currently ranked in the top nine of the Flyweight division that Pantoja has not defeated are Amir Albazi, Matheus Nicolau, and Muhammad Mokaev. Five of Pantoja’s last seven wins ended early, with two first round submissions, two first round knockouts, and an early second round submission.

Now 26-5 as a pro, Pantoja has eight wins by KO/TKO, 10 submissions, and eight decision victories. All five of his career losses went the distance and he’s never been finished in his 16+ year pro career that began when he was just 17 years old back in 2007. In addition to his 26 official pro wins, he also defeated both Brandon Moreno (R2 SUB) and Kai Kara-France (DEC) on The Ultimate Fighter in 2016, but those victories are counted as exhibition matches and don’t show up on his official pro record. He’s typically looking to lock up rear-naked chokes, which is how he finished the majority of his submissions. He has 10 first round finishes, five in round two, and three in round three. Nine of his last 10 finishes occurred in the first two rounds, with six of those ending in under five minutes.

This will be the 4th five-round fight of Pantoja’s career, but just his second in the UFC. His first two fights scheduled to go five-rounds were in 2014 and 2015 and he finished both of those opponents in the second round, while he won a decision in his lone UFC five-round fight.

Overall, Pantoja is an all action fighter who’s constantly hunting for finishes, despite having the demeanor that he’s waiting for a bus. He’s a high level BJJ black belt in addition to being a dangerous striker with rare one punch knockout power in the Flyweight division. He’s been training at American Top Team since 2019, after training at Nova Uniao before that, so you know he’s been well coached. Pantoja generally comes out very aggressively early on in fights, although that’s a tough pace to keep up for three rounds, let alone five. However, when push came to shove in the deciding final round of his recent title shot, Pantoja dug deep and won the round to take the belt off the former champ. In his 13 UFC fights, he landed 17 takedowns on 38 attempts (44.7%), while getting taken down by his opponents 23 times on 69 attempts (66.7% takedown defense). After already defeating Royval once in the past and now holding the belt for the first time, we expect Pantoja to come into this matchup with supreme confidence.

Brandon Royval

8th UFC Fight (5-2)

Royval has won three straight fights following a 2020 R1 TKO loss to Brandon Moreno and a 2021 R2 submission defeat to Alexandre Pantoja. Royval narrowly avoided extending that losing streak to three in a 2022 split-decision win over Rogerio Bontorin, who took Royval down eight times and controlled him for nearly eight minutes. He then submitted Matt Schnell in just 134 seconds, before knocking out Matheus Nicolau in just 129 seconds. In between those two wins, Royval had two fights canceled following an opponent botching a weight cut and then Royval breaking his wrist. That has resulted in Royval only competing once in the last 19 months and it’s been nearly two years since he was in a fight that lasted longer than 134 seconds. Prior to losing to Moreno, Royval landed a pair of second round submissions in his first two UFC fights, which were both against ranked opponents in Tim Elliott and Kai Kara-France.

Now 15-6 as a pro, Royval has four wins by KO/TKO, nine submissions, and two decision victories. All 13 of Royval’s finishes have come in the first two rounds, with 10 ending in round one and three in round two. While he’s coming off a knockout victory, his previous five finishes all ended in submissions. Royval has one TKO loss, one submission defeat, and four decision losses. His lone TKO loss resulted from a dislocated shoulder against Brandon Moreno, while his one submission defeat came against Alexandre Pantoja. Royval fought at 135 lb until 2016 when he dropped down to 125 lb. Standing 5’9”, he’s tall for the division and generally has the height advantage in his fights.

This will be the 3rd five-round fight of Royval’s career, but his first in the UFC. The first time he was scheduled to go five rounds was in a 2018 interim LFA Flyweight title fight, where Royval lost a decision to Casey Kenney. The belt was vacated when Kenney joined the UFC in 2019, and Royval competed for it again, this time against a journeyman in 29-18 Nate Williams, who Royval submitted in the first round. So Royval has seen the championship rounds just once in his career, where he lost a decision.

Overall, Royval is an ultra fast-paced grappler who’s a BJJ black belt and operates at an insane pace that most opponents can’t keep up with. He has no problem hunting for submissions off his back or from unconventional positions and in his seven UFC fights, he surprisingly only attempted two takedowns landing both of those. On the other side of things, his opponents got him down 17 times on 28 attempts (39.3% defense). Also somewhat surprising for a guy that’s known for his submissions, Royval trains at Factory X Muay Thai, a gym more known for their striking and leg kicks. However, training at elevation in Colorado is a benefit for a guy that likes to push the pace as much as Royval does. While his fights are no stop action, we see more scrambling and submission attempts than striking and he still only averages 3.45 SSL/min and 2.63 SSA/min. Nevertheless, he always makes for exciting fights that you never want to miss. Now he’ll be stepping into the first rematch of his career and his first UFC title shot, so we’ll see if that has any impact on his approach.

Fight Prediction:

Royval will have a 4” height advantage and 1” reach advantage, while also being two years younger than the 33-year-old Pantoja.

In their last fight, Pantoja controlled Royval for nearly three minutes in a fight that lasted just 6 minutes and 46 seconds. Pantoja was able to take Royval’s back just 15 seconds into the first round, demonstrating why he’s one of the best Flyweights in the world as he masterfully controlled Royval who was frantically trying to get away the whole time. Royval looked for a heel hook as the two scrambled on the mat, but Pantoja calmly negated his efforts, looking so relaxed he might as well have been smoking a cig during the attempt. Pantoja then reversed the position before the fight returned to the feet late in the round. A minute into the second round, Pantoja was able to take Royval’s back and return him to the mat as he quickly locked in a rear-naked choke, forcing a tap. The fight ended with Pantoja ahead 22-17 in significant strikes, while Royval led 27-23 in total strikes. Pantoja landed 3 of his six takedown attempts with 2:51 in control time, while Royval landed his only takedown attempt, but had just eight seconds of control time. That fight took place over two years, so they’ve each had time to grow since then, but clearly Pantoja was the superior grappler in that matchup.

It’s surprising that the line isn’t wider here, but people continue to sleep on Pantoja and love Royval, who took the early betting action before we finally saw some push back in the week leading up to the fight. Royval showed a pretty poor submission defense in their first matchup and hasn’t switched gyms or made any meaningful changes since then that could result in dramatic improvements. Pantoja is still training with better grapplers on a daily basis at American Top Team, while Royval continues to work out of Factory X Muay Thai. In addition to holding a grappling advantage, Pantoja has been the more durable of the two, and is a more powerful striker. He’s also obviously the current champ, which tends to be beneficial when it comes to scoring close rounds. You could debate who has the better cardio, but the one time Royval saw the championship rounds he lost a decision and the one time Pantoja made it to the championship rounds he won with the judges. Pantoja has also gone 8-5 in 13 career decisions, while Roval went just 2-4 with the judges. Royval has one decision win since 2018, which was split and easily could have gone the other way. So we’re looking at this as Royval needing to become the first fighter to ever finish Pantoja if he wants to pull off the upset. Anything’s possible in a fight, but we’d be pretty shocked to see Royval do that and we like Pantoja’s chances of finishing Royval in the first two rounds once again. He’s got the power to knock him out and the grappling to submit him, but forced to choose we lean slightly towards another submission win—just based on how easy it was for Pantoja to complete that rear-naked choke the first time they squared off. However, we can also see a scenario where Royval gets overly aggressive and forgets about his defense and Pantoja catches him on the feet to close the show.

Our favorite bet here is “Alexandre Pantoja ML” at -165.

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

DFS Implications:

Pantoja just won the Flyweight belt in his first UFC title fight, scoring a massive 143 DraftKings points and 145 points on FanDuel in the five-round decision victory. While he’s “only” averaged 98 DraftKings points in his 10 UFC wins, that number gets dragged down by his three three-round decision victories, where he only put up DraftKings scores of 61, 67, and 63. If we remove those three totals, his average jumps to 113 points and he scored 98 or more points in all seven of his other wins, with four scores of 110 or more. He’s a dangerous finisher with heavy hands and world class jiu-jitsu, while he’s also never been finished himself in 31 pro fights. He’s willing to throw down on the feet, but is also often looking to take opponents down and submit them. He’s landed at least one takedown in six of his last seven fights and also has four knockdowns in the UFC. That leaves him with the ability to fill up the stat sheet and now he’s facing an uptempo opponent who’s always looking to engage. The first time these two squared off, Pantoja locked up a less than ideally timed early second round submission and scored “just” 99 DraftKings points and 116 points on FanDuel. That’s more representative of his floor than his ceiling in this matchup, and a prolonged leg lock entanglement slowed the pace some in the first round of that fight. Royval has just a 39% takedown defense and when Pantoja decides he wants to take this fight to the mat, it will go to the mat. This is a step down in competition for Pantoja and he should have an easier time finding a finish than in his last outing. The fight is favored to end in the opening two rounds and we’re expecting Pantoja to finish Royval once again and put up a solid score. The odds imply Pantoja has a 63% chance to win, a 51% chance to land a finish, and a 21% chance it comes in round one.

Royval has averaged 93 DraftKings points in his five UFC wins, although just like Pantoja, that number is dragged down some by his previous inability to score well in a three-round decision. If we remove Royval’s 62 point score in his lone UFC decision win, his average jumps to 101 DraftKings points. All four of his UFC finishes ended in the opening two rounds, although he’s only landed two takedowns across his seven UFC fights, which has somewhat capped his upside. His frenetic pace and dangerous grappling may lead you to assume that he’s racking up stats in his fights, but that hasn’t typically been the case. He only averages 3.45 SSL/min, 0.7 TDL/min, and gets controlled far more than he controls his opponents. However, he is always looking to push the pace, even if that doesn’t always show up in his stats, and we see some wild scrambles in his fights, with lots of reversals and submission attempts. So it’s not that his style is bad for DFS by any means, it just hasn’t translated into many massive scores for him, with his four finishes returning DraftKings totals of 105, 96, 111, and 91. However, at his cheap price tag, he doesn’t need to put up a slate-breaking performance to end up in winning lineups, he just needs to win. That’s far easier said than done, and Royval looks outgunned both on the feet and the mat in this matchup, while Pantoja has never been finished. Royval has also gone just 2-4 in six career decisions and lost the only five-rounder he’s been to. That leaves him with no clear path to victory and limits our interest in playing him. Considering he already has a loss to Pantoja, we don’t expect Royval’s ownership to get especially high, which does slightly add to his tournament appeal. The odds imply Royval has a 37% chance to win, a 28% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #1

Leon Edwards

17th UFC Fight (13-2, NC)

Coming off his second straight title fight win over Kamaru Usman, Edwards snatched the belt from the former champ with a head kick knockout in the final minute of the first fight, before solidifying the victory with a decision win in the rematch. Those are Edwards’ only two fights in the last two and a half years, after he won a five-round decision over Nate Diaz back in June 2021. Just before that, Edwards had a fight against Belal Muhammad stopped in the opening seconds of round two due to an accidental eye poke, resulting in a No Contest. Only twice in his 16-fight UFC career has Edwards not made it to the final round, with that No Contest being one of those two instances. The other was an eight second knockout win all the way back in 2015 in his second fight with the organization. While 11 of his 16 UFC fights went the distance, including four five-round decisions, Edwards also has three late finishes in the final rounds of fights. The most notable of those was his head kick knockout against Usman that came with just 56 seconds left on the clock. However, Edwards also had a third round TKO with one second remaining in the fight back in 2018 against Peter Sobotta and a 2016 third round submission win with 119 seconds left in the fight. So his last three finishes all occurred in the final half round of fights. Ignoring the No Contest, five of his last six fights went the distance, with four of those coming in five-round fights, with the one exception being his last knockout of Usman. The last time Edwards lost a fight was in a 2015 three-round decision, the first of three times he faced Usman, and since then, Edwards has won 11 fights.

Now 21-3 as a pro, Edwards has seven wins by KO/TKO, three submissions, and 11 decision victories. He’s never been finished, with two of his losses going the distance and the other ending in a 2012 DQ for an illegal knee. One of his UFC losses came in his 2014 UFC debut in a split decision against Claudio Silva, while the other was a 2015 three-round decision against Usman in Edwards’ fourth UFC fight. Ignoring his 2021 No Contest, Edwards’ last 13 matches have seen the third round, with 10 going the distance.

This will be the 7th five-round fight of Edwards’ career. His first five-round fight ended in a low-volume 2018 unanimous 48-47 decision win over Donald Cerrone. The second was another low-volume decision, this time in 2019 against RDA, where Edwards won all but one of the rounds. He then had the unfortunate No Contest against Belal Muhammad, where Edwards won the first round before the fight was stopped early in round two. After that, Edwards won another low-volume five-round decision against Nate Diaz in 2021, and similar to the RDA fight, Edwards won the first four rounds but lost round five. Edwards then won the first round against Usman in his first title fight, but lost the next three rounds and was a minute away from losing when he landed the infamous head kick knockout to steal the belt, in a fight that notably took place at elevation. Most recently, Edwards won another lower volume decision in the final leg of his trilogy against Usman. Edwards was deducted a point in the third round of that fight, which resulted in it being closer than it needed to be, with the scorecards coming in at 48-46, 48-46, and 47-47. In summary, Edwards went the distance in four of his six previous five-round fights (4-0), had one stopped in the second round for an eye poke, resulting in a No Contest, and landed one knockout in the final minute of the fight.

Overall, Edwards is a patient low-volume striker who only averages 2.80 SSL/min and 2.40 SSA/min. He’s only landed above 55 significant strikes in 4 of his 16 UFC fights. He’s talked about how he’s improved his grappling over his UFC career, and he has looked better on the mat over the years, both offensively and defensively. In his 16 UFC fights, he’s been taken down 29 times on 94 opponent attempts (69.1% defense), while landing 22 of his own 66 attempts (33.3% accuracy). Nine of the 11 UFC opponents who tried to take him down were successful, but Edwards has still gone 7-2 in the UFC when he’s surrendered a takedown, winning the last seven of those fights. He’s able to slow fights down and dictate the pace, and while Edwards’ patient approach doesn’t make for action-packed matches, he’s well rounded and a very tough guy to deal with as he’s a crisp striker who throws slicing elbows. He’s got good size for the division and is in the midst of his prime.

Colby Covington

16th UFC Fight (12-3)

Covington is 21 months removed from a March 2022 five-round decision win over a one-dimensional striker in Jorge Masvidal, who was in the midst of a four-fight losing and one fight away from retiring. Covington was able to land 6 of his 15 takedown attempts and finished with over 16 minutes of control time, while also outlanding Masvidal 94-67 in significant strikes and 218-90 in total strikes, but did get rocked on the feet in the fourth round. Prior to that win, Covington lost a five-round decision against Kamaru Usman in November 2021, and also got knocked out by Usman in the fifth round of their first matchup back in 2019. Usman notably knocked Covington down twice in each of those matches and broke Covington’s jaw in the first fight. In between his two losses to Usman, Covington defeated a washed up Tyron Woodley in a 2020 R5 TKO where Woodley quit late in the fight, complaining of a rib injury. Just like Masvidal, Woodley was also in the midst of a four fight skid and one fight away from retiring. Before losing to Usman for the first time, Covington defeated another aging fighter in Robby Lawler, who amazingly was also in the back half of a four-fight losing streak and is now retired. So Covington’s last three wins were all against now-retired opponents in the middle of four fight losing streaks. And just before that he won a decision over RDA, an aging/struggling 155er, following a three-round decision win over Demian Maia, who was in the middle of a three-fight losing streak and is now retired. It’s pretty amazing how Covington fought all these big names late in their careers, while avoiding any up-and-comers. And earlier in his career, Covington built himself up by fighting a bunch of nobodies like Jonathan Meunier, Mike Pyle, Wagner Silva, and Anying Wang. He also hasn’t been very active for the last half decade and since 2017 since 2018.

Now 17-3 as a pro, Covington has four wins by KO/TKO, four submissions, and nine decision wins. Seven of his last nine fights went the distance, with the two exceptions being a R5 KO loss to Usman and a R5 TKO win when Tyrone Woodley quit. Covington’s second most recent early win was all the way back in 2016. Looking at his three losses, Covington has been knocked out once, submitted once, and has one decision loss. The only fighter to beat him beside Usman was Warlley Alves, who submitted Covington in the first round of a 2015 match.

This will be the 7th straight five-round fight of Covington’s career. His previous six all made it to the fifth round, with four of those going the distance (3-1) and two ending in R5 KO/TKOs (1-1).

Overall, Covington is a former DI college wrestler and is typically looking to grind out decisions on the mat. He’s not a very dangerous striker or submission threat, although he is technically a BJJ black belt. However, he hasn’t submitted anybody since 2016, when he locked up a third round rear-naked choke against a debuting Jonathan Meunier, who went 1-1 in the UFC. Where Covington really excels is putting a relentless wrestling pace on his opponents and he has excellent cardio. The only two UFC opponents he failed to take down were Kamaru Usman (either time they fought) and Demian Maia. In Covington’s 15 UFC fights, he landed 67 of his 146 takedown attempts (45.9% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 7 of their 25 attempts (72% defense). Covington landed multiple takedowns in 11 of his 15 fights, and five or more in eight of those matches. He also does a good job racking up ground and pound, landing over 200 total strikes in each of his last three wins.

Fight Prediction:

Edwards will have a 3” height advantage and 2” reach advantage, while also being three years younger than the 35-year-old Covington.

This will be the toughest test of Covington’s career outside of Usman, and he lost both of his fights against the former champ. Covington has tip-toed his way to title shots throughout his career, sitting on the sidelines more than most and only taking on big names after they joined AARP. He’s also now 35 years old and hasn’t competed in almost two years, so who knows if he’s on the decline at this point. He’s not much of a finishing threat, so his only realistic path to victory will be to grind out a decision on the mat. Considering how fights have been judged lately when it comes to control and that we often see close rounds/fights lean towards the current champ, Covington will really need to dominate rounds to assure they go his way. On the feet, Edwards is a much more dangerous striker and will be able to have his way with Covington. The larger Octagon at T-Mobile arena will also benefit Edwards, as he tries to control the distance and stay off the cage. Edwards has improved his wrestling over the years and will be the biggest opponent Covington has faced in a while. That will make it tougher for Covington to control him on the mat. Edwards also throws dangerous slicing elbows out of the clinch that Covington will need to watch out for. If anyone’s going to get a finish, it’s going to be Edwards and we also see him being the more likely of the two to win a decision based on damage. However, if Covington can get his wrestling going, he may be able to do enough to make the fight somewhat close. Both of these two have historically been decision grinders, so this most likely ends in a decision with Covington landing a handful of takedowns and leading in control time and clinch strikes, while Edwards should do more damage and land the bigger shots. We expect that to be enough for Edwards to win a 49-46 or 48-47 decision and then for all the Covington backers to scream robbery.

Our favorite bet here is “Leon Edwards Win & Over 3.5 Rounds” at +150.

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

DFS Implications:

Edwards has only averaged 84 DraftKings points in his 13 UFC wins and even if we remove his five three-round decisions, that average only rises to 91 points. Only once in his last 11 wins did he reach the century mark, which was in a 2018 TKO win in the final second of round three. He only scored 84 DraftKings points in his R5 knockout win over Usman in his second most recent fight, while Edwards’ other three most recent victories all ended in five-round decisions, where he returned DraftKings totals of just 79, 91, and 99. In addition to only averaging 2.80 SSL/min, now he’s facing a relentless wrestler who will be looking to take him down and control him, which really caps Edwards’ upside in a longer fight. And considering Edwards hasn’t finished anybody before the third round since 2015, this does not look like a great spot for him to score well. However, he is cheap enough on DraftKings that he may not need to put up a huge score to sneak into winning lineups, although that will all depend on how the other fights go and you’ll likely need multiple things to go right for Edwards to end up in the optimal. The odds imply Edwards has a 59% chance to win, a 26% chance to land a finish, and a 9% chance it comes in round one.

Covington’s wrestling-heavy style has a safer floor on DraftKings than FanDuel, but he’s shown a massive ceiling on both sites. His last six fights were all scheduled to go five rounds (4-2), and all six of those made it to the 5th round, with four going the distance. In the four of those he won, he averaged an other-worldy 151 DraftKings points, scoring 136 or more DraftKings points in all of those. Just keep in mind, his last three wins all came against opponents who were in the midst of four fight losing streaks and have since retired. The only tough matchups Covington has had recently were against Usman. Covington lost both of those matches against Usman and despite both fights making it to the 5th round, Covington “only” scored 49 and 57 points in those two losses, failing to land a takedown in either fight. In fairness to Covington, Usman has one of the best takedown defenses of all time and we expect Covington to find some wrestling success against Edwards, but it would be very surprising to see Covington completely dominate Edwards and go nuclear here. Edwards has a decent 69% takedown defense that has improved over the course of his UFC career. He also has a knack for slowing fights down and making them ugly and is much larger than Covington, which could make it tougher for Covington to be as effective with his wrestling. While we’re somewhat tempering scoring expectations with Covington, his past success does make him a scarier fade at his reasonable price tag. However, his past scoring success will also drive up his ownership, and if he does fail, he’ll take a huge chunk of the field down with him. The odds imply Covington has a 41% chance to win, a 15% chance to land a finish, and a 4% chance it comes in round one.

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