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Fighter Notes:
Fight #12
Veronica Hardy
8th UFC Fight (3-4)Hardy is coming off her second straight decision win since returning to action in 2023 following a three year hiatus/retirement. She cruised to a unanimous 30-27 decision win over Juliana Miller in her return, despite entering the fight as a massive +310 underdog. Hardy outlanded Miller 62-30 in significant strikes and also landed all four of her takedown attempts with seven and a half minutes of control time. She then followed that up with another upset win over Jamey-Lyn Horth, although that decision was split in a low-volume fight. During her time away from the UFC, Veronica Hardy married Dan Hardy, who Veronica credited with helping her improve as a fighter. The reason for her time off was that she was dealing with a series of concussions earlier in her career that forced her to step away from the sport after starting out 1-4 in the UFC. Prior to her recent two wins, she hadn’t competed since she lost a high-volume March 2020 decision against Bea Malecki. Leading up to that loss, Hardy locked up a first round submission against Polyana Viana in August 2019, after losing her first three UFC fights before that.
Now 8-4-1 as a pro, Hardy has one TKO win (R1 2016), two submissions, and five decision victories. She’s been knocked out once, submitted once, and has two decision defeats. She started her career at 135 lb, before dropping down to 125 lb in her second UFC fight. She then moved back up to 135 lb for a 2020 fight before taking three years off and returning to 125 lb when she came out of retirement.
Overall, Hardy is a Venezuelan striker with a Taekwondo background and she has also shown the ability to lock up submissions. In her seven UFC fights, Hardy landed 7 of her 17 takedown attempts (41.2% accuracy), while she’s been taken down by her opponents 9 times on 21 attempts (57.1% defense). We’ve seen her set a high pace at times, but also turn in lower volume performances, making it a little hard to know what we can expect from her on a regular basis. She has good quickness and movement and her cardio has looked better lately then it did in her last fight at 135 lb. Despite taking three years off going into 2023, she’s still only 28 years old and has spent some time training in New York, in addition to getting all of Dan Hardy’s attention. So she should be continuing to make improvements and we like what we’ve seen from her recently.
JJ Aldrich
15th UFC Fight (9-5)Aldrich has now won two straight fights after losing two in a row before that. She recently won a low-volume decision over a wrestler in Montana De La Rosa, who decided she just wanted to stand and trade with Aldrich, only attempting a single failed takedown in the fight. The striking numbers were almost dead even in every round, with De La Rosa actually finishing ahead 67-65 in significant strikes. However, Aldrich did more damage and all three judges scored it 30-27 in her favor. That win came just six weeks after Aldrich landed a rare finish against Liang Na, who basically finishes herself in every fight and went 0-4 in the UFC with four early losses. Aldrich secured a second round ground and pound stoppage, which was Aldrich’s first finish since 2016 and only early win in the UFC. Prior to that, Aldrich lost a decision in an absolutely abysmal performance where Aldrich got absolutely spanked for three straight rounds by Ariane Lipski, who came in as a +280 underdog. Just before that, Aldrich got submitted in the second round by Erin Blanchfield, but at least gave a good account of herself, as she was impressively able to stuff all four of Blanchfield’s takedown attempts, but got caught with a standing guillotine midway through round two that ended the fight. Leading up to her recent pair of losses, Aldrich won three straight decisions over Cortney Casey, Vanessa Demopoulos, and Gillian Robertson, after losing a 2020 split decision to Sabina Mazo. Eleven of Aldrich’s 14 UFC fights went the distance (8-3), while the other three fights were all stopped in round two (1-2).
Now 13-6 as a pro, Aldrich has three KO/TKO wins and 10 decision victories. She’s been knocked out once, submitted twice, and has three decision defeats. Her first submission loss occurred in her second pro fight, with the other coming in 2022. Two of her three knockout wins also came very early in her career and after three of her first four career fights ended early, Aldrich has gone the distance in 12 of her last 15 fights. Aldrich started her career at 115 lb, before moving up to 125 lb in 2019.
Overall, Aldrich is a decision grinder who has okay boxing and has started mixing in more takedown attempts recently. After she landed just one takedown on two attempts in her first three 125 lb UFC fights, she landed 8 on 33 attempts in her last seven fights. She has a pretty decent 66% career takedown defense, although we have seen that falter some in her last few fights. Aldrich only averages 4.05 SSL/min and rarely puts up big striking totals, failing to land more than 65 significant strikes in 11 of her 14 UFC matches.
Fight Prediction:
Aldrich will have a 1” height advantage and 3” reach advantage, while Hardy is three years younger than the 31-year-old Aldrich.
We expect this to play out mostly on the feet, but both fighters will mix in occasional takedown attempts. Hardy has the more impressive striking and better movement, while Aldrich has the experience advantage. We’d be very surprised if this fight ended early and the bookmakers set the FGTD line at -450. It likely ends in a close, lower-volume decision and we give the slight advantage to Hardy based on her speed, quickness, and movement. We think she’ll be landing the more impressive strikes and Aldrich will have a tough time overcoming that, as she rarely has many big moments in fights. She’s also been working on her grappling and it’s not impossible that she could throw up an armbar if Aldrich takes her down. With that said, Aldrich has a knack for winning close decisions and it certainly wouldn’t be shocking if she pulled off the upset in a close decision.
Our favorite bet here is “Veronica Hardy ML” at -135.
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DFS Implications:
Hardy only scored 59 DraftKings points in her recent decision win, after putting up 92 points in her previous decision victory. Her one other UFC win was a 2019 submission that scored 96 points. Aldrich is a tough fighter to score well against so this doesn’t look like a good spot for Hardy to excel and she’ll likely need a hail mary finish to return a useful score. The only opponents to finish Aldrich in her 14-fight UFC career were Maycee Barber and Erin Blanchfield, and it would be pretty shocking to see Hardy find a finish. The odds imply Hardy has a 56% chance to win, a 14% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.
Aldrich is coming off a low-volume 57 point decision win very similar to Hardy and has only topped 86 points once in her 14 UFC fights. That came in her lone finish, which was against Liang Na, who gets finished by everybody. Aldrich only averaged 69 DraftKings in her eight UFC decision wins and even at her reasonable price tag and low ownership we have no interest in playing her. Hardy has good quickness and movement and it will be hard for Aldrich to put up a big striking total, leaving her reliant on an unlikely finish. The odds imply Aldrich has a 44% chance to win, a 9% chance to land a finish, and a 4% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #11
Jake Hadley
5th UFC Fight (2-2)Hadley will be looking to bounce back from a decision loss to Cody Durden last August. Hadley had some moments in the fight and nearly submitted Durden in round two, but ultimately finished behind in significant strikes 38-26, in takedowns 4-0, and in control time 7:25-2:04, as he went on to lose a unanimous 30-27 decision. Prior to that, Hadley finished two straight opponents in under eight minutes, after suffering the first loss of his career in a wrestling-heavy decision in his May 2022 UFC debut against grappling ace Allan Nascimento. Hadley bounced back from that loss with a second round submission win over Carlos Candelario in a high-volume fight. That was the first time anybody had ever finished Candelario, who was coming off a decision loss in his debut against Tatsuro Taira, following another decision loss on DWCS to Victor Altamirano. Hadley impressively landed 90 significant strikes in a fight that only lasted a round and a half, and never even attempted a takedown in the fight before locking up a triangle choke after Candelario took him down. Hadley followed that up with a 61 second R1 TKO win over Malcolm Gordon, who Hadley dropped with a nice body shot and then finished with ground and pound as Gordon immediately covered up. Leading up to the loss in his debut, Hadley locked up a second round submission on DWCS in 2021, and his last three wins all ended in under nine minutes, while his last two decisions ended in unanimous 30-27 defeats.
Now 10-2 as a pro, Hadley has three TKO wins, five submissions, and two decision victories. All three of his TKO wins occurred in the first round, as did his first two career submission victories. However, his last three submission wins all came in the later rounds, with his last two both ending in round two. Both of his career decision victories occurred in five-round title fights—one for the EFC Flyweight belt and the other for the Cage Warriors Flyweight title. While he’s never been finished, he lost both of the three-round decisions he’s been to.
Overall, Hadley is a young, well-rounded English fighter and a former Cage Warriors champion. He’s still only 27 years old and only turned pro in 2018, so he’s still relatively early in his career. He’s just a BJJ purple belt, but has an active guard off his back as well as solid top pressure and quickly threw up a triangle after getting taken down in his second most recent win. He tends to leave his liver exposed in striking exchanges as he raises his right elbow to defend shot, which will catch up with him once someone times a body shot right. He also stands very upright, which makes it tougher to defend takedowns. While he came into the UFC as more of a grappler, his wrestling hasn’t been severely lacking and he’s yet to land a takedown with the organization on just three attempts—all of which occurred in his last fight. However, he did land his only attempt on DWCS, so including that he’s landed one of his four attempts (25% accuracy). On the other side of things, his opponents got him down on 9 of their 14 attempts (35.7% defense), and we’ve seen him struggle against grapplers. His striking has looked pretty crisp, but he also hasn’t been facing any high-level strikers to really test him on the feet. He averaged 11.54 SSL/min in his two wins, but spent so much time being controlled in his two losses that his overall numbers are just 3.42 SSL/min and 3.20 SSA/min.
Charles Johnson
8th UFC Fight (3-4)Johnson recently saved his job in a decision win over a previously undefeated 15-0 prospect in Azat Maksum. However, Johnson had to overcome a lot of adversity in the fight and got dropped and then nearly submitted 20 seconds into the match. Maksum continued to find early striking success in the fight, but those moments dissipated in the later rounds and after winning round one on all three scorecards, Maksum lost rounds two and three for a unanimous 29-28 decision in Johnson’s favor. Johnson finished ahead 76-38 in significant strikes and we actually saw more grappling from Johnson, who landed two of his six takedown attempts and finished with three submission attempts, while Maksum was only able to get Johnson down on two of his seven attempts. Prior to that, Johnson had lost three straight decisions, where he was taken down a combined 17 times, while only landing one takedown of his own. His most recent defeat came against a debuting Rafael Estevam, who gassed out late in round two but still banked the first two rounds and was able to narrowly hang on to survive round three as Johnson desperately pushed for a finish. Estevam was only able to land 3 of his 22 takedown attempts, but finished with over nine minutes of control time to squeak by with the judges. Just before that loss, Johnson lost all three rounds against Cody Durden, who took Johnson down 11 times on 18 attempts and controlled him for nine and a half minutes. Prior to that, Johnson lost a close split decision against Ode Osbourne, in a fight that Johnson accepted on short notice and had to travel around the world with a sinus infection to show up for, as he had been in Thailand when he got the offer. Even Ode Osbourne took Johnson down three times on 10 attempts and Osbourne has only landed one other takedown in his other eight UFC fights. Six of Johnson’s seven UFC fights went the distance (2-4), with the one exception being a 2023 R1 TKO win over a terrible Jimmy Flick, who was coming out of retirement after taking over two years off. Just before that Johnson won a split decision against Zhalgas Zhumagulov, who arguably beat Johnson. Just before that, Johnson lost another wrestling-heavy decision in his 2022 UFC debut against Muhammad Mokaev, who took Johnson down 12 times on 26 attempts and finished with close to 12 minutes of control time. So getting taken down and controlled on the ground has clearly been a problem for Johnson in the UFC, but he has at least shown the ability to avoid getting finished. He’s survived on the mat against several dangerous grapplers in the UFC and also went the distance against Brandon Royval in a 2018 decision loss. Following the loss to Royval, Johnson won four straight matches leading up to his 2022 UFC debut, with the last three of those wins coming in LFA Flyweight title fights.
Now 14-6 as a pro, Johnson has six wins by KO/TKO, three submissions, and five decision victories. Three of his knockouts came in round one, two ended in round two, and one occurred in round five. Two of his three submission victories ended in round two, with the other ending in round one. He’s never been finished, with all six of his losses ending in decisions. Eleven of his last 12 fights made it out of the first round, with nine of those seeing the third round, and two seeing the fifth round of LFA title fights.
Overall, Johnson is an uptempo striker with a good submission defense but poor defensive wrestling. That has resulted in him getting taken down and controlled for the majority of his UFC career, but never finished. In his seven UFC fights, Johnson has only landed three takedowns of his own on 13 attempts (23.1% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 33 of their 90 attempts (63.3% defense). He doesn’t have a ton of power, but tends to wear on his opponents, with three of his last four finishes coming beyond the first round. While he only averages 4.45 SSL/min, that has a lot to do with how much time he’s spent being controlled on the mat. The one time we got to see him in a striking battle was in his split-decision win over Zhalgas Zhumagulov, where Johnson landed 115 significant strikes (7.67/min), while also absorbing 119. So he is capable of putting up big striking numbers when given the opportunity. Johnson only joined the UFC in July 2022, but this will already be his eighth fight with the organization and he’s been happy to step on short notice time and time again. That hasn’t left him much time to prepare or improve between fights, but he had plenty of notice for this next matchup, which was announced all the way back in early February. Johnson will be fighting in front of his home crowd and is breaking in a new contract, so he should come in with renewed confidence after recently snapping his three-fight losing streak.
Fight Prediction:
Johnson will have a 2” height advantage, but both fighters share a 70” reach. Hadley is six years younger than the 33-year-old Johnson.
The biggest question going into this matchup is how much Hadley will be looking to wrestle and what level of success will he have when he does. It’s no secret that Johnson has struggled immensely against wrestlers, however, you could tell he had been working on his ground game in his last fight and Hadley has yet to land a takedown in the UFC on just three attempts. The bigger cage could benefit Johnson if Hadley does come in with a wrestling-heavy game plan, but it’s also possible that Hadley will either idiotically not try to wrestle or struggle to land takedowns even if he does make the effort. It seems like Hadley is a better grappler than a wrestler and only once in his last seven fights did he land more than a single takedown, which was in a wrestling-heavy five-round decision win with Cage Warriors in 2020 where his opponent just charged into the clinch at every possible opportunity. So it’s hard to have much confidence in Hadley’s ability to fully capitalize on Johnson’s grappling deficiency, which could result in this playing out as a close, high-volume striking battle. Neither guy has ever been finished, increasing the chances that this goes the distance, although we’ve always been concerned about the way Hadley defends strikes by raising his right elbow, leaving his liver exposed. It wouldn’t be the most shocking thing ever if Johnson finished him with a body shot, but we still lean towards this ending in a close decision and we’ll say Johnson pulls off the upset in front of his home crowd.
Our favorite bet here is “Charles Johnson ML” at +125.
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DFS Implications:
Hadley has shown solid upside in his wins, averaging 107 DraftKings points in a pair of finishes. However, his other two UFC fights both ended in unanimous 30-27 decision losses where Hadley averaged just 21 points. Both of those losses were against grapplers who were able to take Hadley down and control him for periods of time. Hadley will now be facing a striker in Johnson, so he shouldn’t have to worry as much about getting taken down. With that said, Johnson did show some improvements to his ground game in his last fight where he landed two takedowns on six attempts, after only landing one takedown in his first six UFC fights combined. Nevertheless, we expect Johnson to mostly want to keep the fight standing, as he’s also struggled on the mat in his career. If the fight does remain standing, it has sneaky shootout potential, despite Hadley only averaging 3.42 SSL/min and Johnson just 4.45 SSL/min. Those numbers have been dragged down by all the time these two have spent being controlled and they’ve each shown the ability to rack up striking volume when given the opportunity. They’re also both very durable and neither of them have ever been finished. The books are expecting it to go the distance and we’re expecting either a high-volume decision or for one of them to find more wrestling success than they have in the past. Either way, that leaves the winner with a solid floor and a decent ceiling if they can really fill up the statsheet. Neither of them project to be very highly owned, making them both good contrarian tournament options. Given Hadley’s more expensive salary, it will be easier for him to get priced out of the winning lineup, but he still has the potential to be useful even without a finish if we see the pace we’re expecting. He averaged a blistering 11.54 SSL/min in his two wins and this is a great example of his official stats not telling the whole story. The odds imply Hadley has a 55% chance to win, a 19% chance to land a finish, and a 9% chance it comes in round one.
Johnson has only put up one useful DFS score in his seven UFC appearances, which was when he finished Jimmy Flick with ground and pound in the first round and scored 114 DraftKings points. Johnson only scored 73 and 83 points respectively in his two UFC decision wins, and has been dominated on the mat for the majority of the time in his losses. However, after only landing one takedown in his first six UFC fights, he landed two in his last match and his ground game looked visibly improved. Hadley only has a 35% takedown defense and it’s possible Johnson will look to catch him off guard and mix in a couple of takedowns. Johnson has also shown the ability to rack up striking volume when he’s not being controlled and Hadley leaves himself exposed to liver shots when he tries to defend strikes with his right elbow. With the home crowd pumping Johnson up, it’s not impossible that he could put Hadley down with a body shot and hand him his first early loss, but a decision is far more likely. At Johnson’s cheap price tag, he could still serve as a value play in a high-volume decision win, especially on FanDuel where striking is more valuable. Johnson had a rare full camp to prepare for this fight, is breaking in a new contract following a win, and gets to fight in front of his home crowd, so he really does have a lot going for him. The odds imply Johnson has a 45% chance to win, a 16% chance to land a finish, and an 8% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #10
Trey Waters
2nd UFC Fight (1-0)Waters is 13 months removed from a decision win in his April 2023 short notice UFC debut against Josh Quinlan. After entering that matchup as an underdog, Waters outstruck Quinlan in every round and finished ahead 104-50 in significant strikes in a unanimous 30-27 win. He also stuffed seven of Quinlan’s eight takedown attempts, while landing one of his own two attempts. That win came just two weeks after Waters landed a second round knockout to capture the vacant LFA Welterweight belt, but he was getting outstruck three to one in that fight against an opponent who has now gone just 2-4 in his last six matches. Prior to that, Waters went on DWCS in 2022 and was submitted in the first round by Gabriel Bonfim. Before going on DWCS, Waters landed another knockout with the LFA, that time in the third round. However, he notably spent the entire match being controlled along the cage until the ref refused to allow the fight to finish that way and immediately broke up the position multiple times until Waters was finally able to land a knee as his opponent shot in just before losing a decision.
Now 8-1 as a pro, Waters has three wins by KO/TKO, three submissions, and two decision victories. His six finishes have been evenly spread out across the three rounds, with two in round one, two in round two, and two in round three. However, after his first two pro fights each ended in first round finishes, his last four early wins all came in the later rounds. Two of his three submission wins came by guillotine, and that looks to largely be the extent of his grappling. The only loss of his career was a first round submission on DWCS.
Overall, Waters is a gigantic Welterweight at 6’5”, but he’s still pretty green in MMA and only turned pro in 2020. He’s primarily a counter striker and while he was able to land 104 significant strikes in his UFC debut, we generally saw much lower striking totals form him on the regional scene. And while he landed one of his two takedown attempts in that last fight, he failed to even attempt a takedown in any of his previous three matches. We’ve also seen him struggle with being controlled along the fence, while he rarely accrues any control time of his own. He likes to keep his hands low and dangle his chin out to try and bait his opponents into lunging in so he can counter them. He also stands heavy on his lead leg and Josh Quinlan landed all 19 of his leg kick attempts in their fight. So we see multiple holes in his defense, but he’s still only 29 years old and maybe he’s cleaned some things up in the 13 months since we last saw him. He obviously has an impressive frame for the division, but we’re still not sold on him as a prospect.
Billy Goff
2nd UFC Fight (1-0)Winner of seven straight, Goff is nine months removed from a first round TKO win in his UFC debut against Yusaku Kinoshita, who’s now 0-2 in the UFC. In a high-volume scrap, Goff was able to outland Kinoshita 40-17 in significant strikes, before putting him down with a body shot late in the round that ended the fight. That win came just over a year after Goff landed another first round TKO win when he went on DWCS. However, he had to overcome some early adversity in that victory, which has been a common theme for him, as he got dropped in the opening seconds of the fight with a head kick and was narrowly able to survive. He also got dominated on the mat in the first round of his previous fight, and got dropped again in the opening minute of his fight just before that. Fortunately for him, none of those opponents were good enough to capitalize on those opportunities and Goff was able to recover and come back to win all of those matches. His last five wins all ended by KO/TKO in under a round and a half, with four of those ending in round one. The reason we didn’t see Goff for a year after his DWCS match is that he underwent surgery on both of his knees. He apparently had been fighting through a torn meniscus for a while, and then tore the meniscus in his other knee and decided to get them both fixed at once.
Now 9-2 as a pro, Goff has seven wins by KO/TKO and two decision victories. All but one of his finishes came in under a round and a half, with four in round one and three in round two. The only time he’s ever been finished himself was in a 2019 post R1 TKO via doctor stoppage, while he also has one decision defeat, which came in a five-round match in his third pro fight. Goff has spent almost his entire career at 170 lb, with the one exception being when he took a short notice fight at 185 lb in 2022 for the vacant CES Middleweight belt and won via second round TKO. That came just a month after Goff won the vacant CES Welterweight belt in a first round TKO, which followed another first round TKO victory for the vacant Cage Titans Welterweight belt.
Overall, Goff is an aggressive fighter with a wrestling background, who loves to throw elbows. While he’s typically looking to get fights to the mat, he’s just a BJJ purple belt and hasn’t demonstrated any real submission skills and he’s mostly just looking for ground and pound, often with flurries of elbows. Goff has looked very hittable and can get kind of wild with his striking, often failing to set up his kicks and body shots. That leaves his chin exposed and has resulted in him getting knocked down early in multiple fights. While he showed the ability to get dropped and recover on the New England regional scene, that won’t be as easy at the UFC level as he faces tougher competition. With that said, he’s very game and always shows up looking to put on a show, so you can’t question his heart. Prior to making his debut, Goff had landed at least one takedown in five straight fights, but failed to land his only attempt in his last fight. He’s also shown the ability to rack up striking volume as well and he looks dangerous offensively wherever fights go, it’s just his defense that we worry about.
Fight Prediction:
Waters will have a 7” height advantage and 5” reach advantage, while also being four years older than the 25-year-old Goff.
Both of these two appear to be defensive liabilities, while they’re also each dangerous offensively. That should result in someone getting finished and we’re expecting to see a knockout in the opening two rounds. Waters is obviously the much larger man, but Goff is the better wrestler and should be looking to negate the length of Waters by closing the distance and working from the inside. Waters’ takedown defense hasn’t been terrible, but his last four opponents all still got him down at least once. That’s encouraging for Goff’s chances of getting this fight to the ground, where he’ll look to land elbows and finish opponents with ground and pound. He also has the ability to finish Waters on the feet—or get knocked out himself. While it’s hard to trust either of these two, we like taking Goff at plus money, as he has more ways to win. If it surprisingly goes the distance, we see him as being the more likely of the two to get his hand raised because of his wrestling and higher output, but we like his chances of knocking Waters out in round one.
Our favorite bet here is “Waters/Goff Fight Ends in KO” at -135.
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:
Waters is a giant at 6’5” but has a ton of holes in his game and now hasn’t competed in 13 months after winning a decision in his short notice UFC debut. Despite landing way more striking volume than normal and also securing a rare takedown, he still only scored 78 DraftKings points in the win. So he’s given us no indication that he can score well without a finish. He also likes to look for guillotines, which presents a way that he finds a finish and still doesn’t score enough to be useful at his high price tag. With that said, Goff is super hittable and also likes to push the pace, which is conducive to all around scoring in his fights. However, we’ve also seen Goff use his wrestling to dominate opponents on the mat and Waters has struggled with being taken down and controlled at times in the past. That creates the potential for Waters to get controlled early, which would make it harder for him to score well with a later finish. So there are a couple of different ways Waters could fail here even with a finish, but he also has solid upside with a well timed knockout and we generally want to be targeting both sides of Goff’s fights. Goff also projects to be highly owned, which makes Waters an interesting leverage play in tournaments. The odds imply Waters has a 59% chance to win, a 41% chance to land a finish, and a 21% chance it comes in round one.
Goff is an aggressive fighter with decent wrestling and striking, but a terrible striking defense. His last five wins all ended by KO/TKO in under a round and a half and he rarely requires the judges. The last time he did go the full 15 minutes was in a 2021 wrestling-heavy decision win, showing he has the ability to score well on DraftKings even without a finish. The only catch with him is that he’s very prone to getting dropped early in fights and his last loss ended in a R1 TKO—although that was back in 2019. That makes it hard to trust his floor, but he has a huge ceiling. He scored 117 DraftKings points and 136 points on FanDuel in his recent R1 TKO win in his UFC debut and landed another first round TKO just before that on DWCS, which would have been good for 126 DraftKings points and 146 points on FanDuel. He always comes in looking to push the pace, making it hard for him to fail when he wins, especially when he’s as cheaply priced as he is here. Just keep in mind, his massive scoring potential combined with his cheap price tag will result in him being extremely popular and he was 34% owned on DraftKings in his last fight. That will make it harder to create unique tournament lineups that include him, but if he wins you can expect him to end up in the optimal. The odds imply Goff has a 41% chance to win, a 25% chance to land a finish, and a 12% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #9
Tabatha Ricci
7th UFC Fight (4-2)Ricci recently had a four-fight winning streak snapped in a split decision against Loopy Godinez. Ricci failed to land any of her six takedown attempts in the fight, but did show improved striking, although Godinez finished ahead 98-84 in significant strikes. Prior to that, Ricci put on an impressive performance in a decision win over Gillian Robertson, aftering locking up a second round submission against Jessica Penne. That followed a pair of decision wins over Polyana Viana and Maria Oliveira, after Ricci got finished in her short notice UFC debut, which took place up a weight class against Flyweight contender Manon Fiorot. Ricci originally turned pro in MMA in 2013 at just 18 years old. However, she then went and fought in a Japanese hybrid Judo league called SEIZA for a while before returning to MMA in 2020. Upon her return, she joined the LFA and defeated a series of very low level opponents before joining the UFC.
Now 9-2 as a pro, Ricci has one win by TKO (R2 2021), three armbar submissions, and five decision victories. The only time she’s been finished was the R2 TKO in her UFC debut, while she’s coming off the first decision loss of her career. Her four finishes were split across the first two rounds, but her last seven fights and 9 of her last 10 matches have made it to round two.
Overall, Ricci has historically been reliant on her grappling to win fights, but has recently made some noticeable improvements in the striking department. She’s a BJJ and Judo black belt and a training partner of Mackenzie Dern, so unsurprisingly she has a solid ground game and looks most dangerous with her armbar submissions. She’s shown she has no problem going to the ground with other dangerous grapplers, and even seems to relish the opportunities to see how she stacks up in those matchups. She typically wins fights by either grinding out grappling-heavy decisions or locking up armbars, but we’ve also seen her striking output soar in her last two fights. After landing 148 total significant strikes in her first four UFC fights, she landed a combined 184 in her last two matches. And while she failed to land a takedown in her last fight, she had landed three or more in each of her previous four fights. In her six UFC fights, she landed 17 of her 41 takedown attempts (41.4% accuracy), while her opponents got her down on two of their seven attempts (71.4% defense).
Tecia Pennington
16th UFC Fight (9-6)Coming off a 25 month layoff after having a baby, Tecia Pennington (formerly Tecia Torres) hasn’t won a fight since 2021 and lost a close split decision to Mackenzie Dern in her last match. After losing four straight fights in a gauntlet of top-shelf opponents in 2018 and 2019, Pennington bounced back with three straight wins against easier competition over the next two years. Her last three wins came against Brianna Fortino, who had just one UFC fight under her belt and then retired, Sam Hughes, who was making her short notice UFC debut, and gatekeeper Angela Hill. The four prior losses came against three former Strawweight champions in Jessica Andrade, Joanna Jedrzejczyk, Weili Zhang, and then the highly ranked Marina Rodriguez. Pennington also has a loss to Rose Namajunas in addition to Mackenzie Dern most recently. Eight of her last night fights went the distance.
Now 13-6 as a pro, Pennington has one TKO win, one submission, and 11 decision victories. Her lone TKO win came when Sam Hughes told her corner she couldn’t see after R1 and the fight was stopped, while her one submission was in the second round of a 2017 match. Pennington has never been finished and all six of her losses went the distance.
Overall, Pennington is a well-rounded fighter with good striking and decent grappling, but she’s never been any sort of finishing threat. In her 15 UFC fights, she only landed 9 of her 61 takedown attempts (14.8% accuracy), while her opponents got her down on 23 of their 60 attempts (61.7% defense). Nine of the last 11 opponents to try and get her down were successful. However, she generally does a good job of scrambling on the mat to get up quickly after being taken down. She holds black belts in karate and taekwondo, which is evident in her kick-heavy approach, but she’s just a BJJ blue belt last we checked. She has no problem looking for takedowns, but she has no desire to play jiu-jitsu off her back.
Fight Prediction:
Both fighters are 5’1”, but Ricci will have a 1” reach advantage and is five years younger than the 34-year-old Pennington.
The biggest question surrounding Pennington is how she’ll look after two years away and having a baby. We typically see fighters struggle in this situation and Pennington said in a recent interview that it was really tough trying to make it back. Ricci has been improving every time we see her and also trains with Mackenzie Dern, who was Pennington’s last opponent. Ricci definitely has the grappling advantage over Pennington, and her striking has come a long way since she got beat up in her UFC debut. If 2021 Pennington shows up, this will be a very competitive matchup, but we’re expecting to see a worse version of Pennington on Saturday. However, all we do is speculate and it’s impossible to know how she’ll look in the fight. It wouldn’t be shocking to see Ricci submit her or even land a TKO finish, but a decision is still far more likely. Maybe Pennington can be the exception to the rule, but if history is any indicator, she’s in for a tough go of things here. Ricci by decision will be our pick.
Our favorite bet here is “Tabatha Ricci ML” at -130.
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DFS Implications:
Ricci had won four straight fights leading up to her recent split decision loss, averaging 101 DraftKings points in those wins, despite three of them going the distance. The first of those wins came against an ultra low-level striker who Ricci was easily able to control on the mat, while the last three were all against grapplers. Ricci has no problem going to the mat with fellow grapplers, and regardless of who she’s facing you can expect her to look for takedowns. She landed at least three takedowns in all four of her UFC wins, and has also shown improvements to her striking. She landed a combined 184 significant strikes in her last two fights after only landing 148 in her first four UFC matches. That’s promising for her scoring outlook, as she now has the ability to fill up the statsheet both on the mat and the feet. However, she’s also gone 0-2 in UFC fights where she failed to land a takedown, albeit against two really tough opponents. She still needs to get her grappling going to score well with the judges, but working in her favor, Pennington only has a 61% takedown defense. Pennington is also coming off a two year layoff after having a baby and her current form remains a mystery. We generally see fighters struggle after long layoffs and in their first fight back after child birth. Pennington is also approaching her 35th birthday so she’s getting up there in age for a 115 lb fighter. If Pennington shows up looking like the same fighter as before, this will be a tough fight for Ricci. However, there’s a strong chance we see a lesser version of Pennington inside the Octagon on Saturday, which could allow Ricci to rack up striking and takedowns and put up another solid score even without a finish. And at her relatively cheap price tag, she likely doesn’t need a huge score to crack the optimal. The odds imply Ricci has a 57% chance to win, an 18% chance to land a finish, and a 9% chance it comes in round one.
Pennington is coming off a 25 month layoff after having a baby, which creates a lot of uncertainty surrounding her current form. However, it feels safe to say that she won’t suddenly look better than in the past, and there’s a good chance that she ends up looking noticeably worse. Regardless, we can use her past scoring as a ceiling, even if her floor is uncertain. She’s averaged 87 DraftKings points in her nine UFC wins, with seven of those going the distance. The only time she ever topped 97 points was when Sam Hughes told her corner she couldn’t see and the fight was stopped and ruled a R1 TKO win for Pennington, who scored 116 points in the ideally timed between round stoppage. Pennington’s only other finish in the UFC was a second round submission that scored 84 points. She also averaged 84 points in her seven decision wins and showed a decent floor but an unspectacular ceiling in those victories. Only once did she fail to reach 80 points, but only twice did she top 85 points. She’s less likely to want to mix in takedowns against a grappler like Ricci, which seemingly caps Pennington’s scoring potential with the judges and leaves her reliant on either a rare finish or an absurd amount of striking volume. While neither of those are entirely impossible, we typically see fighters struggle in Pennington’s situation and the only reason to get excited about playing her is her low ownership. The odds imply Pennington has a 43% chance to win, a 9% chance to land a finish, and a 4% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #8
Esteban Ribovics
3rd UFC Fight (1-1)Ten months removed from his first UFC win, Ribovics defeated the cardiovascularly challenged Kamuela Kirk in a decision where he lost the first round and then won each of the later rounds. Kirk immediately took Ribovics down in round one and controlled him on the mat for the entire round. However, Kirk only landed 2 of his 13 takedown attempts in rounds two and three and Ribovics was able to return to his feet on both of those later takedowns. While Kirk unsurprisingly slowed down in the later rounds, Ribovics pushed a solid 15 minute pace, outlanding Kirk 65-35 in significant strikes in round two and 49-19 in round three, while also landing a takedown of his own in each of those rounds. Ribovics had then been set to face Elves Brener in November, but got injured shortly before the fight and was forced to pull out. Prior to the win in his last match, Ribovics suffered the first loss of his career when he dropped a decision in his March 2023 UFC debut against Loik Radzhabov. Radzhabov took Ribovics down 11 times on 21 attempts with over seven and a half minutes of control time. Leading up to that loss, Ribovics finished his first 11 opponents with the last of those wins coming in a first round knockout on DWCS. His last three finishes all ended in quick knockouts in 90 seconds or less, with two of those coming in the opening 30 seconds of fights. Five of his last seven wins ended in round one and after looking to grapple more early in his career, he now seems content with looking for knockouts.
Now 12-1 as a pro, Ribovics has six wins by KO/TKO, five submissions, and one decision victory. Six of his wins have come in round one, one ended in round two, and four occurred in round three. His last five victories all ended in knockouts, while he landed three straight kimura finishes from 2016 to 2019.
Overall, Ribovics is an aggressive Argentinian brawler who’s all offense and no defense. He comes out swinging and the only defensive grappling technique he knows is to look for kimuras. His takedown defense has looked bad, but he’s done a decent job of using kimura attempts to reverse positions on the mat. Between his two UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, he landed two of his three takedown attempts (66.7% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 14 of their 35 attempts (60% defense). He averages an impressive 6.16 SSL/min and even in his UFC debut where he got taken down 11 times and controlled for over seven and a half minutes, he still landed 66 significant strikes. And despite getting controlled on the mat for the entire first round in his last match and having 14 takedowns attempted against him, he was still able to land 115 significant strikes. Ribovics has been training at Kill Cliff FC and is still just 28 years old, so he should also be making improvements between every fight.
Terrance McKinney
9th UFC Fight (5-3)McKinney is coming off two quick first round TKO wins after getting finished in the second round in each of his previous two outings. He was originally set to face Chris Duncan in his last match, but Duncan pulled out and was replaced by a very low-level talent in Brendon Marotte, who was making his UFC debut on a week’s notice. McKinney couldn’t have asked for an easier matchup and immediately finished Marotte in just 20 seconds, dropping him with a knee up the middle and then finishing him with ground and pound. Prior to that, it was McKinney who stepped in on short notice when he took on Mike Breeden, who went 1-3 in the UFC before being cut. McKinney put it on Breeden from the start as he overwhelmed him with striking and forced a standing TKO stoppage in just 85 seconds, while outlanding Breeden 30-1 in significant strikes. That came just four weeks after McKinney got submitted in the second round by Nazim Sadykhov, after getting knocked out in the second round by Ismael Bonfim. That loss to Bonfim is McKinney's longest UFC fight and it still didn’t quite make it to the midway point of round two. Prior to those two second round losses, McKinney’s first four UFC fights all ended in under three and a half minutes, with him winning three of those and getting finished by Drew Dober in the other. And McKinney’s last four fights before he joined the UFC also all ended in the first round (3-1), all in 72 seconds or less, after he got finished by Sean Woodson in the second round of a DWCS match back in 2019.
Now 15-6 as a pro, McKinney has still never been to the judges and only one of his 21 pro fights even made it past the midway mark of round two, which was a 2018 submission win 43 seconds into the third round three of McKinney’s fourth pro fight. He has seven wins by KO/TKO and eight submissions. He’s also been knocked out four times and has two submission losses. Seventeen of his 21 pro fights ended in round one (14-3), three ended in round two (0-3), and one ended in round three (1-0). Amazingly, eight of those first round finishes ended in the opening minute (6-2), and his last 11 and 14 of his 15 career wins came in under three minutes. McKinney turned pro in 2017 and started off at 145 lb before moving up to 155 lb. He went back and forth between the two weight classes early in his career and even fought as high as 170 lb once, but it appears he’s settled in at 155 lb.
Overall, McKinney is an explosive striker with dynamite in his hands and sugar in his gas tank. He’s also a former college wrestler and is dangerous both on the feet and the mat, but tends to slow down quickly after the first three minutes in fights. His two biggest weaknesses are his cardio and striking defense, both of which he’s been able to mask in all of his early wins, but have come to light in his losses. He tried slowing things down some in his last two losses, but that just exposed his flaws and we saw him get back to aggressively hunting for a quick finish in each of his last two fights. Following his loss to Bonfim, McKinney moved from Spokane, Washington down to Texas and is now training with Kevin Holland and a new team. He said he made a lot of improvements to his striking since making the move, however, it seems pretty clear that McKinney is who is—an aggressive finisher who can quickly put away low-level opponents but will struggle whenever he faces a step up in competition.
Fight Prediction:
Both fighters are 5’10”, but McKinney will have a 4” reach advantage.
We’ve all seen enough of McKinney to know what his deal is. He aggressively comes into every fight looking for a quick finish and when he’s unable to find one he turns into a pumpkin in round two. His last 12 wins all ended in round one and he was finished in the first half of round two in each of his last three fights to make it past the first round. He’s also been finished in the first round three times himself, so he doesn’t even always survive the opening five minutes. Either way, only one of his 21 pro fights made it past the midway mark of round two and that was all the way back in 2018, in his fourth pro appearance. He does have pretty good wrestling and grappling, the only problem with that is that he has such a narrow window to land a finish and he’s wasting precious time when he’s controlling positions on the mat. However, he is a decent submission threat and sometimes that gamble pays off with a finish, while other times it just eliminates the time he could have spent looking for a knockout. Ribovics’ takedown defense is so bad that it could entice McKinney into wrestling here, which would leave him dependent on finding a quick submission win to pull off the upset. Ribovics has never been finished and if he can simply survive the opening five minutes he should be looking at a teed up second round finish, most likely by knockout, although he does love a good kimura. While the potential outcomes in this fight appear very binary (McKinney R1 win or Ribovics R1/2 win), determining which of those comes to fruition is a little more challenging and comes with some inherent volatility. However, the favorite has won in five of McKinney’s last six fights, with the one exception being Ismael Bonfim, who came out victorious as a slight +105 underdog. And considering that Ribovics has never been finished and looks pretty durable, we lean towards him finishing McKinney either late in round one or early round two, most likely by knockout.
Our favorite bet here is “Esteban Ribovics R2” at +650.
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DFS Implications:
Ribovics has gone the distance in each of his two UFC fights, after finishing all 11 of his opponents before he joined the organization. His biggest issue has been his terrible takedown defense and he was taken down 14 times across his last two fights. However, he lands a ton of striking volume (6.16 SSL/min) and was still able to score 92 DraftKings points in his last win even without a finish. He’ll also mix in his own wrestling and loves to look for kimuras. It’s no secret that McKinney is very dangerous in round one, but completely gasses out in round two, so we expect this fight to be highly owned as a whole. However, if we look at McKinney’s eight UFC fights, six of them have produced a piece in the DraftKings winner (75%), while the average cumulative ownership in his matches has “only” been 60%. Amazingly, none of McKinney’s opponents have ever been above 27% owned, while McKinney’s average ownership is all the way up at 43%. If those trends continue, there will be a decent sized edge in playing Ribovics and being overweight on this fight in general, which seems somewhat counterintuitive from a game theory perspective. With all that said, there’s a decent chance that McKinney control this fight on the mat for most of round one and then Ribovics finishes McKinney in round two. We saw that happen in McKinney’s fight against Nazim Sadykhov, who only scored 82 DraftKings points in a second round finish. However, Ribovics lands enough striking volume that he’s still capable of scoring well in a later second round finish if the ref is slower to stop the fight. He’s also live to finish McKinney late in round one and given the high pace we’re expecting here, there’s still a ton of scoring upside on each side. Just keep in mind, there’s also the potential for Ribovics to get finished in the opening seconds of the fight, leaving him with a wide range of scoring outcomes. The odds imply Ribovics has a 60% chance to win, a 49% chance to land a finish, and a 36% chance it comes in round one.
McKinney has averaged 112 DraftKings points in his five UFC wins, all of which ended in the first round. Two of those ended in the opening 20 seconds and garnered the Quick Win Bonus, and all five ended in the opening two and a half minutes. However, that explosiveness comes at the expense of his cardio and he completely fades after 3-5 minutes. That leaves him as the ultimate boom or bust play in DFS and also results in him being consistently popular. While he was only 22% owned in his UFC debut before people knew about him, he’s checked in between 36% and 59% in each of his last seven fights and he was 40%+ owned in each of the last three instances where he was the underdog. Now he’s coming off two straight R1 KO wins, including a 20 second knockout that scored a career-best 131 DraftKings points, and he’s only priced at $7,300. So there’s no reason to think the field will jump ship now and he projects to be very popular once again. That creates a huge leverage opportunity by being underweight on him, but that’s also obviously very risky. If he wins, it will almost certainly come early, most likely in round one. Even if he gets an efficient submission win, it will still be tougher for him to get left out of winning tournament lineups at his cheap salary. However, if Ribovics can simply survive for five minutes then we fully expect McKinney to gas in round two and get finished pretty easily. Whoever wins should score well and it’s extremely risky not to have exposure to both sides. The odds imply McKinney has a 40% chance to win, a 35% chance to land a finish, and a 23% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #7
Viacheslav Borshchev
6th UFC Fight (2-2-1)Borshchev is coming off a rare draw against Nazim Sadykhov, where Borshchev won the first and third rounds on all three scorecards but lost a 10-8 round in round two. Borshchev finished ahead 143-91 in significant strikes, but got taken down four times and controlled for three and half minutes. If Sadykhov wasn’t completely braindead, he could have easily won the fight on the mat, but instead tried to duke it out on the feet for the first half of the fight. To Sadykhov’s credit, he was able to hurt Borshchev in round two, which is ultimately how the fight finally got to the mat in round two. Ironically, Sadykhov only went to the mat when he should have made Borshchev stand up and he showed zero fight IQ in the match. Borshchev showed off his toughness just to survive in the second round and then came back and won round three to force a draw. Prior to that, Borshchev saved his job with a second round TKO win over a fellow one-dimensional striker in Maheshate. Borshchev put on a striking clinic in that match, outlanding Maheshate 85-32 in significant strikes, while tacking on three knockdowns in a fight that lasted just over a round and a half. Leading up to that win, Borshchev got dominated on the mat in back-to-back decision losses against Mike Davis and Marc Diakiese, where he got taken down 20 total times and controlled for over 20 minutes. Prior to those losses, Borshchev knocked out four straight opponents in the first two rounds, including a second round finish on DWCS against Chris Duncan followed by a first round knockout in his January 2022 UFC debut against Dakota Bush.
Now 7-3-1 as a pro, Borshchev has six wins by KO/TKO and one decision victory. Three of those knockouts came in round one, with the other three ending in round two. His lone decision win was in his second pro fight and his last five victories all ended in knockouts. He’s never been finished, with all three of his losses going the distance.
Overall, Borshchev is a one-dimensional striker and former Russian Kickboxing champion with literally hundreds of kickboxing matches on his resume. He’s still relatively new to MMA, as he only turned pro in 2019 and his wrestling—or lack thereof—is clearly a massive weakness. He’s a kickboxing coach at Team Alpha Male, and claims he’s been working on improving his defensive grappling, but that work hasn’t translated to the Octagon as he’s been taken down 28 times on 44 attempts (36.4% defense) between his five UFC fights and his DWCS match. He’s never attempted a takedown of his own and offers nothing in terms of offensive grappling. While Borshchev’s appearance is somewhat unimposing, he’s a really dangerous striker who does a great job of ripping shots to the body of his opponents, frequently targeting the liver. He’s an absolute problem when he can keep fights standing, but he’s helpless when he can’t.
Chase Hooper
9th UFC Fight (5-3)Hooper has now won two fights in a row for the first time in his UFC career. He’s coming off a first round submission win over a fellow grappler in Jordan Leavitt in a fight where Hooper never even attempted a takedown, but stuffed both of Leavitt’s attempts and eventually found his way to a finish in the pure grappling battle. Prior to that, Hooper made the decision to move up to 155 lb after going 3-3 in his first six UFC fights at 145 lb. His first fight at 155 lb couldn’t have gone much better, as he dominated another grappler in Nick Fiore, winning every round of the fight. Hooper showed improved striking and nearly finished Fiore on the feet late in round one, but simply ran out of time. Hooper continued to push a crazy pace for the full 15 minutes and finished ahead 149-51 in significant strikes and 217-58 in total strikes. Leading up to that win, Hooper suffered the first early loss of his career in his final fight at 145 lb, when he got knocked out by Steve Garcia in just 92 seconds, amazingly getting knocked down three times in the brief match. Just before that defeat, Hooper put on an impressive performance in a third round TKO against a BJJ black belt in Felipe Colares. Just keep in mind, Colares was on the smaller side and bounced between 135 lb and 145 lb throughout his career. That fight played out as an action packed grappling match where Hooper eventually wore Colares out and finished him with ground and pound midway through the third round. Hooper’s other two UFC wins also ended early, with a third round submission, and a first round TKO, both against low-level opponents.
Now 13-3-1 as a pro, Hooper has four wins by TKO, six submissions, and three decision victories. The only time he’s ever been finished was in a R1 TKO against Steve Garcia, with his other two losses going the distance. Hooper started his career at 155 lb, where he went 4-0 with four finishes, before moving down to 145 lb when he went on DWCS. However, Hooper was killing himself to get down to 145 lb, and he said he was cutting 40-45 lb and forced to only drink protein shakes and eat honey packets leading up to fights. He said he feels so much better at 155 lb and it showed in his recent two wins. He’s always had the height to compete at 155 lb, it’s just been a matter of adding on the muscle as he grew into his frame. He turned pro at such a young age, a month after his 18th birthday, that clearly his body wasn’t fully developed, as anyone who’s followed his career can attest to. All five of Hooper’s UFC wins came against struggling opponents, with four of them being cut following their losses to Hooper.
Overall, Hooper is a BJJ black belt with extremely fluid grappling, but he’s historically struggled with both his wrestling and his striking. However, he’s continued to improve his striking as he’s been working with Stephen Thompson in recent years. Hooper is still just 24 years old and is no longer completely depleting his body following his move up to 155 lb, which should also aid in his progression as a fighter. Between his eight UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, Hooper landed just 9 of his 40 takedown attempts (22.5% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 8 of their 18 attempts (55.5% defense). While his wrestling leaves something to be desired, he’s comfortable grappling off his back and can create grappling exchanges through a variety of entanglements, even without landing official takedowns. We’ve also seen him really push the pace in fights and he’ll stay busy on the mat landing ground strikes and going for submissions. While it’s not always pretty watching him fight, he’s found a way to make his unique style effective when he can avoid taking too much damage.
Fight Prediction:
Hooper will have a 2” height advantage and 5” reach advantage, while also being eight years younger than the 32-year-old Borshchev.
This is a very binary fight, where Borshchev has a massive striking advantage and Hooper has a huge grappling advantage. The outcome will be determined by who can control where the fight takes place. The victor will look unstoppable, while the loser will likely look like they never had a chance. We generally see these matchups between one-dimensional strikers and one-dimensional grapplers as favoring the grappler, but that requires the grappler to have good enough wrestling to get the fight to the mat. That’s a huge question mark for Hooper and he comes in with just a 22% takedown accuracy. And while Borshchev has just a 36% takedown defense, he has shown some improvements in getting back up when he has been taken down. His two UFC losses came against really strong, powerful opponents in Mike Davis and Marc Diakiese, who were each able to hold Borshchev down. Hooper lacks that physicality, leaving him more reliant on finding a finish, opposed to just controlling positions on the ground. Borshchev has never been finished in his career and has shown a ton of heart when he’s been put in bad positions, so it’s hard to confidently predict that Hooper will be able to get him out of there We liked Hooper’s price at the beginning of the week at +144, but he’s now been bet down to +115 and it’s harder to get behind him at near even money. Hooper will still have a shot at finishing Borshchev either by submission or ground and pound, or even doing enough on the ground to win a decision, but if you’re asking us for the single most likely outcome, it’s probably Borshchev knocking Hooper out in the first two rounds from an accumulation of damage and body shots. With that said, this is a volatile matchup that we expect to end early and it should be a fun fight, with both guys being live to win.
Our favorite bet here is “Borshchev/Hooper Under 1.5 Rounds” at +102.
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DFS Implications:
Borshchev is a one-dimensional kickboxer who has landed knockouts in the first two rounds in six of his seven pro wins. He scored 112 DraftKings points in a R1 KO win in his UFC debut and then put up a massive 134 points in a R2 knockout in his more recent victory. When he can keep fights standing, he’s an absolute monster. However, he may have the worst ground game in the UFC and owns a putrid 36% takedown defense. Mike Davis and Marc Diakiese combined to take him down a ridiculous 20 times with over 20 minutes of total control time. That leaves Borshchev at the mercy of the UFC matchmakers when it comes to his success. They clearly wanted to keep him around, as they threw him a bone with a one-dimensional striker in Maheshate as Borshchev fought for his job in his second most recent fight. However, after knocking Maheshate out, Borshchev fought to a draw in his last match and will now be taking on a grappler. This is an extremely volatile matchup, as we’ve seen Hooper get torched on the feet, but look slick on the mat. So if Borshchev can keep the fight standing, he’ll look -5000, but if he gets taken down he’ll be in serious trouble. While he’s never been finished, he also hasn’t faced any submission grapplers as dangerous as Hooper, which leaves Borshchev with an extremely wide range of scoring outcomes. That makes this a great matchup to target in tournaments, as there’s a lot of uncertainty on both sides but whoever wins has a huge ceiling. We saw Hooper get knocked down three times in 92 seconds in a first round knockout loss in his last fight at 145 lb, before he moved up to 155 lb, and Borshchev has clear multi-knockdown upside. The odds imply Ribovics has a 60% chance to win, a 49% chance to land a finish, and a 36% chance it comes in round one.
Hooper has averaged 109 DraftKings points in his five UFC wins, and put up slate-breaking totals of 120 and 143 in two of his last three victories. He’s shown the ability to fill up the statsheet and score well even in a decision, but he generally finds the most success against fellow grapplers. The last time he faced a dangerous striker he got steamrolled in the first round, getting knocked down three times and finished in just 92 seconds. His standup game is very much still a work in progress, but he has shown growth in that area, at least when facing grapplers. We still need to see how he looks against a high-level striker and it’s possible his recent improvements have been overstated due to who he was fighting. Hooper will be in imminent danger of getting knocked out anytime this fight is on the feet, and while Borshchev only has a 36% takedown defense, Hooper only has a 22% takedown accuracy. That makes it tough to trust Hooper’s ability to get the fight to the mat and even if he can, he could struggle to keep it there. That’s where it’s important to remember that Hooper is a really good grappler, but a far less impressive wrestler. With all that said, Hooper is lightyears ahead of Borshchev when it comes to grappling and if he can get to a dominant position on the ground he’ll have a good shot at finding a finish. And at his cheap price tag, if he does pull off the upset, it’s tougher to see him getting left out of winning lineups. The odds imply Hooper has a 44% chance to win, a 25% chance to land a finish, and a 12% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #6
Robelis Despaigne
2nd UFC Fight (1-0)Despaigne is just nine weeks removed from his UFC debut, which ended in an 18 second first round knockout win against a terrible Josh Parisian. Despaigne came out ultra aggressively looking to land a highlight reel finish, but slipped as he threw a quick 10 seconds into the fight. Parisian tried to blitz him as he stood up, but instead just sprinted head first into his own demise, as Despaigne landed a backpedaling right hand that dropped Parisian and the fight was almost immediately stopped. That was only Despaigne’s fifth pro MMA fight, but it was his fourth in a row to end in the opening 18 seconds. His previous three knockout wins ended in 4, 3, and 12 seconds respectively, after his pro debut almost made it to the end of the first round, but only because his opponent held him up against the fence for almost all of the fight. Despaigne looked pretty lost with his back against the cage in that fight and relied on the ref to break things up.
Now 5-0 as a pro, all five of Despaigne’s wins have come by first round knockout. Just keep in mind, he’s been fighting the lowest level of competition possible and three of his opponents were fighting for the first and only time, while another came in with a 1-0 record, and the most recent was…well Josh Parisian.
Overall, Despaigne is a Taekwondo 4th degree black belt who won a bronze medal in the 2012 Olympics, representing Cuba in Taekwondo. He didn’t make his pro MMA debut until 10 years later, after he moved to Florida in 2022. Despaigne is already 35 years old and four of his five pro fights took place in the last 11 months. So we expect him to be very green when it comes to MMA, despite already being in his mid thirties. However, he’s had such limited cage time that it’s hard to really evaluate him. Clearly he has a ton of power and is dangerous with both his kicks and punches, but he’s shown no grappling or ability to work out of the clinch. Once he starts facing decent competition with a brain, we expect opponents to begin pushing him up against the cage to try and wear him out and test his cardio, as he’s never been in a fight that lasted longer than five minutes. Taekwondo matches are three rounds, but each round is only two minutes, so even outside of MMA he has no experience in longer fights. However, he’s an absolute specimen of a human being and simply closing the distance on him looks like a challenge. The UFC seems to be interested in building him up and after giving him one of the worst fighters on the roster in his debut, now they’re pairing him up with a fellow one-dimensional striker.
Waldo Cortes-Acosta
6th UFC Fight (4-1)Cortes-Acosta is coming off a decision win over an aging Andrei Arlovski, who had been finished in each of his previous two fights. Cortes-Acosta appeared more concerned with pelvic thrusts than pushing the pace and Arlovski actually finished ahead 58-49 in significant strikes in the low-volume fight. No takedowns were attempted on either side and neither fighter finished with even a single second of control time. Prior to that, Cortes-Acosta secured his only UFC finish in a R1 KO win over a terrible Lukasz Brzeski—again in a fight where no takedowns were attempted or control time accrued. That came after Cortes-Acosta suffered the first loss of his career in a decision against Marcos Rogerio de Lima, who tore up Cortes-Acosta’s lead leg and also took him down three times and controlled him for five minutes. Cortes-Acosta failed to land his only takedown attempt and had just 34 seconds of control time. Leading up to that loss, Cortes-Acosta won a pair of decisions in his first two UFC fights against low-level opponents in Jared Vanderaa and Chase Sherman. Cortes-Acosta didn’t attempt a takedown in either of those fights and finished with just 16 seconds of total control time across those six rounds. Those wins came just three weeks apart and Cortes-Acosta wasted no time getting back inside the Octagon after defeating Vanderaa in his October 2022 UFC debut. Prior to making his UFC debut, Cortes-Acosta had knocked out three straight opponents, including a R1 TKO win on DWCS after he won the vacant LFA Heavyweight belt just before that with a third round TKO over Thomas Petersen, who recently lost a decision in his own UFC debut.
Now 11-1 as a pro, Cortes-Acosta has five wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and five decision victories. Despite six of his 12 pro fights ending early, only three of those finishes occurred in round one, and one of those was a submission in his second pro fight. Two of his KO/TKO wins came in round one, two were in round two, and one occurred in round three. His only loss went the distance and he’s never been finished.
Overall, Cortes-Acosta is a one-dimensional striker whose background is in baseball, not martial arts. He played in the minor leagues, but was cut following a fight and embraced the result as he opted to become a professional fighter. While he turned pro in MMA in 2018 and landed a knockout in his first fight, he was more focussed on boxing around that time, and went 4-3 in boxing matches from 2018 to 2021. He then returned his focus to MMA in the Summer of 2021 and rattled off eight straight wins over the next 21 months. While he has one submission win on his record, he hasn’t shown anything in terms of grappling and has struggled at times with getting taken down. Between his five UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, his opponents got him down on 4 of their 10 takedown attempts (60% defense), while he failed to land his only attempt. We also saw him get taken down three times in an LFA title fight just before going on DWCS, where he did a pretty good job of returning to his feet and still had the cardio to land a third round knockout. With that said, he still looks vulnerable on the mat and that may ultimately be his Achilles heel once he faces any legitimate competition at the UFC level with the ability to wrestle. We’ve also consistently seen him get his legs chewed up, and right now he’s basically just a boxer. To his credit, he’s shown good toughness and cardio, allowing him to remain dangerous late in fights. While he has decent power, he loads up with low-percentage cartoon haymakers a little too often. He’s capable of beating low-level opponents at this point, but he has too many holes in his game to ever make a serious run in the division.
Fight Prediction:
Despaigne will have a 3” height advantage and 6” reach advantage, while Cortes-Acosta is three years younger than the 35-year-old Despaigne.
Both of these two are one dimensional strikers who have shown nothing in the way of grappling. However, there are still a lot of questions to be answered with Despaigne. He’s never been past the first round, and it shows in the way he fights, as he puts everything into each strike he throws and has little regard for defense or cardio management. We’d be surprised if he had the gas tank to go three rounds, but all we can do is speculate until we see him in a longer fight. We’ve also yet to see him operate on the mat, but we assume he’ll look terrible on the mat if he ever gets there. This isn’t the matchup to find out though. All of his fights have ended so quickly that we also haven’t seen his durability really tested. All we really know about Despaigne is that he’s massive, athletic, powerful, and green when it comes to MMA. However, he was a good enough striker to medal in the 2012 Olympics in Taekwondo. He comes into every fight aggressively looking for an immediate knockout and loves to throw helicopter head kicks and five-mile uppercuts. He’s powerful enough to land knockouts off his back foot and long enough to quickly cover distance in a single bound. He’s also already 35 years old and doesn’t have much time to waste. The UFC could have paired him up with a wrestler if they wanted to expose him, but instead they gave him a training dummy in Josh Parisian for his debut, followed by a fellow one-dimensional striker for his sophomore outing. Despaigne is from Cuba and Cortes-Acosta is Dominican, so we’ll see who the true king of the Caribbean is here.
Getting any legitimate fighter against Despaigne at plus money is pretty tempting, but Cortes-Acosta’s lack of grappling and cage control leaves him reliant on winning a pure striking battle. He often keeps his hands low and relies on his athleticism and quickness to avoid strikes, but that could be problematic for him here, as he takes on an athletic specimen in Despaigne. With that said, we expect Cortes-Acosta to have the cardio advantage and if he can simply survive the first round he could be in a good position to take over down the stretch—at least if our speculation comes to fruition on Despaigne’s gas tank. Cortes-Acosta has never been finished, which is encouraging for his chances, but you also have to look at who he’s faced. His UFC wins came against a group of pillow-fisted missfits in Andrei Arlovski, Lukasz Brzeski, Chase Sherman, and Jared Vanderaa. The one time he faced a more dangerous opponent was when he got his lead leg destroyed by Marcos Rogerio de Lima, who predictably slowed down after the first round, but still cruised to a decision win. Cortes-Acosta has consistently looked vulnerable to having his legs kicked, so it will be interesting to see if Despaigne looks to lower his target or if he continues to head hunt with his kicks. Neither guy has ever been knocked out, but that likely changes here given the way Despaigne fights. We expect to see either another early knockout for Despaigne or a later finish for Cortes-Acosta. Given all of the uncertainty on Despaigne’s side of things, it’s still a pretty volatile matchup. However, we don’t think the UFC cared much for Cortes-Acosta pelvic thrusting his way to a decision win over a legend in Arlovski and now they’re trying to use him to build up Despaigne, in what looks like a tailor-made matchup for Despaigne to showcase his striking, while not having to worry about getting taken down or controlled. Cortes-Acosta has just one failed takedown attempt and only 50 seconds of total control time in his five UFC fights and there’s no reason to think he suddenly comes in with a smart game plan of trying to wear Despaigne down against the fence and take him into deep waters. And when you combine that with Cortes-Acosta’s tendency to keep his hands low, it’s hard not to like Despaigne’s chances of landing another highlight reel, first-round knockout.
Our favorite bet here is “Despaigne/Cortes-Acosta Under 0.5 Rounds” at +250.
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DFS Implications:
Despaigne is just nine weeks removed from an 18-second first round knockout win in his UFC debut against a terrible Josh Parisian, who kamikaze’d his way into the finish like a fat frat boy on penny pint night going in for his 19th beer. With the help of the Quick Win Bonus, Despaigne scored 128 DraftKings points and he’s now amazingly finished four straight opponents in 18 seconds or less. That’s obviously unsustainable and he’ll face a step up in competition here. However, the UFC also knows what they’re doing with the matchmaking as they pair Despaigne up with a fellow one-dimensional striker here. While Cortes-Acosta has never been finished, he has a tendency to keep his hands low and also hasn’t faced many true knockout threats. Despaigne should have ample opportunities to land a knockout, at least early on, as Cortes-Acosta has never landed a takedown on just one attempt in the UFC and only controlled his opponents for 1.32% of his total Octagon time. However, if Cortes-Acosta’s chin holds up for at least five minutes, things could get dicey for Despaigne after that, as he would be entering uncharted territory. He fits the profile of a gasser and Cortes-Acosta has good cardio and a history of landing late finishes—at least on the regional scene. So we’re really only playing Despaigne for his first round finishing upside, which leaves him with an unknown floor. He was 42% owned on a 14-fight card for his debut and after breaking that slate we expect him to be popular once again, which does lower his tournament appeal some. The odds imply Despaigne has a 68% chance to win, a 57% chance to land a finish, and a 39% chance it comes in round one.
Cortes-Acosta is also a one-dimensional striker with no real grappling skills who relies on striking and knockouts to score well. Four of his five UFC fights ended with the judges, with the one exception being a violent first round knockout win over a terrible Lukasz Brzeski, where Cortes-Acosta scored 106 DraftKings. However, he was unable to finish low-level opponents in Jared Vanderaa and Chase Sherman, a gasser in Marcos Rogerio de Lima, or an ancient relic in Andrei Arlovski. While Cortes-Acosta was able to land 147 significant strikes against Sherman and score 90 DraftKings points in that decision win, he only put up 50 and 59 points respectively in his other two decision victories. So even at his cheap price tag, there’s no guarantee that he’ll score enough in a decision win to be useful. He’ll also be at risk of getting immediately knocked out, leaving him with an untrustworthy floor. However, all of the unknowns with Despaigne translate to potential upside for Cortes-Acosta. While Cortes-Acosta is unlikely to expose Despaigne on the mat, he could put his cardio and durability to the test. Three of Cortes-Acosta’s five career knockout wins occurred in the later rounds and if Despaigne gasses himself out looking for an unsuccessful first round knockout, then Cortes-Acosta could be looking at a teed up late knockout of his own. That leaves Cortes-Acosta with a wide range of scoring outcomes, but he’ll be a solid leverage play off of Despaigne and it makes sense to have exposure to both sides of this matchup. The odds imply Cortes-Acosta has a 32% chance to win, a 28% chance to land a finish, and a 14% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #5
Sean Woodson
8th UFC Fight (5-1-1)Woodson recently fought outside of the US for the first time as he went into enemy territory and won a split decision win over Charles Jourdain on the January Canada card. Woodson was able to stuff all four of Jourdain’s takedown attempts and outlanded him 80-60 in significant strikes. Woodson even landed a takedown of his own, although that resulted in him getting stuck in a guillotine late in the match and he nearly gave the fight away because of it. Prior to that, Woodson won another decision against Dennis Buzukja, who was making his short notice UFC debut on just four days’ notice. Woodson had originally been scheduled to face Steve Garcia, but Garcia dropped out and Jesse Butler was announced as the replacement. However, Butler then wasn’t medically cleared and Mairon Santos was announced to replace him. Then Santos ran into visa issues and Dennis Buzukja was announced as Woodson’s fourth opponent in the weeks leading up to the fight. We saw Woodson wrestle offensively for the first time in his career in that fight, as he took Buzukja down four times on five attempts after failing to attempt a single takedown in his first five UFC fights. A year before that win, Woodson was fortunate to escape a matchup against Luis Saldana with a draw. Woodson got dropped twice in the first round of that match, but was bailed out by an illegal knee thrown by Luis Saldana that gave Woodson some time to recover and cost Saldana a point. Both guys slowed down in the later rounds in a fight that took place at elevation in Salt Lake City, and it got sloppy down the stretch. Woodson said he doesn't even remember the 2nd and 3rd rounds after getting hurt badly early on and also said he was dealing with a bunch of personal things at the time that affected his performance. Just before that, Woodson won two in a row after suffering his first career loss in a 2020 R3 submission against Julian Erosa, who took the fight on short notice. Woodson bounced back with a split-decision win over Youssef Zalal, before landing his only UFC finish in a late R1 TKO against a terrible Collin Anglin, who was finished in both of his UFC fights before being cut. Woodson originally punched his ticket to the UFC with a R2 KO win on DWCS in 2019 against Terrance McKinney who was winning the fight up until Woodson landed a flying knee to knock him out. Woodson then won a decision in his October 2019 UFC debut against a suspect Kyle Bochniak, who entered the fight 2-4 in the UFC and was cut following his fifth loss, before suffering the loss to Erosa.
Now 11-1-1 as a pro, Woodson has three wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and seven decision victories. His only career loss was a 2020 third round submission against Julian Erosa. After landing back-to-back first round finishes against low-level opponents in his first two pro fights, Woodson has seen the second round in 10 of his last 11 matches, with nine of those making it to round three and eight going the distance. Woodson’s first two MMA fights were at 180 lb and 185 lb respectively, before he dropped down to 155 lb for his third pro match and then all the way down to 145 lb after that.
Overall, Woodson is a good boxer, who’s insanely long for the 145 lb division. He had an extensive amateur boxing career and it shows in his fighting style. Most of his opponents are looking to get him to the mat, but he has a really solid 84% takedown defense and has only been taken down 9 times on 57 attempts between his seven UFC fights and his DWCS appearance. On the other side of things, he landed five of his own eight attempts (62.5% accuracy), with all of those attempts coming in his last two fights. He doesn’t load up on his punches, but just consistently chips away at his opponents, averaging 5.40 SSL/min and 4.00 SSA/min. That makes it tougher for him to land finishes, but allows him to get ahead on the scorecards and he’s never lost a decision. Woodson lives and trains in St Louis and will have the home crowd behind him for this matchup.
Alex Caceres
30th UFC Fight (16-12, NC)Caceres is coming off a unanimous 30-27 decision loss to Giga Chikadze, despite the striking numbers being almost identical in every round and neither fighter attempting a takedown or landing a knockdown. Prior to that, Caceres won a decision over Daniel Pineda, who has now gone 0-6 with the judges in his career. Caceres has quietly won seven of his last nine fights, with his one other loss over that stretch coming in another decision against a tough Sodiq Yusuff in 2022. In between those two fights, Caceres landed a rare R1 TKO win over a fragile Julian Erosa, which is only Caceres’ second KO/TKO victory since 2010. His only other TKO “finish” in the last 14 years was a 2017 post R2 TKO due to an opponent suffering an eye injury. Leading up to his loss to Yusuff, Caceres had won five straight fights, with two submissions and three decisions. That winning streak began with a decision win over Steven Peterson, who went 2-4 in his last six UFC fights before hanging it up in 2023. Caceres followed that up with another decision victory in 2020 over a very green Chase Hooper, who was making his second UFC appearance and was just 20 years old at the time. Caceres then landed a first round submission against a short notice replacement in Austin Springer, who was making his UFC debut and never fought again. Caceres then won another decision, this time against Kevin Croom, who went 0-3 plus a No Contest in the UFC before being released. Caceres’ most impressive win over the five fight stretch was against Seung Woo Choi. After nearly getting knocked out and then taking an illegal knee to the head in the first round, Caceres opted to continue and fought his way back into the fight and then three minutes into round two Caceres was able to take Choi’s back on the feet and lock up a rear-naked choke. Choi has now gone just 1-3 in his last four fights.
Now 21-14 as a pro, Caceres has four wins by TKO, seven submissions, and 10 decision victories. He’s only been knocked out once in his career (R1 2015), but has been submitted seven times, and has six decision losses. Four of those seven submission losses notably occurred in 2011 or prior, and he’s only been finished twice in his last 17 fights dating back to 2015—both times by rear-naked choke (2017 & 2019). If we include the split-decision win over Kyung Ho Kang that was later overturned to a No Contest when Caceres tested positive for THC, seven of his 17 career decisions have been split (4-3). Eleven of Caceres’ last 12 fights have ended in either decisions (5-3) or submissions (2-1). Caceres made his UFC debut in 2011 at 145 lb, but after starting 0-2 with the organization he dropped down to 135 lb later that year. He stayed at 135 lb until 2015, going 5-4 plus a No Contest (originally a decision win) in his next 10 fights, before moving back up to 145 lb in 2016 following three straight losses at 135 lb. He’s since stayed at 145 lb and is now 11-8 at 145 lb in the UFC.
Overall, Caceres is a longtime UFC veteran who joined the organization all the way back in 2011 and will be stepping into his 30th fight with the organization. He has a fluid karate style that utilizes a lot of kicks, but leaves his lead leg vulnerable to getting beat up. He’s worked on his wrestling in recent years to shore up what had been his biggest weakness, and despite having seven submission losses on his record, the last of those came all the way back in 2019 against Kron Gracie. In his last UFC 10 fights, Caceres landed four takedowns on 7 attempts (57.1% accuracy), while only giving up 8 takedowns on 37 opponent attempts (78.4% defense). His karate style approach to fighting generally results in somewhat lower volume striking battles as he only averages 4.16 SSL/min and 2.93 SSA/min. Caceres hasn’t lost two fights in a row since 2016-2017, but that will be put to the test here as he travels into enemy territory.
Fight Prediction:
Woodson will have a 4” height advantage and 5” reach advantage, while also being four years younger than the 35-year-old Caceres.
This sets up as a striking battle between a boxer in Woodson and a karate fighter in Caceres. While Caceres has made improvements to his grappling, he faced a one-dimensional striker in his last match and never even attempted a takedown. When you combine that with the solid 84% takedown defense of Woodson, it’s hard to have much confidence in Caceres finding a lot of grappling success in this match. However, if the fight does end early, a Caceres submission would be the most likely result. With that said, we’re not expecting a finish here and Woodson has never lost a decision. He’ll also have the home crowd behind him, which could help to sway the judges if this ends in a close decision and means Woodson doesn’t have to travel for the fight, which is great from his perspective since he hates flying. Caceres lost two of the last three decisions he’s been to, with the one exception coming against Daniel Pineda, who is 0-6 with the judges. Woodson has never been knocked out and Caceres only has one knockout loss in 36 pro fights, and neither throws with a ton of power. So outside of Caceres finding the neck of Woodson, it would be surprising to see this end early. Woodson is the taller, longer fighter, who also lands more volume, and we expect him to show up in front of his home crowd and outland his way to a decision victory.
Our favorite bet here is “Sean Woodson DEC” at +105.
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DFS Implications:
Woodson has averaged 89 DraftKings points in his five UFC wins, although four of his five UFC wins went the distance and he failed to top 82 points in three of those. The one time he scored well with the judges was when he took on a short-notice debuting opponent in Dennis Buzukja and wrestled for the first time in his career, landing four takedowns with nearly six minutes of control time, while also putting up a solid striking total. Woodson followed that up by only scoring 73 points in his last decision win and he also scored just 61 and 82 DraftKings points in his first two UFC decision victories. Outside of his win over Buzukja, the only other time he scored well was in his line UFC finish, which came in a first round TKO against a terrible Collin Anglin, who was put away early in each of his two UFC fights before being cut. You have to go all the way back to 2019 to find Woodson’s second most recent finish, when he outlasted Terrance McKinney on DWCS and landed a second round knockout. And as we’ve since learned, if you can make it to the second round with McKinney, you’re practically guaranteed to finish him. The only other two early wins of Woodson’s career were in his first two pro fights when he was still fighting up at 185 lb. Woodson hasn’t shown a ton of power and also doesn’t offer much in the way of grappling, which makes it tougher for him to score well in DFS. He’s mostly reliant on striking volume or rare finishes to put up useful scores and Caceres only averages 2.93 SSA/min and has only been knocked out once in 36 pro fights. That makes this a tough matchup for Woodson to score well, even before you factor in his expensive price tag. He will have the home crowd pumping him up, but Woodson looks like a hail mary KO or bust option and we don’t have much interest in playing him. The odds imply Woodson has a 66% chance to win, a 21% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.
Caceres has historically struggled to put up big DFS scores, averaging 85 DraftKings points in his 16 UFC wins. He’s only topped 98 points three times in 29 UFC appearances—a 2022 R1 TKO win where he scored 107 points, a 2017 R2 TKO win where he scored 105 points, and a 2016 decision victory where he scored 116 after completely filling up the stat sheet. With that said, he’s shown a somewhat decent floor recently, with DraftKings scores of 77, 107, 91, 76, 98, and 92 in his last six wins. At his cheap price tag, he could potentially serve as a value play without putting up a huge score, but that would likely require a slate with not many high scoring underdogs. With so many other live underdogs to choose from on this card, it’s more likely that Caceres will need a finish to end up in tournament winning lineups. While we have seen Woodson submitted once before, he also has a solid 84% takedown defense and isn’t an easy guy to get down. That makes it hard to get excited about playing Caceres here as he travels into enemy territory and the most likely outcome is that he loses a lower scoring decision. The odds imply Caceres has a 34% chance to win, a 15% chance to land a finish, and an 8% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #4
Mateusz Rebecki
4th UFC Fight (3-0)Rebecki had originally been scheduled to face Joel Alvarez on April 27th, but Alvarez dropped out in early April and this new matchup was announced on April 16th, with three and a half weeks to prepare. That’s the second straight time that Rebecki had to deal with a late opponent change, and third in four UFC bookings. Apparently no one wants to fight this guy once they study his tape. He had been booked to face Nurullo Aliev in his last bout, but Aliev got “injured” and Roosevelt Roberts stepped in on five days’ notice in his return to the UFC following a loss on TUF. Rebecki made short work of Roberts, submitting him with an armbar midway through the first round. That came after a dominant second round TKO win over a previously very durable Loik Radzhabov, who had never been finished in his career to that point. Rebecki did a great job of chopping Radzhabov down with leg kicks and also landed his only takedown in the fight along with two knockdowns. Prior to that, Rebecki won a lopsided decision in his UFC debut against Nick Fiore, who was also fighting for the first time with the organization. Fiore was filling in on 16 days’ notice after Omar Morales dropped out. Rebecki took Fiore down three times and controlled him for eight and a half minutes while more than doubling him up in striking. The only knock on his performance was that he couldn’t find a finish. Leading up to that win, Rebecki punched his ticket to the UFC with a first round submission win on DWCS. Rebecki was the longtime FEN Lightweight champion in Poland and after winning the vacant FEN Lightbelt belt back in 2018, he successfully defended it seven straight times before going on DWCS. While the most recent of those defenses ended in a five-round decision victory, he landed nine straight finishes before that and 12 of his last 14 wins ended early, with nine KO/TKOs and three submissions. Six of those finishes ended in round one, two ended in round two, three occurred in round three, and one was stopped in round four. So he’s shown the ability to get opponents out of there early and also the cardio to finish them later on in fights. However, his last seven finishes were all stopped in the first two rounds.
Now 19-1 as a pro, Rebecki has nine wins by KO/TKO, seven submissions, and three decision victories. His only loss occurred in a 2014 R2 knockout in his fourth pro fight and he’s now won 16 straight fights. Five of his seven submission wins occurred in his first seven pro fights, with three heel hooks and two armbars, and he’s only completed two submissions since 2017. Nine of his last 11 early wins ended in KO/TKOs.
Overall, Rebecki is a Polish powerhouse who’s generally looking to wrestle and has a BJJ background. He aggressively pushes forward looking to land both takedowns and heavy strikes. His stocky build can make it harder for him to find his striking range against taller/longer opponents, but his threat of wrestling allows him to feint takedowns while landing heavy shots. He also does a great job of landing leg kicks, as we saw against Loik Radzhabov, who had his legs absolutely destroyed. Rebecki is a serious problem in the clinch and has an impressive 72.7% takedown accuracy. Between his three UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, he landed 8 of his 11 takedown attempts, while his opponents got him down on just 1 of their 3 attempts. His biggest obstacle appears to be his height, but he’s shown the ability to walk through strikes to get his hands on his opponents and overall he’s very well rounded and dangerous.
Diego Ferreira
15th UFC Fight (9-5)It’s been a year since we last saw Ferreira compete, when he notched his first win since early 2020 in a second round knockout of a fellow aging veteran in Michael Johnson. The fight was close leading up to the finish, and Johnson actually won the first round on two of the three scorecards. Ferreira failed to land either of his two takedown attempts and finished slightly behind in striking 32-30. However, he put Johnson out cold with a big right hand midway through round two to snap a three-fight losing streak. Ferreira ended up taking all of 2022 off due to an injury and his second most recent fight was all the way back in December 2021, when he got finished by Mateusz Gamrot in a second round TKO. Ferreira also withdrew from a fight due to an injury just before his loss to Gamrot and then got injured in the Gamrot fight to force the second round TKO stoppage, so father time may be catching up with the 39-year-old at this stage in his career. That loss to Gamrot was Ferreira’s second straight R2 TKO loss, after another wrestler in Gregor Gillespie finished him on the mat just before that, in a fight where Ferreira notably missed weight by a ridiculous 4.5 lb. Leading up to those two early losses, Ferreira got dominated on the mat by Beneil Dariush in a decision loss, which snapped a six-fight winning streak.
Now 18-5 as a pro, Ferreira has four KO/TKO wins, seven submissions, and seven decision victories. While 7 of his 18 pro wins ended by submission, he’s only landed one submission in his last 13 matches, with his second most recent submission win coming all the way back in his 2014 UFC debut. Four of his last five early wins came via knockout, and all 11 of his career finishes occurred in the first two rounds, with four in round one and seven in round two. On the other side of things, he has three KO/TKO losses, with one in round one and the last two in round two. His other two defeats both went the distance. After only getting finished once in his first twenty pro fights, he’s now been finished in two of his last three matches. Nine of his 23 pro fights have been stopped in the second round (7-2). To Ferreira’s credit, he’s only been defeated by top-level opponents in Mateusz Gamrot, Gregor Gillespie, Beneil Dariush (twice), and Dustin Poirier.
Overall, Ferreira is a 3rd degree BJJ black belt and very dangerous on the ground, both in top position and off his back. However, he’s had a tougher time getting fights to the mat and is not the most aggressive or effective wrestler. In his 14 UFC fights, he only landed 6 of his 27 takedown attempts (22.2% accuracy). He’s only successfully taken one of his last seven opponents down, which was Anthony Pettis back in 2020. On the other side of things, Ferreira’s opponents took him down on 22 of their 60 attempts (63.3% defense), and the last three opponents to try and take him down each landed four or more of their attempts. We’ve seen Ferreira wilt in round two against heavy wrestling pressure multiple times in recent fights, which will be an ongoing concern for him. Looking beyond his ground game, Ferreira is a decent striker and has four UFC knockout wins, although only one since 2018. He’s missed weight at multiple points in his career and at 39 years old and coming off a long layoff he’s definitely a guy to keep an eye on during weigh-ins. Ferreira said at media day that his head coach Sayif Saud would not be able to be in his corner for this event and instead he’ll have Alex Morono filling in.
Fight Prediction:
Ferreira will have a 2” height advantage and 8” reach advantage, while Rebecki is eight years younger than the 39-year-old Ferreira.
This is a brutally tough spot for Ferreira to step into on just three and a half weeks’ notice and he was dominated on the mat by the last three wrestlers he faced. He only has one win in the last four and a half years, which came against a striker, and is approaching his 40th birthday. While Ferreira is a 3rd degree BJJ black belt, he only has one submission win since 2014 and has struggled with his defensive wrestling in recent years. Gamrot took Ferreira down four times on seven attempts, Gillespie got him down on four of his eight attempts, and Dariush landed 5 of his 15 attempts. Now Ferreira will be facing another relentless wrestler and there’s no reason to think that Rebecki will struggle to get this fight to the ground. Rebecki also does a great job of wearing opponents out on the mat with ground and pound and submission attempts, while we’ve seen Ferreira wilt in the back half of round two against similar pressure. That leads us to believe that Rebecki can get Ferreira out of there early, most likely with ground and pound in round two as Ferreira begins to fade.
Our favorite bet here is “Mateusz Rebecki KO” at +140.
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DFS Implications:
Rebecki’s aggressive, wrestling-heavy approach to fighting is tailor-made for DFS production. He’s won 16 straight fights, with 12 of his last 14 wins coming early. While his UFC debut ended in a decision win, he was still able to score 104 DraftKings points in the grappling-heavy victory. He followed that up with a dominant second round TKO win that was good for 122 DraftKings points in his next fight, before locking up a first round submission win that scored 112 points most recently. The only downside of his consistent scoring success is that it drives his ownership way up, making it tougher to create unique tournament lineups that include him. Nevertheless, he has massive wrestling and finishing upside and will now be facing a 39-year-old opponent who’s only won a single fight in the last four and a half years. And while Ferreira is a 3rd degree BJJ black belt, his defensive wrestling has looked poor in recent years. The last three opponents who tried to take Ferreira down all landed at least four of their attempts and Ferreira was finished in the second round in two of those matches, while losing a decision in the other. So we’ve seen multiple other wrestlers dominate Ferreira on the mat in recent years and there’s no reason to think Rebecki can’t find similar success. The fact that Ferreira is a high-level black belt who has never been submitted can actually be looked at as a positive for Rebecki, as it reduces the chance of an efficient submission win where Rebecki fails to score enough to return value as the most expensive fighter on the card. It’s more likely that he’ll need to wear Ferreira down on the mat with ground and pound to get him out of there, which is ideal for DFS. Rebecki is the largest favorite on the card by a wide margin and one of the few safe plays who also has a huge scoring ceiling. The odds imply Rebecki has an 80% chance to win, a 51% chance to land a finish, and a 26% chance it comes in round one.
Ferreira is now 39 years old and hasn’t fought in a year after knocking out Michael Johnson. While the finish was impressive, Ferreira was actually losing a close fight leading up to it, after also dropping three straight matches before that. He’s only competed once in the last two and a half years after suffering consecutive second round TKO losses and you have to go all the way back to January 2020 to find Ferreira’s second most recent victory. To his credit, his last two wins both ended early, and only three of his nine UFC victories required the judges. It’s hard to see him winning a decision here, and even if he somehow does, he’s never scored more than 81 points with the judges and returned totals of just 75 and 65 points respectively in his last two decision wins. He also has just one submission win since 2014, despite being a 3rd degree BJJ black belt. Rebecki is really solid on the mat and it would be surprising to see him get stuck in a submission, leaving Ferreira more reliant on landing a hail mary knockout to pull off the upset. In the unlikely event that happens, it’s hard to see Ferreira getting left out of winning lineups as the cheapest fighter on the card. Just keep in mind, he stepped into this matchup on just three and a half weeks’ notice and his cardio will be a concern in the back half of the fight. The odds imply Ferreira has a 20% chance to win, a 14% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #3
Carlos Ulberg
7th UFC Fight (5-1)Ulberg is coming off the first submission win of his career, which came in the third round against Da Woon Jung, who came in on a two-fight losing streak. Ulberg knocked Jung down in the first round, but couldn’t get him out of there and then didn’t really have any other big moments until he took Jung down late in round three and apparently forced him to tap. We saw a very bizarre ending there as Ulberg looked for a late rear-naked choke as the third round expired. The fight was never stopped, but just before they went to read the scorecards, they reviewed the closing seconds of the match and decided that a Jung tap went unnoticed by the referee with 11 seconds left in the fight and the result was changed to a third-round submission. Ulberg finished ahead 81-58 in significant strikes, while both fighters landed one of their two takedown attempts. That was Ulberg’s fifth straight win, after he gassed out in the second round of his 2021 UFC debut against Kennedy Nzechukwu and got knocked out in just over eight minutes. He bounced back from what was his first career loss with a very tentative decision win over Fabio Cherant, who went 0-3 in the UFC and had been finished in the first round of each of his previous two fights. Ulberg then rattled off three straight first round knockout wins, leading up to his recent submission victory. Ulberg also landed a first round knockout on DWCS in 2020 to punch his ticket to the big show.
Now 9-1 as a pro, Ulberg has six wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and two decision victories. His only loss came in a R2 KO in his UFC debut when Ulberg gassed out after taking a huge early lead. His last five knockout wins all ended in the first round, after he landed a second round TKO in his 2011 pro debut.
Overall, Ulberg is a talented kickboxer with good size and power. He was also able to lock up an opportunistic submission in his last fight, showing a potential new wrinkle to his game. However, he still hasn’t shown much in the way of grappling and between his five UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, he only landed three takedowns on four attempts (75% accuracy), while his opponents got him down once on just four attempts (75% defense). Ulberg landed an insane 146 significant strikes in just eight minutes and 19 seconds in his UFC debut (17.56 SSL/min), but after gassing out in that fight he’s paced himself much more in his last five fights, where he “only” landed 189 significant strikes combined (5.12 SSL/min). He’s been a little bit less aggressive since that loss and more content with counter striking. However, once he has an opponent hurt he’ll unload with a heavy combination of punches to try and force a stoppage. While he’s still a pretty raw talent, his striking ability and power are impressive and he trains with City Kickboxing so he should be continuing to improve. However, we do still wonder about his gas tank in higher paced matches or when he’s forced to wrestle.
Alonzo Menifield
13th UFC Fight (8-3-1)Continuing to show improvements to his game, Menifield is coming off an impressive decision win over a very talented kickboxer in Dustin Jacoby. While Jacoby finished ahead 93-68 in significant strikes, Menifield had all of the show stealing moments in the fight, hurting Jacoby at multiple points and securing both a knockdown and a takedown in the match. Menifield lost the first round but then won each of the later rounds on all three scorecards. Menifield’s previous 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 6-1-1 since suffering back-to-back losses in 2020, and is a point deduction and a close decision away from being on an eight-fight winning streak.
Now 15-3-1 as a pro, Menifield has 10 KO/TKO wins, three submissions, and two decision victories. He’s been knocked out once (R2 2020), with his other two losses both going the distance. Ten of his 13 early wins occurred in round one, with the other three ending in the first half of round two. All five of the decisions he’s been to in his career have come in his last 10 fights, after his first nine pro matches all ended early.
Overall, Menifield is a former college, CFL and Arena League football player who 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. Between his 12 UFC fights and his two DWCS appearances, Menifield landed 5 of his 15 takedown attempts (33.3% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 11 of their 44 attempts (75% defense). While Menifield failed to land a takedown in either of his DWCS fights or his first four UFC matches, he landed five in his last eight fights. He was successful in landing a takedown in four of the last five fights where he attempted one. Rarely do we see big striking totals in his fights, as Menifield only averages 3.92 SSL/min and 3.51 SSA/min. Only once in his career has he landed more than 68 or absorbed more than 79 significant strikes in a fight. However, when he does land, he makes it count and he even showed the ability to carry his power into the later rounds in his last fight.
Fight Prediction:
Ulberg will have a 4” height advantage and 1” reach advantage, while also being three years younger than the 36-year-old Menifield.
This sets up as a high-stakes chess match between two powerful strikers. They both have the power to knock the other out, although they’ve also each only been finished once in their respective careers. Ulberg is the taller, longer, and quicker of the two, but Menifield holds the advantage when it comes to experience and wrestling. Ulberg likes a clean fight where he can dictate the pace and range, while Menifield doesn’t mind getting his hands dirty and operating out of the clinch. Menifield seems to handle adversity a little better, although both guys are prone to tiring out in a higher paced fight. It will be interesting to see how much wrestling success Menifield can find, as that looks like his easiest path to victory. While he’s not a high-level wrestler by any means, he’s made enough improvements in that area to come out ahead against a kickboxer like Ulberg. Those exchanges will also wear on Ulberg and could weaken his overall defenses and create more opportunities for Menifield to land a knockout on the feet in subsequent striking exchanges. We’re not expecting to see gaudy striking numbers, which theoretically lowers the chances of a finish, although any strike could spell the end with these two heavy-handed hitters. Nevertheless, if the striking numbers are close, any wrestling success that Menifield can find will be impactful on the scorecards and will give him a solid shot at getting his hand raised in a decision. And while we won’t be surprised to see either man get finished, we are leaning towards Menifield doing just enough with his wrestling to win a close decision.
Our favorite bet here is “Alonzo Menifield ML” at +220.
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DFS Implications:
Ulberg initially appeared to win a decision in his last fight, but then just before reading the scorecards they went to review and determined that Jung had actually tapped with 11 seconds left on the clock and it was overturned to a submission in a rare turn of events. That allowed Ulberg to score 97 DraftKings points in a late finish instead of about 82 points in a decision. That goes down as his fourth straight finish, after he landed three consecutive first round knockouts before that. His scoring couldn’t have been much more consistent in those knockout wins, as he returned DraftKings scores of 105, 106, and 106 points. His one other UFC victory went the distance, where he only scored 70 points. While he did land three takedowns in the UFC and just secured his first career submission win, he’s still essentially a one-dimensional kickboxer who relies on striking volume and knockouts to score well. Working against him here, Menifield averages just 3.51 SSA/min and has only been finished once in his career. Menifield will also look to wrestle some, which could slow Ulberg down and further limit his ability to put up a big striking total. As the second most expensive fighter on the card, Ulberg will need a well-timed knockout to have a shot at returning value, and even then he could still easily get outscored and priced out of tournament winning lineups. The odds imply Ulberg has a 70% chance to win, a 48% chance to land a finish, and a 23% chance it comes in round one.
Menifield has averaged 96 DraftKings points in his eight UFC wins, with five of those ending in the first round. He’s yet to score well in fights that made it past round one, scoring 82 points in a second round submission, while only putting up 81 and 74 points respectively in his two decision victories. However, he has been looking to wrestle a little more in recent years and now he’s facing a one-dimensional kickboxer, making this a great spot to lean on his ground game. However, he’s still never landed more than two takedowns in a fight and only averages 3.92 SSL/min, so it’s still hard to see him really scoring well without a finish. Nevertheless, at his really cheap price tag he could potentially still serve as a value play even without a really big score, although that would all depend on how many other underdogs win and there are plenty of other live options to choose from. The odds imply Menifield has a 30% chance to win, a 21% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #2
Joaquin Buckley
13th UFC Fight (8-4)Making a quick turnaround just six weeks after he finished a washed up Vicente Luque in a R2 TKO, Buckley was granted his wish by being put on the St. Louis card to fight in front of his home crowd. Buckley outlanded Luque 55-21 in significant strikes and also stuffed all three of his takedown attempts, before finishing him with ground and pound in round two. Prior to that, Buckley won a low-volume decision over Alex Moreno, where he finished ahead 68-40 in significant strikes and led in takedowns 2-1. Buckley has won all three of his fights since dropping down to 170 lb, after starting his UFC career off 5-4 at 185 lb and losing the last two of those 185 lb matches. Before the Morono fight, Buckley landed a late second round knockout against Andre Fialho, who has now been knocked out in the later rounds in four straight fights. There weren’t many strikes landed in that fight, with Buckley finishing ahead 26-22 in significant strikes and once again landing two takedowns. That came after Buckley got knocked out in the second round of his final 185 lb fight against Chris Curtis, following a decision loss to Nassourdine Imavov. However, leading up to those losses Buckley had won five of his previous six fights after getting knocked out in the third round of his short notice 2020 UFC debut against Kevin Holland. Six of Buckley’s eight UFC wins ended in knockouts, with five of those ending in round two and one in round three. His last eight and 12 of his last 13 fights made it to the second round, with the one exception being a 2021 R1 KO loss to Alessio Di Chirico. However, he only required the judges in three of those 13 fights (2-1), with the other 10 ending in knockouts (7-3).
Now 18-6 as a pro, Buckley has 13 wins by KO/TKO and five decision victories. Four of his knockout wins occurred in round one, seven ended in round two, and two came in round three. He’s also been knocked out four times himself and has two decision losses. Two of his knockout losses occurred in round one, one ended in round two, and the other came in round three. At just 5’10”, Buckley was always undersized at 185 lb and often came in under the 186 lb limit by multiple pounds. After he moved down to 170 lb, he said he had previously been fighting at his natural weight and didn’t even have to cut down, which adds up when you see where he had been weighing in. He did start his career at 170 lb, going 8-2 at the weight class in his first 10 fights, before he moved up to 185 lb in 2019 when he joined the LFA. He then stayed at 185 lb when he came into the UFC and after starting out 5-2 with the organization he never had a real reason to drop back down to 170 lb until his two fight skid in 2022. So looking at his entire pro career, he’s 11-2 at 170 lb and 7-4 at 185 lb. Five of his 13 170 lb fights went the distance (38.5%), while only 2 of his 11 185 lb fights required the judges (18.2%). Only two of his last six 170 lb fights ended early and one of those was against Andre Fialho, who may have the worst chin in the UFC. Also notable, Buckley won four of the last five decisions he’s been to at 170 lb.
Overall, Buckley has historically been a power puncher who relies mostly on his striking, but he’s continued to work on his wrestling and in his 12 UFC fights he landed 11 of his 30 takedown attempts (36.7% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 8 of their 26 attempts (69.2% defense). While he didn’t attempt a takedown in his last fight, he landed two in each of his first two fights after moving down to 170 lb, after only landing seven total takedowns in his first nine UFC fights, with five of those coming against Alhassan. He still hasn’t looked like any sort of submission threat on the mat, but it’s nice to see him mixing things up. He only averages 4.06 SSL/min and 3.26 SSA/min, but landed more significant strikes in each of his last two fights (55 & 68) than he did in any of his first 10 UFC fights. Similarly, the only fighter to ever land more than 51 significant strikes against him was Kevin Holland, who landed 79 in Buckley’s 2020 short notice UFC debut. It’s been more about quality than quantity when it comes to striking in his fights and anyone could get put out at any moment.
Nursulton Ruziboev
3rd UFC Fight (2-0)Ruziboev fought on the same card as Buckley just six weeks ago and will now be cutting down from 185 lb to 170 lb on pretty short notice. Ruziboev did compete at 170 lb earlier in his career, but hasn’t had to make the weight since 2021. He went just 1-3 in his last four fights at 170 lb, with all three of those losses going the distance and the one win ending in a quick kimura. Ruziboev last fight ended in a R1 TKO win, but it arguably should have been overturned to a No Contest after it appeared that Ruziboev poked Sedriques Dumas in the eye to begin the finishing sequence. Ruziboev finished ahead 12-1 in significant strikes, while neither fighter attempted a takedown. Prior to that, Ruziboev landed a quick 77 second R1 KO win in his short notice UFC debut against a dangerous opponent in Brunno Ferreira, where Ruziboev finished ahead 6-3 in significant strikes and landed his only takedown attempt. Ruziboev has now finished 10 straight opponents in the first round and hasn’t lost a fight since 2019. The last time he was in a fight that even made it to the four minute mark was in a 2019 decision loss, where he spent extended periods of time on his back eating ground and pound. We saw him get taken down by multiple opponents on the regional scene, but he’s been able to land multiple submissions off his back. Five of his last 10 wins came via submission, with three of those ending in kimuras.
Now 34-8-2 as a pro, Ruziboev has an absurd number of fights for a 30-year-old. He has 12 wins by KO/TKO, 20 submissions, and two decision victories. He’s been knocked out once, submitted once, and has six decision losses. His lone KO loss came in the second round of a 2014 fight in what was just his third pro appearance, while his one submission defeat came in the second round of a 2016 fight. He hasn’t won a decision since 2017, going 0-5-2 in his last seven trips to the judges, and he has as many draws as decision wins on his record. Looking at his entire career he’s gone just 2-6-2 in fights that went the distance. Ruziboev has fought anywhere from 155 lb to 195 lb, but most of his career has been split between 170 lb and 185 lb. His last seven fights have all been at 185 and 195 lb. He’s fought a lot of suspect competition and his last win before joining the UFC came against an opponent with a 12-12 pro record.
Overall, Ruziboev is an insanely tall, rangy 6’5” BJJ purple belt from Uzbekistan, who’s now training in Philadelphia at Renzo Gracie Philly with several other grappling-heavy UFC fighters. Ruziboev absolutely loves looking for kimuras and can throw up quick armbars as well. His takedown defense is non-existent and he’s struggled with being controlled on his back at times, but has shown the ability to reverse positions. He’s got long skinny legs that look prone to getting chewed up, although the majority of his fights are spent on the mat or end so quickly that there’s no time for leg damage to add up. While he’s been able to lock up kimuras against numerous low-level opponents, that’s rarely an effective finishing method at the UFC level, but is helpful for reversing positions on the ground. Considering he’s still just 30 years old and trains with several UFC grapplers in Philadelphia, he should be continuing to improve his wrestling. However, with just 275 seconds of UFC Octagon time there are still far more questions than answers with him. He’ll obviously be a guy to monitor closely on the scale as he tries to cut down to 170 lb on shorter notice, but he claimed the weight cut wouldn’t be hard and that he was walking around at 190 lb.
Fight Prediction:
Ruziboev will have a 7” height advantage, but both fighters share a 76” reach.
Both of these two are dangerous finishes, but we have legitimate concerns about how Ruziboev will look after cutting down from 185 lb to 170 lb on pretty short notice. He’s a giant at 6’5” and was already skinny at 185 lb, so unless he’s taking out an organ we’re not sure where he has extra weight to lose. He also has plenty of other flaws in his game that have yet to come to light in the UFC. He has a terrible takedown defense, doesn’t land much striking volume, and looks prone to getting leg kicked. He went 0-5-2 in his last seven decisions and appears entirely reliant on finishes to win fights. He’s facing a big step up in competition here and only finished his last opponent after blinding him with an eye poke. While Buckley has been prone to getting knocked out, all but one of his early losses occurred at 185 lb and he has looked more durable at 170 lb. Ruziboev is also a submission threat, although Buckley has never been submitted in his career. And while Ruziboev has been durable for most of his career, who knows what impact the weight cut will have on his chin. That adds a fair amount of uncertainty to this match up. We’re expecting a low-volume, high-stakes striking battle, where they each try to knock the other out with limited opportunities. If Ruziboev leaves his chin on the scale then Buckley’s chances of knocking him out will go way up, but we also won’t be surprised to see Buckley win a low-volume decision. You know Buckley will be looking to put on a show in front of his home crowd, but he could struggle with the size of Ruziboev and it will be interesting to see how this one plays out. The books have set the FDGTD line at -330, so clearly they think it ends early, and there’s definitely a good chance it does, but we’ll go out on a limb and say Buckley wins by decision.
Our favorite bet here is “Joaquin Buckley ML” at -134.
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DFS Implications:
Buckley has averaged 93 DraftKings points in his eight UFC wins, with six of those ending in late round knockouts. While he averaged a respectable 102 points in his five second round knockouts, he failed to top 80 points in any of his fights that made it past the second round. He scored just 80 points in a third round knockout and only 73 and 80 points respectively in his two decision wins. While he has been looking to wrestle a little more lately, he only averages 4.06 SSL/min and none of his fights have been high-volume. It will also be risky for him to look for takedowns in this matchup, as Ruziboev is a dangerous grappler. That leaves Buckley reliant on landing a knockout in the first two rounds to score well and even a second round knockout may not be enough at his high price tag. Ruziboev is massive at 6’5” and closing the distance on him could be a challenge, but he’s also cutting down from 185 lb to 170 lb on pretty short notice and that could negatively impact his cardio and durability. That adds to Buckley’s upside but this is still a tough matchup and sets up for a lower volume fight. However, if he does land a well timed finish in the first two rounds then he’ll be a great leverage play in tournaments against the highly owned Ruziboev. The odds imply Buckley has a 55% chance to win, a 39% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.
Ruziboev has finished both of his UFC opponents in under three and a half minutes with a pair of efficient knockout wins. He scored 97 DraftKings points in the first of those and 105 points most recently. He was fortunate that they didn’t overturn his last win to a No Contest, as it looked like an eye poke began the finishing sequence. He’s landed 10 straight first round finishes going back to his regional days, so obviously he has a lot of upside. However, he’s got more holes in his game than swiss cheese, most people just don’t know about them because we’ve only seen the edge of the sandwich. He has terrible defensive wrestling and is prone to getting controlled on the mat. He doesn’t land much striking volume. He’s gone 0-5-2 in the last seven decisions he’s been to. He’s got long skinny legs that look prone to getting kicked. And now he’s cutting down from 185 lb to 170 lb on relatively short notice and traveling into enemy territory to face a step up in competition. Ruziboev’s cheap price tag, recent scoring success, and history of landing first round finishes will drive his ownership way up and he looks like the biggest trap on the card, although it’s definitely a two-man race with him and McKinney. Could he finish Buckley? Sure. But he’ll need a first round finish to really score well and he’ll be owned far above his chances of achieving that. At his cheap price tag he could still serve as a value play with a later finish, but on a slate with so many live underdogs there are no guarantees. And considering he hasn’t won a decision since 2017 and will be fighting in front of Buckley’s home crowd, he appears reliant on a finish to win. The odds imply Ruziboev has a 45% chance to win, a 33% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #1
Derrick Lewis
29th UFC Fight (18-10)Lewis will be looking to bounce back from a smothering five-round decision loss against Jailton Almeida, where Lewis stepped in on four weeks’ notice to save the Brazil card after Curtis Blaydes dropped out. Lewis got taken down six times and controlled for 21 of the 25 minutes in a low-volume snoozer that somehow went the distance. Prior to that, Lewis secured his only win in his last five fights in a quick 33 second first round TKO against Marcos Rogerio de Lima. Lewis came out ultra aggressively in the match as he blitzed De Lima right out of the gate with a flying switch knee that dropped De Lima. Lewis then finished him with ground and pound in the one-sided assault. Prior to that, Lewis had been finished in under seven minutes in three straight fights. The most recent of those losses ended in a first round submission against Serghei Spivac, after Lewis got knocked out in just 55 seconds by Sergei Pavlovich and in the second round by Tai Tuivasa. While Lewis’ last two wins both ended in first round knockouts, you have to go all the way back to 2016 to find his third most recent R1 knockout victory.
Now 27-12 as a pro, Lewis has 22 wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and four decision victories. He’s been knocked out seven times, submitted twice, and has three decision defeats. His last four wins all came via KO/TKO in under seven minutes, with two ending in round one and the other two occurring in the opening 90 seconds of round two. While his most recent loss went the distance, his previous nine all ended early, with seven knockouts and two submissions. You have to go all the way back to 2011 to find his second most recent decision loss. While four of his last six fights ended in the first round, he’s still seen the second round in 16 of his last 20 matches. In his 39 pro fights, Lewis has only been knocked out in the first round twice and was also submitted in the first round once.
This will be Lewis’ 15th five-round fight of his career (12th in the UFC), and only once has he been past the fourth round, which was in his last fight. The first three five-round fights of his career came prior to joining the UFC. The first was in 2012 and ended in a No Contest just 48 seconds in for “Illegal Strikes.” His next was later in 2012 and ended in a second round KO win in a Legacy FC Heavyweight Championship fight, immediately followed by a third round KO win in a 2013 defense of that title. His first five-round fight in the UFC was in 2016 and ended in a fourth round KO win, immediately followed by a second round knockout victory in 2017 and then a fourth round KO loss against Mark Hunt in 2017. Lewis’ next five-round fight was for the belt against Daniel Cormier in 2018 and Cormier submitted Lewis in the second round. Lewis was then finished again in another five-round match as he was knocked out by Junior dos Santos in the second round of his next fight. Lewis bounced back with a pair of three-round decision wins, before landing back-to-back second round knockouts in fights scheduled to go five-rounds against Alexey Oleynik and Curtis Blaydes. He then got knocked out in the third round of his next five rounder by Ciryl Gane, before knocking out Daukaus in the first round of his next main event. Then Lewis got submitted by Serghei Spivac in the first round, before losing a five-round decision to Jailton Almeida most recently. To sum that up, Lewis is 7-6 plus a No Contest in his 14 career five-round fights. All but one of those 14 fights ended early, and ignoring the No Contest, all but two of them made it out of the first round. Six ended in round two (4-2), with two ending in round three (1-1), and two more in round four (1-1).
Overall, Lewis is a low-volume power puncher, who averages just 2.43 SSL/min and he hasn’t landed more than 39 significant strikes in any of his last 16 fights. He’ll often look to mix in a takedown or two to keep opponents guessing, but failed to land any takedowns in seven of his last eight fights. He’s pretty agile for his size and will also throw head kicks. His gas tank is limited so we often see him conserve it early on and/or wear down midway through fights. He has just a 53% career takedown defense and he’s been taken down 19 times on 41 attempts in his last 12 fights. Lewis has recently talked about coming into fight week lighter to make the cut down to 265 lb easier and it sounds like he’s in a little bit better shape these days.
Rodrigo Nascimento
7th UFC Fight (4-1, NC)Coming off a decision win over a terrible Don'Tale Mayes, Nascimento has won three straight decisions, with two of those being split. He came out of the gates hot in front of his home crowd in his last fight, but then slowed down considerably in the later rounds and actually finished behind in significant strikes 70-79, while also failing to land any of his three takedown attempts. Prior to that, Nascimento squeaked out a split decision win against a 40-year-old Ilir Latifi, who landed the only two takedowns in the fight and controlled Nascimento for nearly four minutes. One judge thought that was enough for Latifi to get his hand raised, but the other two disagreed. Total strikes were dead even at 76 apiece, while Nascimento finished ahead in significant strikes 68-49. Just before that, Nascimento narrowly defeated Tanner Boser in another split decision, despite finishing behind 36-62 in significant strikes and 91-163 in total strikes. However, he was able to take Boser down three times and control him for eight minutes, which was enough for two of the three judges to score the fight for him. That came after Nascimento landed a second round knockout win over a terrible Alan Baudot in July 2021. However, the win was overturned to a No Contest when Nascimento failed a drug test. It seemed like a technicality as Nascimento tested positive for Ritalin, something he’s been prescribed to take for years. He’s since been granted a therapeutic use exemption for the medicine. Leading up to that No Contest, Nascimento got knocked out by Chris Daukaus in just 45 seconds, after submitting Don'Tale Mayes in the second round of his 2020 UFC debut.
Now 11-1 plus a No Contest as a pro, Nascimento has two official TKO wins, six submissions, and three decision victories. Both of those TKOs came in the first round in his first three pro fights in 2012 and 2014. He landed another TKO in the second round of a 2021 fight, before it was overturned to a No Contest. All six of his submission wins ended in the first two rounds, with four coming in round one and two in round two, although he hasn’t submitted anybody since his 2020 UFC debut. The only loss of his career came in a first round knockout and he’s only seen the third round three in his career, although all of those instances were in his last three outings.
This will be the 1st five-round fight of Nascimento’s career and he’s never been in a fight that lasted longer than 15 minutes.
Overall, Nascimento is a Brazilian Heavyweight grappler, who’s typically looking to get fights to the mat to hunt for submissions. While he’s shown improvements to his striking, he’s still not especially impressive on the feet and we’ve also seen him slow down later in fights. He only averages 4.31 SSL/min while absorbing more at 4.76 SSA/min. He landed a career best 70 significant strikes in his last fight, but we typically don’t see a ton of striking volume in his matches. Between his six UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, he landed 5 of his 15 takedown attempts (33.3% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 2 of their 9 attempts (77.8% defense). Ultimately, we haven’t been at all impressed by what we’ve seen from Nascimento.
Fight Prediction:
Lewis will have a 1” height advantage, but Nascimento will have a 1” reach advantage and is eight years younger than the 39-year-old Lewis.
Nascimento is surprisingly getting a main event opportunity despite his last three fights all going the distance, with two of those decisions being split. He arguably doesn't deserve to be on the main card, let alone in the main event, but you could also easily make the argument that Lewis shouldn’t be getting main event opportunities after going 1-4 in his last five matches. Regardless, here we are, enjoy it St. Louis. We expect Nascimento to be looking to get the fight to the ground and he could find some success in doing so, as Lewis only has a 53% takedown defense. However, we saw Lewis survive for 25 minutes on the mat against Almeida and he’s generally been a tough guy to submit. We’re not even entirely sure that Nascimento is able to get this fight to the ground though and he failed to land a takedown in four of his last five fights. Lewis still packs a punch and Nascimento will need to be very careful when he enters range. He won’t be able to throw punches all willy-nilly the way he did against Mayes in his last fight, at least not if he wants to remain conscious. Nascimento also punched himself out in that last fight and it will be interesting to see how his cardio holds up here if we get past the second round. With that said, this looks like a tailor-made bounce back spot for Lewis as a thank you for saving the Brazil card back in November and we expect him to knock Nascimento out in the first two rounds.
Our favorite bet here is “Derrick Lewis ML” at -150.
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DFS Implications:
Lewis is coming off a loss in one of the toughest matchups he could ask for, but is now getting a massive step down in competition in a good bounce back spot. It came as no surprise that Lewis lost his last fight to Almeida, but it was pretty shocking to see it go the distance. That’s encouraging for Lewis’ ability to remain competitive beyond the second round and avoid getting submitted as he faces another Brazilian grappler. Nascimento has been fighting complete bums and also got violently knocked out by Chris Daukaus back in 2020, so it’s puzzling as to why he’s even getting this opportunity after fighting to three straight close decisions. Regardless, it sets up well for Lewis to land a knockout. However, because he only averages 2.43 SSL/min and rarely lands any takedowns, he’s typically reliant on knocking opponents out in the first round to really score well. He averaged 110 DraftKings points in his six UFC first round finishes, but only 86 points in his finishes to come beyond round one. The only time he hit the century mark since 2015 in a fight that lasted longer than five minutes was in a second round knockout of an aging Alexey Oleynik, where Lewis flukily accrued a knockdown, a takedown, a reversal, and a half a round of control time, in addition to landing more strikes than normal. So while it’s not impossible for him to score well in a second round finish, it takes a lot of help. He followed that up with a second round knockout win that was only good for 83 points and his last third round finish scored just 77 points. Priced as the favorite, a simi;ar score here wouldn’t be enough for him to be useful and it’s probably best to treat him as a R1 KO or bust option with a slight chance he could bail you out in round two. The odds imply Lewis has a 59% chance to win, a 52% chance to land a finish, and a 30% chance it comes in round one.
Nascimento has won three straight lower scoring decisions after his first eight pro wins all ended early. We’d say that he was exposed once he started facing tougher competition, except he hasn’t even started facing tougher competition yet. Two of his four UFC wins came against a terrible Don'Tale Mayes and just before that recent rematch he barely won a pair of split decisions against a washed up 40-year-old Ilir Latifi and a one-dimensional striker in Tanner Boser who has since dropped down to Light Heavyweight and been cut from the UFC. The only time that Nascimento faced an opponent with dangerous striking in the UFC was when he got immediately knocked out in 45 seconds by Chris Daukaus, who has since been knocked out in four straight fights himself and also moved down to Light Heavyweight. Queue up the “What is it ya say ya do here?” Office Space memes for Nascimento, because he came into the UFC as a grappler but hasn’t submitted anybody since his UFC debut when he finished a terrible Don'Tale Mayes in their first encounter. Maybe Nascimento can get Lewis down, but we’d be surprised if he was able to submit Lewis and doesn’t appear to have the power to knock him out either. He also hasn’t shown good enough cardio to even really outlast Lewis and Nascimento faded hard after the first round in his last fight. However, Lewis is 39 years old and just 1-4 in his last five fights, so he hasn’t exactly been trustworthy lately and it’s always possible he quits and hands Nascimento a free finish. That’s definitely not what we’re expecting, but we also can’t completely rule it out. What we’re expecting is for Lewis to knock Nascimento out in the first two rounds, leaving Nascimento with a very low scoring floor. However, we’re giving Lewis too much credit and underestimating Nascimento. And since Nascimento can grapple a little and Lewis has just a 53% takedown defense, there is some upside for Nascimento if he exceeds expectations and is able to get Lewis down and control him. So it makes sense to have some level of exposure, but we’re not overly excited about playing either guy in this main event. The odds imply Nascimento has a 41% chance to win, a 36% chance to land a finish, and a 16% chance it comes in round one.
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