The Sheet

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Fighter Notes:

Fight #11

Maria Oliveira

4th UFC Fight (1-2)

Likely fighting for her job here, Oliveira is now 1-2 in the UFC and coming off a decision loss to Vanessa Demopoulos, who took Oliveira down twice and controlled her for eight minutes. That’s the second time Oliveira has been dominated on the mat in the UFC, after Tabatha Ricci also won a grappling-heavy decision against her. To Oliveira’s credit, she was at least able to to avoid getting submitted by the pair of BJJ black belts. In between those two losses, Oliveira won a close split decision over Gloria de Paula, despite finishing behind 105-96 in significant strikes. While Oliveira is always looking to land knockouts, her last three and four of her last five fights went the distance, with the one exception being a 63 second R1 knockout win just before she joined the UFC. Take that win with a grain of salt as her opponent was fighting for the first and only time as a pro. Oliveira originally tried to crack the UFC roster through DWCS Brazil, but got knocked out by Marina Rodriguez in the first round.

Now 13-6 as a pro, Oliveira has seven wins by KO/TKO, one by submission, and five decisions. She’s been knocked out once, submitted twice, and has three decision losses. Only 3 of her 13 pro wins have come against opponents with winning records, and most of her victories came against pretty dubious competition. Oliveira bounced between Atomweight and Strawweight throughout her career until she went on DWCS and has remained at Strawweight since 2018.

Overall, Oliveira is a one-dimensional striker with a Muay Thai background and is helpless off her back. She comes in ready to brawl, but can also get a little carried away looking for finishes as she blitzes forward early in fights. With that said, that level of aggressiveness makes for exciting fights and can be successful against other low-level opponents. She’s definitely dangerous with her striking and throws a ton of volume, but her grappling still appears to be her biggest weakness. Between her three UFC fights and her DWCS match, she’s landed just two takedowns on four attempts (50% accuracy), while her opponents have gotten her down 10 times on 19 attempts (47.4% defense).

Diana Belbita

5th UFC Fight (1-3)

It’s been 16 months since Belbita last competed, when she lost a really close decision to Gloria de Paula. Prior to that, Belbita notched her only UFC win in a decision over Hannah Goldy. Three of Belbita’s four UFC fights have gone the distance, with the one exception being a 2020 R1 armbar loss to Liana Jojua. While her last win went the distance, her last four before joining the UFC all ended early, with three of those finishes coming in the later rounds.

Now 14-7 as a pro, Belbita has six wins by KO/TKO, four submissions, and four decision wins. All four of her submission wins came by R2 armbar, while five of her six knockout wins occurred in round one, with the other ending in round three. She’s never been knocked out herself, but she’s been submitted four times and has three decision defeats. Three of her submission losses ended in first round armbars, with the other ending in a second round guillotine. Belbita started her career all the way up at Bantamweight, before dropping down to Flyweight, and then all the way to Strawweight for her last two fights. She seemed to carry her power down with her and landed a first round knockdown in her first Strawweight match.

Overall, Belbita is a Romanian kickboxer who’s dangerous on the feet and throws a good amount of striking volume, averaging 6.43 SSL/min and 6.18 SSA/min. However, she’s also essentially helpless off her back. That may not be an issue in this match as she goes against an opponent with similar strengths and weaknesses, but it is something to keep in mind if she finds herself getting taken down. Belbita trains in Canada, so should have the crowd behind her and is likely fighting for her job here as she sits on a 1-3 record.

Fight Prediction:

Belbita will have a 1” height advantage, but Oliveira will have a 1” reach advantage.

Both of these two are one-dimensional strikers who struggle off their backs and have been prone to getting armbarred. While they’re similar heights, Belbita has fought at heavier weight classes, while Oliveira spent time down at Atomweight. That should result in Belbita having the power advantage, while Oliveira may have the speed advantage. While Belbita has been prone to getting submitted, she’s shown a chin and has never been knocked out, while Oliveira hasn’t looked like any sort of submission threat. So if anyone’s getting finished here we would expect it to be Oliveira. With that said, nearly 70% of women’s Strawweight fights have gone the distance over the last year and a half, and the most likely outcome is still for this to make it to the judges. We’re expecting a back and forth striking battle and in addition to having a chance of landing a finish, Belbita also has a better shot at getting her hand raised by the judges, so she’s our pick here. An early knockout or a surprise armbar submission are both possible for her, but it’s more likely she wins a close decision.

Our favorite bet here is Belbita’s ML at -115.

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DFS Implications:

Oliveira scored 82 DraftKings points in her lone UFC win, which ended in a close split decision against a pretty terrible Gloria de Paula. Both of her UFC losses also went the distance, where she scored 36 and 31 DraftKings points. So she’s yet to show any real upside in fights that go the distance and doesn’t offer much in terms of grappling. That leaves her reliant on landing a knockout to score well, and now she’s taking on an opponent who’s never been knocked out. We are expecting a lot of striking volume in this fight, which should provide a decent scoring floor but uncertain ceiling for whoever wins. The line flipped in Belbita’s favor, which should result in Oliveira being low owned which adds to her tournament appeal. There’s a slight chance she could serve as a value play even in an average scoring decision win, but if you’re playing that angle you won’t want to leave much salary on the table in lineups that include her. Her striking-heavy fighting style will generally score better on FanDuel than DraftKings. The odds imply she has a 49% chance to win, a 16% chance to land a finish, and an 8% chance it comes in round one.

Belbita is similar to Oliveira in a lot of ways, but offers a little more finishing upside and is slightly cheaper priced. However, after the line moved in her favor, she’ll also be more popular, which takes some of the shine off of her tournament appeal. In her lone UFC win, which came in a decision over Hannah Goldy and included a knockdown, Belbita scored 89 DraftKings points and 102 points on FanDuel. She doesn’t offer much in terms of grappling, so she’ll generally score better on FanDuel. She averages a healthy 6.43 SSL/min and will occasionally land a takedown, while Oliveira averages 5.35 SSA/min and is terrible off her back. So Belbita could put up a big striking total and if this fight does somehow hit the ground, whoever’s on top will be in a good position to score well as long as they don’t get armbarred. At her cheaper price tag, Belbita has the potential to serve as a value play in a decision win, with a slight chance she can find a finish and really score well. This is probably the best matchup she could ask for in the UFC, with the second best matchup being the one she just lost to Gloria de Paula. So the UFC is doing everything they can to help her out, but it remains to be seen if she can capitalize on that generosity. The odds imply Belbita has a 51% chance to win, a 16% chance to land a finish, and an 8% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #10

David Dvorak

6th UFC Fight (3-2)

Looking to bounce back from a pair of decision losses after winning 16 straight before that, Dvorak lost to a pair of top 10 ranked opponents in Matheus Nicolau and Manel Kape. Both of those opponents nearly finished Dvorak, but neither was able to put him away. After a painfully slow start, Nicolau almost knocked Dvorak out in the second round and then Kape almost submitted Dvorak in round one and almost knocked him out in round two. Dvorak’s shoulder appeared compromised after a really tight kimura attempt from Kape late in round one, which couldn’t have helped things. Prior to the pair of losses, Dvorak landed his first early win in the UFC, which came against an extremely short notice replacement in Juancamilo Ronderos who was making his UFC debut and has now been submitted in the first round of both of his UFC fights. Dvorak’s previous two UFC wins both went the distance.

Now 20-5 as a pro, Dvorak has eight wins by KO/TKO, eight submissions, and four decision victories. The only time he’s ever been finished was in a 2012 R2 TKO and he’s never been submitted. He also has four decision losses, but two of those occurred in his first four pro fights in 2010 and 2011. While four of his five UFC fights have gone the distance, he landed 13 straight finishes just before joining the organization. All 16 of his career finishes have come in the first two rounds, with 10 ending in round one and six ending in round two.

Overall, Dvorak is a very calculated fighter, who is more focused on winning opposed to landing finishes, but has the ability to end fights both on the feet or the mat. He’s more of an opportunistic finisher and if it’s there he’ll go for it but he’s far less likely to sell out to try and end them early. In his five UFC fights, he’s landed two of his seven takedown attempts (28.6% accuracy), while his opponents have gotten him down on 3 of their 16 attempts (81.3% defense). All three of those takedowns allowed occurred in his UFC debut and since then he’s stuffed all five of the attempts against him. Despite four of his five UFC fights going the distance, he’s never landed more than 68 significant strikes in a fight or absorbed more than 58, and he only averages 3.47 SSL/min and 3.21 SSA/min.

Stephen Erceg

1st UFC Fight (0-0)

Stepping into his UFC debut on short notice, Erceg had originally been scheduled to make his UFC debut against Clayton Carpenter back in May but the fight got postponed and now apparently canceled altogether. Erceg has won eight straight fights, with six of his last seven wins coming early. Born and raised in Australia he’s been fighting for the Eternal MMA promotion, where he won the Flyweight belt over a highly suspect Shannon Ross back in 2020. Erceg then took a short notice fight up a weight class in his next match, winning a grappling-heavy decision at 135 lb. He then dropped back down to 125 lb and defended the Flyweight belt against Paul Loga, who he had already knocked out once before, and landed a first round submission. The promotion then opted not to put the belt on the line in Erceg’s most recent fight, and when asked why, Erceg said he thought it was because his opponent wasn’t from Australia and he didn’t think the promotion would want to pay to fly him in for future title fights if he won, which sounds super legit. Erceg also has a decision win over Seung Guk Choi, who lost in the finals of Road to the UFC recently and is back on the show for season two.

Now 9-1 as a pro, Erceg has one win by KO (R1 2019), six submissions, and two decision wins. Four of his submission wins ended in round one, with one in round two and the other in round three. His last four finishes all occurred in the first round. The only loss of his career came in a 2017 decision in his second pro fight. Erceg has competed at 135 lb a few times, but most of his career has been spent at 125lb.

Overall, Erceg is a BJJ black belt and relies heavily on his grappling to win fights. He hasn’t been facing the toughest competition so it’s harder to fully gauge how good or bad he is, but we haven’t been that impressed by him. He doesn’t offer much in the way of striking, hasn’t shown great cardio, and isn’t some world-class grappler. He looks like the type of fighter that will find some success against low-level opponents and one-dimensional strikers but will struggle against more well-rounded and legitimate competition. However, that will be put to the test right off the bat and he’ll get his chance to prove us wrong.

Fight Prediction:

Erceg will have a 3” height advantage, but both fighters share a 68” reach.

While Dvorak has struggled in each of his last two fights, those were against guys at the top of the division and now he’s facing a UFC newcomer who took the fight on short notice and is flying around the world from Australia to get there. While it’s a massive step down in competition for Dvorak, it’s a major step up for Erceg, and it would be pretty shocking to see Erceg pull off the upset. His only real shot appears to be locking up an early submission and Dvorak has never been submitted in his career. We expect Dvorak to come in with a patient game plan and meticulously pick Erceg apart for three rounds as he gets back on track with a decision win.

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

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DFS Implications:

Dvorak’s calculated approach to fighting makes it tougher for him to score well and now he’s the second most expensive fighter on the DraftKings slate. He averaged just 75 DraftKings points in his three UFC wins and even in his first round submission victory, he still somehow scored just 94 points. His last decision win only returned 58 points, after scoring 74 points in another decision just before that. He then failed to top 32 points in either of his recent two decision losses and he’s given us no indication that he can score well without a well timed finish. He failed to land a takedown in four of his five UFC fights and only averages 3.47 SS/min. While he does get a massive step down in competition here and will be facing a debuting fighter who stepped in on short notice, Erceg is a grappler and Dvorak’s easiest path to victory will likely be on the feet. That will leave him reliant on landing his first knockout since 2019 and Erceg has never been finished in his career. Also, while Erceg is filling in on short notice, he had already been preparing to make his debut a few weeks ago, so it’s like he just rolled off the couch. Our expectation here is that Dvorak will be entirely focussed on winning by any means necessary after losing his last two and he won’t care if he gets a finish or puts on an exciting show. And even if he does find a finish there’s still a good chance he gets priced out of winning lineups. The one hope for him will be that Erceg completely gasses out and Dvorak can fill up the stat sheet against a compromised opponent, but that’s an unlikely scenario. The odds imply Dvorak has a 70% chance to win, a 29% chance to land a finish, and a 15% chance it comes in round one.

Erceg finds himself in a tough spot to succeed as he flies around the world to make his UFC debut on short notice against a veteran with far more experience. Erceg looks like a one-dimensional grappler with most of his recent wins coming in the first round and locking up an early hail mary submission will likely be his lone path to victory. Dvorak has never been submitted and we’d be surprised to see that change here and he also has a solid 81% takedown defense. While Dvorak’s recent struggles may have some of the field underestimating him, this is far from an easy matchup for Erceg and we don’t have much interest in playing him. The odds imply he has a 30% chance to win, a 15% chance to land a finish, and an 8% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #9

Blake Bilder

2nd UFC Fight (1-0)

Fresh off a decision win over Shane Young in his recent UFC debut, Bilder came in as a slight underdog but easily cruised to a victory, winning every round of the fight. He was only able to land one of his seven takedown attempts, but outlanded Young in every round, increasing his output as the fight went on. Just before that, he landed a first round submission on DWCS and Bilder has won six straight fights since fighting to a draw in 2018. His last two wins before going on DWCS both came in CFFC Featherweight title fights, which Bilder won with a R3 TKO and a R2 submission. It’s important to point out that the submission win came against an opponent who stepped in on just a day’s notice, yet still dominated Bilder for the first nine and a half minutes of the fight before Bilder threw up a triangle late in round two to steal the win. Following that comeback victory, Bilder landed the only KO/TKO victory of his career, but he once again faced a ton of adversity early on. He got knocked down not once, not twice, but thrice in the first round. However, he rebounded in round two with a knockdown of his own and then landed another knockdown in round three as he finished the fight with strikes.

Now 8-0-1 as a pro, Bilder has one TKO win, four submissions, and three decision victories. While he’s never been defeated, he does have a draw on his record. Three of his submission wins came in round one with the other ending in round two, while his lone TKO victory ended in round three. Four of his last five wins ended early, but three of his last four fights made it out of the first round. He hasn’t faced much in the way of competition and none of his first four opponents had winning records, while his last few haven’t been overly impressive either.

Overall, Bilder has a background in boxing and also recently received his BJJ black belt. He’s a slow starter who’s had to deal with a lot of adversity both inside the Octagon and out, but finds ways to persevere. However, that’s not a very sustainable way to get by as a pro fighter and it’s bound to catch up with him eventually. His striking isn’t overly impressive, and he’s been dropped four times in his last four fights. He does a good job of quickly looking for rear-naked chokes and has no problem taking opponents’ backs on the feet or working off his back, but he still needs to clean some things up in his grappling and wrestling as well. No takedowns were attempted in his DWCS match, while he landed one of his seven attempts in his recent debut (14.3% accuracy), while defending all three of the attempts against him.

Kyle Nelson

7th UFC Fight (1-4-1)

After his first four UFC fights ended early (1-3), Nelson has now fought to two straight boring decisions (0-1-1). He seems content with slowing fights down and making them as boring as possible as he drags out his inevitable UFC release as long as possible. His only win in six UFC appearances came against Marco Polo Reyes, who was attempting to move down to 145 lb for the first and only time in his career after getting knocked out in three of his previous four fights at 155 lb. Prior to that win, Nelson amazingly got submitted by a terrible Matt Sayles, after getting knocked out in the second round of his UFC debut by Diego Ferreira. Following his lone UFC victory, Nelson got knocked out in the third round by Billy Quarantillo and then lost a slow-paced decision to Jai Herbert. He most recently fought to a draw against Doo Ho Choi, who was coming off a 3+ year layoff and had lost three straight. Choi would have won the fight but was deducted a point in the third round for a questionable headbutt, so Nelson was fortunate to walk away with the draw.

Now 13-5-1 as a pro, Nelson has five wins by KO/TKO, four submissions, and four decisions. He’s been knocked out twice, submitted once, and has two decision losses. Seven of his last nine fights ended early (4-3), with all four of those early wins coming in round one and all three of the losses ending in the later rounds. The last time he won a fight that made it past round one was in 2016. He’s fought at both 145 lb and 155 lb in his career, and after making his UFC debut at 155 lb he dropped down to 145 lb for his next three fights before moving back up to 155 lb for his second most recent match. While he said he was planning on staying at 155 lb, the UFC had other ideas and Nelson was moved back down to 145 lb for his last fight, where this next match will also be.

Overall, Nelson has been a tail of two fighters in his UFC career. He started out as a brawler with bad cardio, but changed his approach in his last two matches as he’s started slowing fights down and relying more on his unimpressive wrestling. It didn’t take a genius to figure out his brawling approach was a losing one, as he got finished in three of his first four UFC fights. However, his new less exciting approach is just a slower way for him to lose and his wrestling has been unimpressive at best, although he is a BJJ brown belt for what it’s worth. In his six UFC fights, Nelson has landed 7 of his 30 takedown attempts (23.3% accuracy), while his opponents have gotten him down on 4 of their 11 attempts (63.6 % defense). After only landing two total takedowns in his first five UFC matches, he landed five in his last fight, but didn’t do much with them and got reversed on the mat. While he has okay power, it seems to diminish later on in fights and he only averages 2.85 SSL/min, while absorbing 4.89/min. Sitting at 1-4-1 in the UFC, any fight could, and probably should, be Nelson’s last with the organization and he’s never done anything to impress us. Nelson will be fighting in front of his home Canadian crowd for this match.

Fight Prediction:

Nelson will have a 3” height and reach advantage.

Neither one of these two have been especially impressive, but Bilder will have advantages in mobility, speed, striking volume, grappling, and cardio. All Nelson has going for him is he’s bigger, likely has more power in his punches (at least early on in fights), and will have the home crowd behind him. Barring a hail mary early knockout, we don’t see Nelson winning this fight. The main question we have is whether Bilder submits him or wins a decision. Nelson’s recent two decisions both came against pure strikers, where he was able to slow the fight down with his attempts to wrestle. However, if Nelson looks to wrestle here there’s a really good chance Bilder will win the position on the mat and submit him. Nelson seems to have a pretty low fight IQ and a false sense of his own talents so we’ll say he gets submitted after trying to get the fight to the ground.

Our favorite bet here is “Bilder SUB” at +185.

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DFS Implications:

Bilder isn’t as good as his undefeated record suggests, but he gets a favorable matchup here against a low-level opponent in Kyle Nelson. Bilder has been a slow starter but tends to finish strong in fights and often has to overcome early adversity. That’s far from ideal in DFS where early finishes are rewarded and late finishes often struggle to score well. That’s especially true when you factor in Bilder’s expensive price tag. While Nelson has been finished in three of his four UFC losses, we’ve seen him look to slow the pace down in recent fights, which has resulted in back-to-back low-volume decisions where nobody scored well. He basically said that would be his plan once again at his media day interview, which isn’t encouraging for the scoring potential of this fight. Bilder scored 85 DraftKings points in his recent decision win and will likely need a finish in the first two rounds to score well. His most likely path to finding a finish will be to lock up a submission, and an overly efficient submission win could easily be outscored by the other high-priced options, which is just one more way he fails to crack winning lineups. The odds imply Bilder has a 68% chance to win, a 43% chance to land a finish, and a 23% chance it comes in round one.

Nelson has been a R1 finish or bust option for as long as he’s been in the UFC and hasn’t won a fight that lasted longer than five minutes since 2016. His only UFC win came in a R1 KO against the corpse of Marco Polo Reyes in 2019 and it’s honestly surprising that Nelson is even still on the roster. On top of being a bad fighter, he recent;y decided to become a boring fighter, as he started slowing fights down and looking to wrestle more than land knockouts. He’s not a good wrestler and this change of approach is the equivalent of pulling a band-aid off slowly versus ripping it off. Perhaps he’ll be more motivated to look for a finish in front of his home crowd, but when asked about that at media day his response was that he wouldn’t be. All he has going for him in DFS is that he’ll be low owned because everyone knows he’s terrible, and that we’ve seen Bilder look vulnerable to getting knocked down prior to joining the UFC. The fact that Nelson’s last four wins have all come in the first round offers some theoretical upside, just keep in mind three of those came before he joined the UFC. The odds imply Nelson has a 32% chance to win, a 20% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #8

Aoriqileng

5th UFC Fight (2-2)

Keeping his UFC hopes alive with a close decision win over Jay Perrin, Aoriqileng has now won two straight after dropping a pair of decisions in his first two UFC matches. Prior to squeaking by Perrin, Aoriqileng landed a R1 TKO against a highly suspect Cameron Else, and we’ve yet to see Aoriqileng beat anyone decent in the UFC. He lost a high-volume decision in his April 2021 UFC debut to Jeff Molina and then got outwrestled by Cody Durden to lose another decision after that.

Now 24-9 as a pro, Aoriqileng has eight KO/TKOs, one submission, and 15 decision wins. He’s never been knocked out, but he’s been submitted twice, and has seven decision losses. Aoriqileng had mostly been fighting at 135 lb before joining the UFC, but dropped down to 125 lb for his debut and stayed at the weight class for his second UFC fight. However, after going 0-2 at 125 lb in the UFC he moved back up to 135 lb, where he’s since gone 2-0.

Overall, Aoriqileng is a fearless striker who has no problem walking through the fire to land shots of his own. He’ll also mix in takedowns, but doesn’t look like much of a submission threat on the mat and is primarily looking for ground and pound. In his four UFC fights, he’s landed 5 of his 11 takedown attempts (45.5% accuracy), while his opponents have gotten him down on 8 of their 18 attempts (55.6% defense). He averages 6.07 SSL/min and 7.18 SSA/min. Aoriqileng has been training at Fight Ready since 2022 and is still just 29 years old, so he should be continuing to show improvements.

Aiemann Zahabi

6th UFC Fight (3-2)

Continuing to find ways to make fights boring, Zahabi is 11 months removed from a super low-volume decision win over a previously exciting Ricky Turcios. That fight ended with Zahabi ahead 54-27 in striking, with no takedowns landed from either fighter. Thankfully we don’t have to watch Zahabi fight very often and his second most recent fight was all the way back in February 2021, after taking all of 2020 and all of 2018 off. He made his UFC debut in 2017, but after competing twice that year he’s only fought three times since. Prior to his recent staring contest victory, Zahabi landed his only early win since 2016 with a first round KO win over Drako Rodriguez, who went 0-2 in the UFC before being cut and losing another fight on the regional scene. Leading up to his last two wins, Zahabi lost a 2019 decision to Vince Morales after getting knocked out in the third round by Ricardo Ramos. Zahabi’s one other UFC win came in a 2017 decision in his UFC debut.

Now 9-2 as a pro, Zahabi has five wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and two decision victories. He’s been knocked out once and has one decision defeat. Six of his seven finishes came against a low level of competition in his first six pro fights before he joined the UFC.

Overall, Zahabi is a low-volume counter striker who only averages 3.01 SSL/min and 3.38 SSA/min. He’s never landed more than 54 significant strikes in a fight or absorbed more than 64. And in his five UFC fights, he’s only landed one takedown on six attempts (16.7% accuracy), while his opponents have gotten him down five times on 20 attempts (75% defense). So despite being a BJJ black belt, he doesn’t offer much in terms of offensive grappling either. He’s already 35 years old and only seems half interested in being a professional fighter, but his older brother, Firas Zahabi, is the owner and head coach at Tristar in Canada, which seems to keep Zahabi somewhat invested in the sport.

Fight Prediction:

Zahabi will have a 1” height advantage, but Aoriqileng will have a 1” reach advantage. Aoriqileng is six years younger than the 35-year-old Zahabi.

This is a complete clash of styles. On what side we have Aiemann Zahabi, whose sole purpose in life is to ruin every fight he’s part of as he refuses to engage in fisticuffs. And on the other side we have Aoriqileng, who likes to wear down opponents’ hands with his face and eat as many punches as is humanly possible. Despite that fact, Zahabi is the only one of them that has ever been knocked out and Aoriqileng is basically a zombie. So the chances of this fight ending early are lower, but Aoriqileng should give Zahabi every opportunity to land clean shots if Zahabi will actually let his hands go. In the last three decisions he’s been to, Zahabi has landed 54, 28, and 44 significant strikes, while only landing one takedown in his entire UFC career. Queue up the “What is it you say you do here?” Office Space meme for this guy. With all that said, his style of “fighting” makes his opponents look just as bad as him, which results in close decisions that he’s gone 2-1 in so far in the UFC. He also showed when he knocked out Drako Rodriguez that he has some power when he’s willing to use it, so there’s always a slight chance he can finish Aoriqileng. Based on how hittable Aoriqileng is, we’ll say Zahabi is able to finish ahead in striking and win another gross decision.

Our favorite bet here is Zahabi’s ML at +106.

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DFS Implications:

Aoriqileng is coming off a close decision win that only scored 65 DraftKings points after notching 125 points in a R1 TKO just before that. While he’s shown the ability to put up big striking numbers, this is one of the worst possible matchups he could ask for when it comes to landing volume. Zahabi is the most patient counter striker you’ve ever seen and habitually makes fights boring as he refuses to engage with opponents. That will leave Aoriqileng reliant on landing a finish to score well, and even a later round finish may not be enough, despite his reasonable price tag. On the bright side, after Aoriqileng fails to score well in this fight we should be able to get him at somewhat lower ownership in his next match. The odds imply Aoriqileng has a 51% chance to win, a 20% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

Zahabi has topped 58 DraftKings points just once in five UFC fights, which was in his lone early win with the organization when he knocked out Drako Rodriguez in the first round and scored 104 points. In his two decision victories he scored just 52 and 58 DraftKings points as he’s deathly allergic to human contact and does his best to avoid touching his opponents during fights. Now he’s facing an opponent who’s very hittable, but has never been knocked out. While that creates the potential for Zahabi to land more volume if he’s willing to come out of his shell, it’s not encouraging for his chances of landing the knockout he needs to actually score well. We don’t see Zahabi suddenly landing enough strikes to score well without a finish, even though this would be the perfect matchup to do so and he’ll be fighting in front of his home crowd. Honestly, we wouldn’t be surprised if the home crowd booed him, we would. He’s nothing more than a KO or bust fighter and the only thing he has going for him in DFS is he’ll be low owned. The odds imply Zahabi has a 49% chance to win, an 18% chance to land a finish, and a 9% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #7

Miranda Maverick

7th UFC Fight (4-2)

Coming off a decision win over a suspect Shanna Young who went 1-3 in the UFC before being released, Maverick has won two in a row after dropping two straight just before that. Maverick took Young down five times on eight attempts with nine minutes of control time, but was unable to find a finish in the teed up matchup. That was the second straight one-dimensional striker that the UFC gave Maverick to build her back up after she lost decisions to Maycee Barber and Erin Blanchfield. The first was Sabina Mazo, who Maverick submitted in the second round, and just like Young, Mazo was cut following the loss. Leading up to the pair of grappling-heavy wins, Maverick got dominated on the mat by Erin Blanchfield for three rounds, which was the first time we’ve seen someone manhandle Maverick like that for an entire fight. Blanchfield took Maverick down seven times on eight attempts with 12 minutes of control time. Leading up to that loss, Maverick lost a close/questionable decision to Maycee Barber, which most people scored for Maverick.

Now 11-4 as a pro, Maverick has one TKO victory, six submissions, and four decision wins. Her lone TKO win came from a doctor stoppage following the first round in her 2020 UFC debut. After the first four submission wins of her career ended in the first round her last two occurred in the later rounds. She’s never been finished, with all four of her losses going the distance and four of her last five fights have ended with the judges. Maverick started her pro career at 115 lb before moving up to 125 lb in her third pro fight.

Overall, Maverick is somewhat well rounded, but relies more on her grappling and she wrestled in high-school and is a BJJ brown belt. She’s made some improvements to her striking in recent years and is still just 25 years old so should be continuing to grow as a fighter. However, her striking still isn’t exceptional, and whenever she goes against a pure striker you should be looking for her to rely heavily on her grappling, as we saw in her last two fights. In her six UFC fights, she’s landed 13 of her 21 takedowns attempts (61.9% accuracy), while getting taken down 10 times on 18 opponent attempts (44.4% defense). She’s never landed more than 71 significant strikes in a fight or absorbed more than 46 and only averages 3.74 SSL/min and 2.53 SSA/min.

Jasmine Jasudavicius

4th UFC Fight (2-1)

Jasudavicius recently won a decision over a debuting one-dimensional striker in Gabriella Fernandes and has now gone the distance in six straight fights (4-2). Jasudavicius was able to take Fernandes down four times on eight attempts and control her for 11 and a half minutes in the lopsided decision win. Prior to that, Jasudavicius faced another debuting fighter when she lost a decision to a bright young prospect in Natalia Silva. Jasudavicius failed to land any of her six takedowns in the fight and got dominated from start to finish as Silva outlanded her 96-31 in significant strikes and 120-40 in total strikes. Silva was also able to take Jasudavicius down twice as she won every round and completely outclassed Jasudavicius. Looking back one fight further, Jasudavicius won a decision in her UFC debut over Kay Hansen, who was fighting up at 125 lb for the first and only time in the UFC and was in the midst of a three fight before being cut by the UFC. Jasudavicius made her way into the UFC with a strong wrestling performance on DWCS as she landed four takedowns on seven attempts with over eight minutes of control time in a decision win.

Now 8-2 as a pro, Jasudavicius has two wins by R1 TKO, one by submission, and four decisions. Both of her losses went the distance, with one of those coming in a questionable split decision against a one dimensional striker in Elise Reed in a 2020 four-round CFFC Strawweight Championship fight before they both joined the UFC. Jasudavicius only turned pro in 2019 and was very late coming into MMA as she’s already 34 years old. Her loss to Reed came at 115 lb, while almost all of her other fights have been at 125 lb, with the one exception being a 2020 122 lb Catchweight match. Her only career submission win was in her 2019 pro debut against an opponent who had never fought professionally before, while her two TKO wins both came by knees in the first round of her third and fourth pro fights.

Overall, Jasudavicius relies almost entirely on her wrestling to grind out decision wins and is very one-dimensional. She generally looks for ground and pound on the mat, opposed to really hunting for submissions, although she’s never actually finished anyone with ground strikes. While she didn’t get into MMA until later on in her life, she does have a freestyle wrestling background and is a BJJ purple belt. Between her three UFC fights and her DWCS appearance, Jasudavicius has landed 10 of her 24 takedown attempts (41.7% accuracy), while her opponents have gotten her down on 3 of their 11 attempts (72.7% defense). She only averages 2.92 SSL/min and 3.85 SSA/min and she’s yet to show she can hang against legitimate competition. She’ll get to fight in front of her home Canadian crowd in this next matchup so look for her to come in amped up.

Fight Prediction:

Jasudavicius will have a 4” height advantage and 3” reach advantage. Maverick is nine years younger than the 34-year-old Jasudavicius.

Both of these two come from wrestling backgrounds, but Maverick has shown a more well-rounded skill set and should have the advantage on the feet. Jasudavicius has yet to show any sort of striking game and will need to rely on her size to win the wrestling exchanges in hopes of squeaking out a decision win in front of her home crowd. We did see Maverick get dominated on the mat by Erin Blanchfield, but she’s one of the best fighters in the division and has been dominating everybody. While Jasudavicius is nowhere close to Blanchfield’s level, that at least presents a sliver of hope for Jasudavicius to find success. If Jasudavicius can take Maverick down and convincingly control her for one round and make another one close, that could be enough to steal a split decision with the home crowd behind her. That’s the one way we see her pulling off the upset, but it’s more likely that Maverick’s more well rounded game prevails. We’d be pretty surprised if this fight ended early and while we could definitely see it being much closer than the odds suggest, we still like Maverick to win a decision.

Our favorite bet here is “Fight Ends in Split Decision” at +350.

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DFS Implications:

Maverick is averaging an impressive 110 DraftKings points in her four UFC wins and put up a massive 119 point score in her most recent decision victory, after scoring 99 points in her previous decision win. Both of her finishes were good for exactly 110 points, so she’s shown both a solid floor and ceiling in all of her wins. However, after getting two very favorable matchups against one-dimensional strikers, now she’s facing a fellow wrestler and it will be much harder for Maverick to completely dominate this fight on the ground. Jasudavicius has also never been finished in her career and Maverick hasn’t been a major finishing threat anyways. That will make it tougher for Maverick to return value at her expensive price tag, but she has shown the ability to score well in the past even in decisions. We were really high on Maverick in each of her last two fights, but we’re far less excited about playing her. With that said, one way we could see her still scoring well in a decision on DraftKings is if she gets multiple reversals in a back and forth wrestling match, while she’ll need a finish to be useful on FanDuel. The odds imply she has a 72% chance to win, a 22% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

Jasudavicius is a one-dimensional wrestler who has fought to six straight decisions and is typically a DraftKings specific play who needs to completely dominate fights on the mat to score well. She did just that in her last outing, where she landed four takedowns with 11 and a half minutes of control time against a one-dimensional striker making her UFC debut. That allowed Jasudavicius to score a career best 105 DraftKings points, but just 58 points on FanDuel. Now Jasudavicius will step into a much more difficult matchup as she faces a fellow wrestler and it would be far more surprising to see her find the same level of grappling dominance. Working in her favor, she will have the home crowd behind her and we did see Erin Blanchfield dominate Maverick on the mat. However, Jasudavicius is lightyears behind Blanchfield in all aspects of MMA. The only way we see Jasudavicius being useful in DFS is as a value play at her cheap price tag, which will require some help from the other dogs on the slate. The odds imply she has a 28% chance to win, a 7% chance to land a finish, and a 3% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #6

Nassourdine Imavov

7th UFC Fight (4-2)

Imavov will be looking to bounce back from a five-round decision loss to Sean Strickland, who stepped in on short notice after Kelvin Gastelum dropped out. Strickland notably weighed 10 lb heavier for the 205 lb Catchweight match and outlanded Imavov 182-123 in significant strikes in what played out as basically a pure striking battle with Imavov failing to land his only takedown attempt and Strikcland taking Imavov down once on his only attempt. Prior to that, Imavov won a decision over Joaquin Buckley after landing a pair of second round TKOs against Edmen Shahbazyan and Ian Heinisch. Imavov’s only other loss with the organization came in a majority decision against Phil Hawes, where Imavov got taken down four times and controlled for 11 minutes. All six of Imavov’s UFC fights have seen the second round, with four going the distance.

Now 12-4 as a pro, Imavov has five wins by KO/TKO, four submissions, and three decision victories. He’s never been knocked out, with his only early loss coming in a R1 guillotine choke in his 2016 pro debut. His other three losses all ended in decisions. Imavov notably fought most of his career at 170 lb before moving up to 185 lb when he joined the UFC. All nine of his early wins ended in the first two rounds, with the first seven finishes of his career coming in round one and the last two ending in round two.

Overall, Imavov is a powerful striker and a decent grappler. He trains out of the MMA Factory in Paris with Ciryl Gane and seems to be constantly improving, which makes sense considering he’s still just 27 years old. He has a solid left jab and good size for the Middleweight division, which makes it tricky to close the distance on him. In his six UFC fights, he’s been taken down 6 times on 22 opponent attempts (72.7% defense), while landing 4 of his own 18 attempts (22.2% accuracy). Imavov likes to defend takedowns with guillotine attempts, although we haven’t seen him submit anybody since 2019. Imavov said he went into the Strickland fight with an ankle injury that he had surgery on following the match.

Chris Curtis

7th UFC Fight (4-2)

Coming off his second decision loss in his last three fights, Curtis lost a close, somewhat controversial decision to Kelvin Gastelum where a second round clash of heads helped Gastelum to secure the win. Prior to that, Curtis landed a second round knockout against Joaquin Buckley, after losing a decision to Jack Hermansson. Curtis won eight straight fights leading up to that loss and he loves to stay busy. After landing a first round knockout against Phil Hawes in his UFC debut in November 2021, Curtis hopped right back inside the Octagon a month later and knocked out Brendan Allen. He then won the decision over Rodolfo Vieira in June 2022, a month before his loss to Hermansson. He originally tried to crack the UFC roster through DWCS in 2018, but despite landing a third round KO he was not awarded a contract. Curtis is generally a slow starter and has lost the first round in four straight fights, but tends to finish strong.

Now 30-10 as a pro, the 35-year-old Curtis has 17 wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and 12 decisions. Eight of his last 10 wins have come by knockout, with six of those occurring in the later rounds. He’s only been knocked out once himself (R2 2019), submitted once (R3 2011), and has eight decision losses. In fairness to him, that lone KO loss came in a night where he fought twice in the PFL playoffs. While he’s landed two first round knockouts in his last seven fights, those are his only two fights of his last 23 to end in round one, and he’s generally putting guys away in the later rounds. While he’s been fighting exclusively at 185 lb in the UFC, where this next fight will also be, Curtis has bounced around weight classes in the past and spent much of his career down at 170 lb. He’s also fought as high as 205 lb. His last fight before joining the UFC was at 170 lb but he seems content with staying at 185 lb, although another loss here could cause him to consider a move back down to 170 lb.

Overall, Curtis is primarily a boxer and relies on his hands to win fights. While he has yet to attempt a takedown in the UFC and doesn’t offer much of anything in terms of offensive grappling, his takedown defense has been perfect, stuffing all 35 of the attempts against him so far in six UFC fights. He does tend to get hit a lot, as he averages 5.59 SSL/min and 6.22 SSA/min, but he’s built like a tank and has looked extremely durable. He’s been in several five round fights in the past and conditioning isn’t really a concern for him, which when combined with cutting less weight at 185 lb has allowed him to jump into so many short notice matchups. However, Curtis has a baby on the way which could slow down the number of fights he can take for the rest of the year. Curtis’ primary training partner, Sean Strickland, just fought Imavov for 25 minutes and Curtis was actually in the corner for that fight, which can’t hurt him here as he literally had a front row seat for that match, in addition to helping Strickland prepare for it and getting to discuss the match after the fact.

Fight Prediction:

Imavov will have a 5” height advantage, but both fighters share a 75” reach. Imavov is eight years younger than the 35-year-old Curtis.

Curtis never attempts any takedowns, nor does he ever allow any, which results in all of his fights being pure striking battles. He’s also extremely durable, which has resulted in his last 11 fights all ending in either knockout wins (7) or decisions (2-2). Nine of his last 11 knockouts have come in the later rounds, with three in round two, four in round three, and two in round four. While Curtis starts slower but finishes strong, Imavov is a fast starter who starts to tire some later in fights and has never landed a finish beyond the second round. We expect Imavov to win the first round and if you’re inclined to bet Curtis’ moneyline you’d probably be better off waiting to bet his live line after round one. It will be interesting to see how Curtis deals with the size of Imavov, which gave an identically sized Joaquin Buckley trouble finding his range against Imavov. If Imavov can successfully control the distance throughout the match, he should be able to outland his way to a decision win. However, if Curtis can close the distance and force Imavov into a phonebooth brawl then we like Curtis’ chances of pulling off the upset, with a good chance he hands Imavov the first knockout loss of his career late in the fight. While a close decision is the most likely outcome, we’re actually going out on a limb here and say Curtis knocks Imavov out in round three.

Our favorite bet here is “​​Chris Curtis R2 or R3 KO” at +800.

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DFS Implications:

Imavov has yet to score more than 98 DraftKings points in any of his six UFC fights, despite two of those ending in second round TKO victories. All nine of his career finishes occurred in the opening two rounds and we’ve seen him tire later in fights. He only scored 71 and 74 DraftKings points in his two UFC decision wins and looks reliant on landing a finish to score well. Curtis has been insanely durable, with just one knockout loss in 40 pro fights and also has the greatest takedown defense in UFC history, as he’s defended all 35 of the takedowns attempted on him. That makes this a really tough spot for Imavov to put up a usable score and he looks like nothing more than an early KO or bust option in a terrible matchup. The odds imply he has a 59% chance to win, a 22% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

Curtis has landed knockouts in three of his four UFC wins and eight of his last 10 victories. Those finishes were good for 95, 106, and 109 DraftKings points, while he scored 78 points in his lone UFC decision win. Working against him here, he’s taking on a much taller opponent who’s never been knocked out. However, Curtis couldn’t ask for better preparation for this fight as he just cornered Sean Strickland in his five-round decision win over Imavov. In addition to sitting cageside and helping Strickland to prepare for the match, Curtis gets to immediately use everything Strickland and their team learned during the fight. This is a rare situation similar to when Umar Nurmagomedov and Tagir Ulanbekov fought Nate Maness in back-to-back fights and Umar won a decision and then Tagir knocked him out immediately after. Imavov’s fight against Strickland was only five months ago and Imavov had ankle surgery afterwards, so it’s not like he’s had much time to make any major changes. And regardless of the impact that the whole Strickland narrative will have here, Curtis is always a knockout threat who tends to overcome early adversity and land late finishes. Because Imavov has never been knocked out and Curtis has lost two of his last three fights, we should see Curtis’ ownership remain under control, which adds to his tournament appeal. While he needs a finish to really score well, at his cheaper price tag it’s not impossible for him to serve as a value play in a high-volume decision win, but he would need most of the other dogs to lose. The odds imply he has a 41% chance to win, a 20% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #5

Marc-Andre Barriault

11th UFC Fight (4-5, NC)

Fresh off a high-volume second round TKO win over Julian Marquez, Barriault kept up a pace that Marquez couldn’t maintain and midway through round two Marquez just shelled up along the cage until the ref finally stopped the fight following a plethora of punches. Barriault finished ahead 109-82 in significant strikes in a fight that lasted just over nine minutes. Prior to that, Barriault was the one who got outpaced when he suffered the only submission loss of his career in the third round against Anthony Hernandez. Barriault’s last four fights have now all ended early and he’s only been to one decision in his last seven matches, after his first three UFC matches all made it to the judges, with Barriault losing all three of those. Just before getting submitted for the first time in his career, he landed his first submission win in a round one guillotine against Jordan Wright, after getting knocked out in round one by Chidi Njokuani. Barriault’s only trip to the judges since 2019 came in a 2021 decision win over Dalcha Lungiambula just before that KO loss. Barriault notched his first official UFC finish just before that win over Lungiambula, as he landed a late third round TKO against an exhausted Abu Azaitar. Barriault also finished his previous opponent in a second round knockout of Oskar Piechota, but the results were overturned to a No Contest when Barriault failed a drug test.

Now 15-6 as a pro, Barriault has 10 wins by KO/TKO, one by submission, and four decisions. Four of his six losses have gone the distance, with the other two ending in a 2022 R1 KO and a 2022 R3 submission. While 6 of his 10 UFC fights have ended early, he’s seen the second round in 8 of his 10 UFC fights and the third round in six of those. If we include his TKO that was later overturned to a No Contest, he has two R2 TKO wins and another in R3 as he tends to wear on his opponents as fights go on.

Overall, Barriault typically relies on his striking volume and cardio to win fights and doesn’t have a ton of power in his shots or offer much in the way of grappling. He enjoys working out of the clinch and averages 5.90 SSL/min and 5.18 SSA/min. In his 10 UFC fights, he has only landed two of his eight takedown attempts (25% accuracy) and he’s gone six straight fights without landing a takedown and didn’t even attempt any in his last five matches. On the other side of things, his opponents have gotten him down on 20 of their 53 attempts (62.3% defense), with five of his opponents getting him down multiple times.

Eryk Anders

16th UFC Fight (7-7, NC)

Coming off his first early win since 2019, Anders landed a second round TKO over Kyle Daukaus, who got knocked out in his last two UFC fights before being released. Anders came out pretty aggressively in that fight and had Daukaus hurt at multiple points and never stopped pouring it on him until things were eventually stopped midway through the second round. Prior to that win, Anders lost a close split decision to Jun Yong Park, after getting submitted in the first round by Andre Muniz. Anders shot for a ridiculous 24 takedown attempts against Park, but was only able to land three of those. Anders’ second most recent win was a 2021 decision over Darren Stewart up at 205 lb. Anders nearly finished Stewart in a 185 lb fight just before that, but idiotically threw an illegal knee after he had Stewart nearly out in the first round and the fight was ruled a No Contest. Anders is just 4-6 plus the No Contest in his last 11 fights and the last time he strung two wins together was in 2019 when he knocked out an absolutely terrible Vinicius Moreira and then won a split decision over Gerald Meerschaert.

Now 15-7 as a pro, Anders has nine wins by KO/TKO, one by submission, and five decisions. He has one TKO loss (R3 2018), has been submitted once (R1 2021), and has five decision defeats. Four of the 10 decisions he’s been to have been split (1-3). Anders has bounced between 185 lb and 205 lb throughout his career, with four of his 15 UFC fights taking place at 205 lb (2-2), including his lone TKO loss, and his other 11 UFC fights occurring at 185 lb (5-5, NC). Anders has gone 1-3 plus a No Contest in his last five fights at 185 lb.

Overall, Anders is a fairly well rounded UFC veteran who’s a BJJ brown belt, but not much of a submission threat. He had been training out of Fight Ready, but just switched to the MMA Lab, due to what he described as politics that had nothing to do with him. Our guess is that it’s the same reason Vanessa Demopoulos left, due to a conflict with the gym and her agent, but we never actually got a full explanation from Anders at media day. Regardless, the part that actually matters is that he’s at a new gym. Anders has been an inconsistent performer who will look great in one match and average in the next, so it’s always hard to know what we can expect from him. He’s often involved in slower paced affairs and has never landed more than 79 significant strikes in a UFC fight, averaging just 3.39 SSL/min in his UFC career. In his 15 UFC fights, he’s landed 19 of his 72 takedown attempts (26.4% accuracy), while his opponents have gotten him down on just 9 of their 44 attempts (79.5% defense). Despite attempting 44 takedowns in his last 10 fights, he failed to land any in seven of those matches. Anders is a former Alabama linebacker who had stints in the NFL, CFL and AFL and is massive at 185 lb, which generally makes for tough weight cuts. He had a November 2020 fight canceled due to weight cutting issues, so it will be important to monitor him closely on the scale Friday. He also announced that he plans on fighting exactly five more times and then retiring, which is the most notice anyone has given on a retirement in a while. He’s gone 8-1 following his previous nine finishes, so it will be interesting to see if he can keep his momentum going here.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 6’1” but Anders will have a 1” reach advantage. Barriault is three years younger than the 36-year-old Anders.

We expect Barriault to try and put a pace on Anders to test his gas tank, but Anders is the superior grappler and could look to slow things down by taking Barriault down. With that said, Anders’ takedown defense has been pretty poor and he’s not much of a submission threat on the ground, so slowing things down is likely all he can hope for. And if he does look to grapple, that also has the potential to further wear on his cardio, which could play into Barriault’s favor in the later rounds. Neither guy offers much in the way of one punch knockout power, so we do expect this fight to make it to the later rounds, which should favor Barriault at that point in the fight. He also should have the home crowd behind him, despite the fact that Anders had a stint with the CFL back in the day. If Barriault can really wear Anders down then we could see another late round TKO stoppage victory, but otherwise we would expect this to end in a close decision that could go either way. Barriault is just 1-3 with the judges since joining the UFC, but could get some home cooking. On the flipside, Anders is only 3-5 in UFC decisions with four of those being split, but his grappling could help his case. With each of them losing more often than they win with the judges, it’s impossible to have much confidence in who will get their hand raised if this hits the scorecards. However, because we like Barriault’s chances more if it ends early and the fight is also on his home turf, we’ll pick him to win with either a late round TKO or in a tightly contested decision, but this looks like a tight one.

Our favorite bet here is “Barriault R2 or R3 KO” at +700.

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DFS Implications:

Barriault took a while to get going in his UFC career and has still been largely inconsistent, but has topped 100 DraftKings points in three of his four wins, putting up slate breaking scores of 120 and 136 in two of those. All three of his usable scores have come in finishes, while his lone UFC decision victory only returned 80 DraftKings points. While he doesn’t offer much in terms of grappling or one-punch power, he does a good job of weaponizing his cardio and putting a pace on his opponents that tends to result in them gassing out late in fights. That’s great for DFS, as it allows him to rack up strikes late in fights when his opponents tire out. However, that’s also generally his only path to scoring well, and the only other time he put up a usable score was in a first round finish of Jordan Wright, which barely counts since it was Jordan Wright. Barriault has struggled with getting taken down throughout his UFC career, with five of his 10 opponents taking him down multiple times. That’s always somewhat concerning for his outlook and Anders notably shot for an insane 24 takedowns in his second most recent fight, although only landed three of those. For Barriault to score well, he’ll need to drain Anders’ cardio and then land another late round TKO. Anders has just one KO/TKO on his record, but is huge for the division and cuts a lot of weight to make 185 lb. So we could definitely see Barriault wearing him out and finding the finish he needs to score well, but the most likely outcome is still for this to end in a close decision where the winner fails to put up a big score. The odds imply Barriault has a 55% chance to win, a 23% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

Anders has been a volatile DFS contributor who struggles with consistency. One fight he’ll look unstoppable and the next he’ll look unstartable. The best example of that is when he fought Darren Stewart in back-to-back fights. Anders came out like a man possessed in the first matchup and was on the brink of finishing Stewart and scoring 130+ DraftKings points when he threw an illegal knee late in the first round that resulted in a No Contest. Then they ran it back and Anders scored just 81 points in a lackluster low-volume decision. Further demonstrating his inconsistency, Anders has 15 UFC fights under his belt but only twice has he won two in a row and only once in his last 13 matches. So we truly never know what to expect from him, but he has been consistently inconsistent. To his credit, he’s mostly shown a solid scoring floor, with six of his seven UFC wins scoring at least 81 points. Considering Barriault will be looking to push the pace and Anders is priced as the underdog, if Anders does win he should have a shot to serve as a value play even in a decision win, along with a legit ceiling if he can find a finish. Just keep in mind, he will be going into enemy territory here which could play a factor if this ends in a close decision, which realistically is the most likely outcome. The odds imply he has a 45% chance to win, a 21% chance to land a finish, and an 11% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #4

Dan Ige

14th UFC Fight (8-5)

Ige finally snapped a three fight losing streak with a second round knockout win over Damon Jackon in his last fight. Despite Jackson being a grappler and Ige getting dominated on the mat in two of his previous three fights, Jackson idiotically only attempted a single failed takedown in the match and then unsurprisingly got knocked out in the second round following one of the worst game plans in recent memory. Prior to that win, Ige got dominated on the mat by Movsar Evloev, who took Ige down nine times on 16 attempts with nearly seven minutes of control time. Just before that, Ige lost decisions to Josh Emmett and The Korean Zombie, after knocking out Gavin Tucker in just 22 seconds, following a five-round decision loss to Calvin Kattar. So while Ige is just 2-4 in his last six fights, all of those losses came against really tough opponents. After losing a decision to Julio Arce in his 2018 UFC debut, Ige rattled off six straight wins, with four of those going the distance and the other two ending in first round finishes. Seven of Ige’s last nine fights have gone to the judges (3-4), with the other two ending in knockout victories.

Now 16-6 as a pro, Ige has five wins by KO/TKO, five submissions, and six decisions. All six of his losses have gone the distance and he’s never been finished. Six of Ige’s 10 early wins occurred in the first round and three of his four UFC finishes have occurred in the opening 77 seconds of fights, with two ending in 50 seconds or less. His only UFC finish to come in the later rounds was his recent R2 knockout victory, but he did have three late round submission wins prior to joining the UFC.

Overall, Ige is a durable fighter who’s shown the ability to recover from early adversity. Despite being a BJJ black belt and Judo brown belt, as well as a former college wrestler, he’s struggled with both his takedown accuracy and defense. Between his 13 UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, he’s landed just 15 of his 56 takedown attempts (26.8% accuracy), while his opponents have gotten him down on 21 of their 44 attempts (52.3% defense). Ige has only landed two takedowns on 18 attempts in his last six fights and the only time Ige has won a UFC fight without landing at least one takedown was when he knocked out Tucker 22 seconds into the first round. Ige also only averages 3.80 SSL/min and 3.58 SSA/min and has never landed more than 79 significant strikes in a three-round UFC fight or absorbed more than 80.

Nate Landwehr

7th UFC Fight (4-2)

Fresh off a second round submission win over Austin Lingo, who took the fight on short notice, Landwehr has now won three straight with the only two submission wins of his career both coming over that stretch. In Landwehr’s last fight, Lingo actually won a close first round on all three scorecards but then faded in round two and Landwehr took over and choked him out late in the round. Prior to that, Landwehr showed he cared more about putting on a show than landing a finish and he easily should have finished an exhausted David Onama, but was too busy pandering to the crowd. Onama nearly knocked Landwehr out in the first round, but Landwehr was able to survive and take over in the later rounds as Onama’s cardio went off a cliff. Looking back one fight further, Landwehr outlasted another opponent in Ludovit Klein who gassed out in the back half of the fight. Landwehr originally made his UFC debut in January 2020 and got knocked out in the first round by a suspect Herbert Burns. Then he bounced back with a decision win in a high-volume bloody war against Darren Elkins before getting knocked out again in the first round, this time by Julian Erosa, leading up to his current winning streak.

Now 17-4 as a pro, Landwehr has eight wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and seven decision victories. He’s been knocked out twice (R1 2020 & R1 2021), submitted once (R2 2015), and has one decision loss (2013). He’s won the last seven decisions he’s been to, despite three of those being split/majority. Landwehr’s last five and 8 of his 10 career finishes have come in the later rounds, with six in round two and two in round three. He hasn’t finished anybody in round one since 2016.

Overall, Landwehr is a brawling striker who averages 6.47 SSL/min and 5.51 SSA/min. However, he did recently start adding some grappling to his game after he moved down to MMA Masters in 2021. After failing to attempt a takedown in his first three UFC matches, he’s landed five of his eight attempts in his last three fights (62.5% accuracy). On the other side of things, he’s only been taken down on 3 of his 22 opponent attempts and has a solid 86.4% takedown defense. After starting his career on the Tennessee regional scene, Landwehr went over to Russia in 2017 and fought for M-1 Global, where he won the Featherweight belt and then defended it twice before making his UFC debut. This will be Landwehr’s third straight fight in front of a big crowd, and he’s definitely the type of fighter that feeds off the energy of the audience, sometimes a little too much. However, after failing to push for a finish in his second most recent fight, he flipped the switch in his last match and actually focused entirely on fighting (opposed to the crowd) efficiently locked up a second round submission once. We’ll see here if that newfound composure is a permanent change or not here. Landwehr just turned 35 on Wednesday, recently got his BJJ purple belt, and has a baby on the way, so maybe he’s becoming a little more disciplined.

Fight Prediction:

Landwehr will have a 2” height advantage and 1” reach advantage, while Ige is four years younger than the 35-year-old Landwehr.

This is a major step up in competition for Landwehr, while the UFC is finally giving Ige more winnable fights after putting him through a gauntlet of killers in recent years. Ige has been a boom or bust fighter throughout his career, with the majority of his fights ending in quick finishes or close decisions. Working in his favor, Landwehr has been finished in the first round in three of his four career losses, but has only lost one of the eight decisions he’s been to. As a fan favorite, you would think the crowd will benefit Landwehr more than Ige with the judges, but that remains to be seen. Landwehr is the more active striker and also has the better takedown defense, which will leave Ige more reliant on his power advantage to win the fight. Landwehr is pretty hittable, so there’s a good shot Ige knocks him out or even submits him, but if that doesn’t happen we expect this to end in a close, potentially split, decision that could go either way. While we’d rather be holding a Landwehr ticket if this fight hits the scorecards, we’re picking Ige to win based on his finishing potential.

Our favorite bet here is “Landwehr DEC” at +460.

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DFS Implications:

Ige is a volatile DFS producer who has three UFC finishes in under 77 seconds, but has gone the distance in seven of his last nine fights, losing the last four of those decisions. He’s shown a massive ceiling with the help of the Quick Win Bonus, but scored just 75 and 58 DraftKings points in his last two decision wins. In fairness to him, he had been facing a slew of really tough competition to the point that we had been calling for him to fire his agent (spoiler: he is his agent). The UFC is finally putting him in winnable fights and he’s now coming off a second round knockout that was good for 100 DraftKings points. That’s the only time he’s landed a finish beyond the first round in the UFC, but at least shows he’s capable of finishing opponents later in fights. Up until that point he had been nothing more than a R1 KO or bust option. Although when you factor in his low striking volume, poor takedown accuracy, and high price tag, in addition to Landwehr’s elite takedown defense, it’s probably still fair to call Ige a R1 KO or bust play. Working in his favor, Landwehr has been finished in the first round in three of his four career losses and tends to be very hittable. That should give Ige a solid shot at landing the first round knockout that he needs to score well here, but he’s far less likely to return value if that doesn’t happen. The odds imply he has a 68% chance to win, a 45% chance to land a finish, and a 23% chance it comes in round one.

Landwehr failed to top 92 DraftKings points in any of his first four UFC fights, but has now scored 104 and 102 points in his last two matches. He added some grappling to his game after moving down to MMA Masters in 2021, and is suddenly a submission threat on the mat. Ige has struggled with his takedown defense, so that newfound grappling ability could prove to be useful here. However, Ige is also a BJJ black belt and has never been finished and it would be really surprising to see Landwehr put him away. That leaves Landwehr dependent on filling up the stat sheet in a decision win to score well, although he doesn’t need to put up a massive score to be useful at his cheap price tag. Following three straight wins where he scored 92, 104, and 102 DraftKings points, we expect Landwehr to be a popular underdog on this card in DFS, which definitely lowers his tournament appeal as he steps into an already tougher matchup. Ige is a tough guy to land a ton of striking volume against and for Landwehr to score well he’ll likely need to really rely on his grappling. That’s not really his style, as he likes to put on a show, which leads us to believe he doesn’t have much of a ceiling here and he’ll be overowned relative to his chances of scoring well. The odds imply he has a 32% chance to win, a 15% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #3

Mike Malott

3rd UFC Fight (2-0)

Fresh off his fifth straight first round finish, Malott submitted Yohan Lainesse late in the first round this past February and hasn't lost a fight since 2014. That recent win started slowly with only 10 significant strikes landed in the match (Malott ahead 9-1), before Malott took the fight to the mat and locked up an arm-triangle choke. Ten months prior to that, Malott landed a violent first round knockout in his UFC debut against Mickey Gall. Malott got taken down once in the fight, but immediately returned to his feet before face planting Gall with a left hook later in the round. Looking back one fight further, Malott landed a 39 second first round submission win on DWCS in October 2021. Malott has only been past the first round once in his career, which ended in a 2015 draw with Bellator.

Now 9-1-1 as a pro, Malott has four wins by KO/TKO and five by submission, with all nine of those finishes ending in the first round. His lone career loss also came in the first round, in a 2014 knockout against UFC fighter Hakeem Dawodu. Malot turned pro in 2011 when he was just 19 years old and started out at 145 lb. He went back and forth between 145 lb and 155 lb early on in his career, but as he continued to grow into his frame making that weight became more and more of a challenge and following his 2015 draw he never tried to make 145 lb again. He took a year and a half off after that fight before returning at 155 lb and landing a 36 second knockout. He then took nearly two years off and focussed more on his grappling, where he earned a BJJ black belt and had ADCC aspirations. He said his passion to fight in MMA just wasn’t there anymore at the time, but he took a position as a striking coach at Team Alpha Male so he was still involved in the sport and cornered several fighters. He also said during his time away that his passion for fighting returned and he finally began competing in MMA again in 2020, although at that point he had added a good amount of muscle and moved up to 170 lb, where he’s stayed since. He did compete in a grappling match up at 185 lb, which he won by decision over Trevin Giles who used to compete at 205 lb.

Overall, Malott is a dangerous striker and an opportunistic submission threat who will be fighting in his home country of Canada alongside several teammates like Kyle Nelson and Jasmine Jasudavicius. While he didn’t attempt any takedowns in his UFC debut or his last two fights on the regional scene, we finally saw him land his first attempt in the UFC in his last fight, where he quickly locked up a submission. Between his two UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, he’s been taken down twice on two opponent attempts, so he’s yet to successfully defend a takedown. Despite his connection with Team Alpha Male, Malott has been mostly training in Canada recently to remain closer to family. Considering Malott has only been out of the first round once in his career, which was all the way back in 2015 and ended in a draw, his cardio remains a mystery and it will be interesting to see how he looks in the later rounds if he ever gets there.

Adam Fugitt

3rd UFC Fight (1-1)

Looking to keep his momentum going after notching his first UFC win, Fugitt landed a late first round TKO against a young debuting prospect in Yusaku Kinoshita. Fugitt leaned on his wrestling in that matchup as he landed four of his seven takedowns with nearly three minutes of control time. That was Fugitt’s ninth straight fight to end early (7-2), and came after he got knocked out in the third round of his short notice UFC debut. That loss came against another surging young prospect in Michael Morales and despite losing, Fugitt outperformed expectations as he held his own for two rounds before succumbing to the late finish. Prior to that, Fugitt had finished four straight opponents before joining the UFC, with the last three of those finishes coming in the later rounds.

Now 9-3 as a pro, Fugitt has five wins by KO/TKO, three submissions, and one decision victory. He’s been knocked out in his last two losses, after losing a 2017 decision to Austin Vanderford in his first career defeat. In fairness to Fugitt, the most recent of those early losses came on short notice against an undefeated prospect, while the previous one was up at 185 lb, where Fugitt was clearly undersized. Fugitt recently said it was just his ego that caused him to take two fights at 185 lb and the rest of his career has been spent at 170 lb. While Fugitt’s last two finishes ended in first round knockouts, his four prior to that all occurred in the later rounds.

Overall, Fugitt is a former high school wrestler who started training jiu-jitsu and then MMA in his early 20’s. He also has Muay Thai experience and is willing to stand and trade at times, but typically relies on his wrestling to win fights. In his two UFC fights, he’s landed 5 of his 15 takedown attempts (33% accuracy), while successfully defending both of the attempts against him. Despite only having 11 pro fights under his belt, he’s already 34 years old after getting a late start to his career. He’s talked about adding muscle recently as he’s upped his strength and conditioning, which seemed to show in his last fight as he forced the fight to the mat and found a finish. At 6’1” he’s got decent size for the division and a long 77” reach.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 6’1” but Fugitt will have a 4” reach advantage. Malott is three years younger than the 34-year-old Fugitt.

There’s no question that Malott is a dangerous fighter who can finish fights anywhere they go, but his cardio remains a mystery, as all nine of his pro wins ended in the first round. When you combine that uncertainty with the fact that he’ll be fighting in front of his home Canadian crowd it wouldn’t be that surprising to see some sort of adrenaline dump or gas out if this fight hits the second round. That adds some inherent volatility to this matchup and Fugitt could take over in the later rounds if he can simply survive round one. Malott has knocked out a one-dimensional grappler and submitted a one-dimensional striker so far in the UFC, but Fugitt will be the most well-rounded fighter he’s faced so far, so there’s no easy path to victory like there was for him in those two previous fights. Fugitt is fully aware that Malott’s cardio remains a mystery and we expect him to do everything he can to take Malott into deeper waters and see how his cardio holds up in the later rounds. If successful, we like his chances of finishing a compromised Malott late in this match, but it also won’t be shocking to see Malott secure the 10th first round finish of his career. We’re expecting a close fight with the needle moving in Fugitt’s direction the longer it lasts, and we’ll say Fugitt finishes Malott in the later rounds, most likely late in round two.

Our favorite bet here is Fugitt’s ML at +175.

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DFS Implications:

Malott has only been out of the first round once in his career, which ended in a 2015 draw, as all nine of his wins and his lone loss came in under five minutes. So while he’s finished both of his UFC opponents in the first round, he’s still a hard guy to trust as we don’t know what his cardio looks like. With that said, his upside is obvious even if his floor is uncertain. Fugitt has been knocked out twice before, but one of those times was in the third round of his short notice UFC debut and the other was up a weight class at 185 lb, so both should be taken in context. Until Malott shows us that he has the cardio to remain competitive later on in fights, we’ll be treating him more or less as a R1 finish or bust option in DFS. His early upside paired with the potential for him to gas out later in fights makes targeting both sides of his fights a smart strategy. The odds imply he has a 65% chance to win, a 51% chance to land a finish, and a 30% chance it comes in round one.

Fugitt’s wrestling-heavy approach to fighting adds to his DFS appeal, especially on DraftKings. His last nine fights all ended early (7-2), and he’s coming off a late first round TKO that was good for a massive 126 DraftKings points. The UFC continues to match him up against dangerous finishers, but so far he’s outperformed expectations every step of the way, even though he did get finished in the third round of his short notice UFC debut. He’ll face another tough test here, but Malott’s uncertain cardio presents a clear path for Fugitt to potentially take over late in the fight if Malott slows. If Malott does gas out, which in fairness is basically pure speculation, that would open an opportunity for Fugitt to take him down and put up a massive score driven by ground and pound and a late round finish. And at his cheaper price tag, Fugitt can still be useful in an unlikely decision win, especially on DraftKings. The odds imply Fugitt has a 35% chance to win, a 24% chance to land a finish, and a 12% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #2

Beneil Dariush

22nd UFC Fight (16-4-1)

This matchup had originally been booked for May 6th, but Oliveira pulled out citing an injury and it was pushed back a month.

Coming in on an eight fight winning streak, Dariush hasn’t lost a match since getting knocked out by Alexander Hernandez in 2018. He’s coming off a decision win over Mateusz Gamrot in a crazy back and forth grappling battle. Dariush never actually attempted a takedown in the fight, but defended 15 of Gamrot’s 19 attempts and did a good job of returning to his feet when he did get taken down as Gamrot only finished with a 127 seconds of control time. Dariush finished ahead in striking and also landed a knockdown in the third round as he won a unanimous decision. Prior to that win, Dariush had been scheduled to face Islam Makhachev back in February 2022, but was forced to withdraw due to an ankle injury and now has only fought once in the last 25 months since winning a three-round decision over Tony Ferguson in May 2021. Leading up to the win over Ferguson, Dariush won a split decision (that shouldn’t have been split) against Diego Ferreira. Dariush’s last three fights all went the distance after he finished four straight opponents in the first two rounds before that.

Now 22-4-1 as a pro, Dariush has five wins by KO/TKO, eight submissions, and nine decision victories. All of his knockout wins came in six minutes or less, with three in round one and two in the first 60 seconds of round two. All eight of his submission victories also ended in the first two rounds, with five in round one and three in round two. He’s also been knocked out three times himself (R1 2018, R2 2017 & R1 2014) and has one submission loss (R2 2016). All 17 of his fights that ended early were stopped in the first two rounds and he’s never lost a match that lasted longer than 10 minutes.

Overall, Dariush is a well rounded fighter who holds black belts in both BJJ and Muay Thai. He’s generally looking to exert his will on opponents, whether it be on the mat or the feet, and isn’t one to run from a firefight. His aggressive fighting style has also gotten him into trouble at times, as all four of his losses have also come early, although he has been less reckless in his last few bouts. In his last 10 fights, he’s landed 17 of his 41 takedown attempts (41.5% accuracy), with two or more takedowns landed in five of his last eight fights. Over that same stretch, his opponents were only able to take him down on 5 of their 30 attempts (83.3% defense). Prior to Gamrot getting Dariush down four times on 19 attempts, Dariush had gone eight straight fights without surrendering a takedown. He’s never been a high-volume striker, as he only averages 3.81 SSL/min and 2.55 SSA/min, and he’s never landed more than 81 significant strikes in a fight or absorbed more than 84. Dariush is very willing to strike with strikers and grapple against grapplers and he likes to test his skills against the strengths of his opponents. Over his current eight fight winning streak, Dariush has shown a pattern of going to decisions against other grapplers, while finishing strikers, but that will be tested in this match as 90% of Oliveira’s pro fights have ended early,

Charles Oliveira

32nd UFC Fight (21-9, NC)

Oliveira is looking to rebound from his first loss since 2017 as he had an 11 fight winning streak snapped by Islam Makhachev in a second round submission for the Lightweight belt. After getting taken down and controlled for the majority of the first round, Oliveira got dropped midway through round two and then couldn’t tap quick enough as Makhachev locked up an arm triangle choke. Prior to that, Oliveira lost the Lightweight belt on the scale in the notorious Arizona weigh-in debacle, where a bizarre turn of events had many pointing to a faulty hotel scale. Despite missing weight by a half pound and being stripped of his belt, Oliveira kept himself in the title picture with a first round submission win over Justin Gaethje. That’s Oliveira’s only first round finish in his last six fights, despite 30 of his 33 career wins coming early. Oliveira originally won the vacant Lightweight belt with an early R2 TKO against Michael Chandler in 2021 and then successfully defended it with a third round submission win.

Now 33-9 as a pro, Oliveira has only been to four decisions (3-1) in 42 pro fights and 25 of his 30 early wins occurred in the first two rounds, with the other five ending in third round submissions. He has nine wins by KO/TKO, 21 submissions, and three decision victories. He holds the all time UFC record for the most submission wins as 16, which is five ahead of Demian Maia who’s in second with 11. Eight of Oliveira’s nine career losses have also ended early, with four knockouts and four submissions. His last three losses all ended in round two, two by submission one one by TKO. Prior to that, he had been finished four times in round one and twice in round three, but his last four and five of his last six early losses came in the later rounds. The only decision loss of his career was in 2013 against Frankie Edgar. Oliveira’s losses have historically come in bunches. His first two defeats came in 2010 and 2011 with only a No Contest between them. Then he lost back-to-back fights in 2012 and 2013. Next he lost four out of six matches from 2015 to 2017. Oliveira started his UFC career at 155 lb, but after starting out just 2-2 plus a No Contest he dropped down to 145 lb in 2012. Oliveira then moved back up to 155 lb in 2017 after missing weight by a ridiculous 9 lb against Ricardo Lamas in 2016.

Overall, Oliveira is a 3rd degree BJJ black belt and one of the most dangerous grapplers on the planet. He has shown an improved standup game since joining Chute Boxe Diego Lima in 2018 and he’s a technical striker who uses all eight of his weapons and changes things up well. His striking defense remains his biggest weakness, and we’ve seen him get hurt on the feet in all four of his recent title fights, getting dropped in the last three of those. In his last 10 fights, Oliveira has only landed six takedowns on 17 attempts (35.3% accuracy), with zero takedowns landed in his last three fights. Over that same timeframe, his opponents took him down six times on 10 attempts (40% defense). He only averages 3.48 SSL/min and 3.20 SSA/min and has never landed more than 73 significant strikes or absorbed more than 81 in a fight.

Fight Prediction:

Both fighters are 5’10” but Oliveira will have a 2” reach advantage and is a year younger than Dariush.

Oliveira’s not-so-secret weapon has always been that when he gets hurt he just flops to his back and most of his opponents don’t want to go to the ground with him, which gives him a safe zone to recover. However, when fighters are equipped to follow him to the mat is when we’ve seen Oliveira get finished, and Dariush fits that bill. Makhachev knocked Oliveira down and quickly followed him to the ground and locked up a submission. In Oliveira’s second most recent loss Felder finished him on the ground with elbows, after both Ricardo Lamas and Anthony Pettis locked up guillotine chokes. While the narrative that Oliveira is a quitter may be somewhat unfair, when he does get put in a bad spot on the ground we’ve seen him tap or cover up fairly quickly at multiple point, in addition to actually quitting against Max Holloway back in 2015, although who knows the severity of his “Esophagus Injury” in that fight. Regardless, once Oliveira gets put in a bad spot on the ground and can’t use his jiu-jitsu to save him, he’s often looking for a way out as soon as one presents itself. While we haven't seen Dariush submit any high-level grapplers and it’s been four years since he submitted anybody, his competitive mindset of wanting to beat opponents at their own game makes us think he may be looking for a statement submission here. With that said, both guys have knockout power and have looked a bit chinny at times, so either is capable of knocking out or submitting the other. That makes this much anticipated fight trickier to predict, but we’ll say Dariush finishes Oliveira in the second round.

Our favorite bet here is “Fight Ends in R2” at +300.

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DFS Implications:

Dariush has averaged 93 DraftKings points in his 16 UFC wins and 99 points over his current eight fight winning streak, scoring at least 92 points in seven of those. While he only scored 66 points in his most recent decision win, he was forced to defend takedowns for that entire fight, which he did masterfully, as Gamrot only landed 4 of his 19 attempts with very little control time. That recent lower score will also work in our favor in tournaments as it should help to keep Dariush’s ownership down against one of the highest owned underdogs on the slate in Oliveira. And while Dariush has fought to three straight decisions, those were tougher spots to find a finish and Oliveira has been put away early in eight of his nine career losses. In addition to scoring 92 or more DraftKings points in three of his last four decisions, Dariush landed four straight finishes leading up to his recent run of decisions, averaging 107 points in those four early victories. Oliveira has shown he’s content working off his back, which is great for Dariush on DraftKings, where he can rack up ground strikes and control time. Even if this does surprisingly go the distance, Dariush can still put up a usable DraftKings score in a decision win. However, it’s much more likely to end early according to the odds, which provides a solid ceiling for him as well. Obviously Oliveira is one of the most dangerous grapplers on the planet, so it’s hard to feel entirely confident in Dariush, but that uncertainty is part of what makes him a great tournament option and more of the field will opt to side with the cheaper, more well known option in Oliveira. The odds imply Dariush has a 57% chance to win, a 39% chance to land a finish, and a 21% chance it comes in round one.

Oliveira has averaged 95 DraftKings points in his 21 UFC wins, but has never topped 116 points, which came in his 2010 UFC debut. While 19 of his 21 UFC wins have come early, he’s only reached 100 DraftKings points seven times and has only scored above 104 points twice in his last 20 matches. However, both of those instances were in his last three wins and he has improved his striking in recent years. At his cheaper price tag, he may not need to put up a huge score to end up in tournament winning lineups, but he will need to avoid spending extended periods of time off his back and then landing a late finish. The last time we saw him do that was against Kevin Lee in 2020, and despite locking up a third round submission he still only scored 69 DraftKings points after getting controlled for six and a half minutes in the early rounds. Dariush does a great job of controlling opponents and won’t be scared to go to the mat with Oliveira, so the potential for a similar outcome is in play here. Dariush also has an elite takedown defense, making it less likely that Oliveira can take him down and dominate him on the mat for three rounds and the last time Oliveira won a decision without a huge amount of control time he only scored 73 points. That leaves the chances of Oliveira scoring well lower than his chances of landing a finish. The field gives zero shits about that and Oliveira will be owned higher than his chances of landing a finish, which presents a clear and obvious leverage opportunity. The odds imply Oliveira has a 43% chance to win, a 32% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.

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Fight #1

Amanda Nunes

18th UFC Fight (15-2)

This was originally supposed to be the trilogy matchup between Nunes and Pena, but Pena dropped out and Aldana was announced as the replacement on May 2nd.

It’s been 11 months since Nunes reclaimed her throne atop the Bantamweight division with an emphatic five-round decision win over Julianna Pena, who had no answer for Nunes changing things up and fighting mostly southpaw in the match. Nunes landed a ridiculous three knockdowns and six takedowns in the fight, with nearly 12 minutes of control time. Pena showed her toughness simply surviving to see the judges and didn’t win a round in the fight. Prior to that Nunes suffered her first loss since 2014 as she had her 12 fight winning streak snapped by Pena the first time the two fought back in December 2021. Nunes was dropping back down to 135 lb for the first time since 2019, after defending her Featherweight strap in her previous two matches. In addition to cutting the additional weight, Nunes was also recovering from COVID and a knee injury going into that fight and didn’t look like her usual self in the match as she allowed herself to get sucked into a brawl in round two and gassed out, before basically quitting as soon as Pena took her back on the mat. Following the loss to Pena, Nunes left American Top Team and opened up her own personal gym.

Now 22-5 as a pro, Nunes has 13 wins by KO/TKO, four submissions, and four decision victories. She has two TKO losses, two more by submission, and one decision defeat. Her last three early losses ended in round two and three. Nine of her 15 UFC wins have come in the first round and five went the distance, with her only UFC finish to come beyond the first round ending in a 2018 R5 TKO victory over Raquel Pennington. The last time Nunes knocked anybody out was in 2019 when she finished Holly Holm with a head kick in the first round. Since then, three of her four wins ended in five-round decisions, with the one exception being a first round submission against a severely outgunned Megan Anderson, who entered as a +545 underdog.

This will be Nunes’ 12th straight title fight, with her winning 10 of her previous 11. Five of those 10 wins ended in round one (3 KOs & 2 SUBs) and the other five made it to round five, with four going the distance. Her loss to Pena is the only time we’ve seen one of her title fights end in rounds two through four.

Overall, Nunes is undoubtedly the greatest female mixed martial artist of all time and has first round finishes of Holly Holm, Cris Cyborg, Ronda Rousey, Miesha Tate, and Germaine de Randamie, in addition to two decision wins over Valentina Shevchenko. She’s a BJJ black belt and Judo brown belt and is a well rounded fighter who’s both dangerous on the feet and the mat. Nunes does a great job of landing heavy low leg kicks that often take her opponents off their feet. In her 17 UFC fights, she’s landed 32 takedowns on 54 attempts (59.3% accuracy), while her opponents have only gotten her down six times on 32 attempts (81.3% defense). The UFC decided to also factor in a couple of her previous Strikeforce matches, which is why she’s listed as having a 56% takedown accuracy and an 82% defense. Her takedown numbers have actually risen recently, and after failing to land more than three takedowns in any of her first 12 UFC matches, she’s landed six or more in three of her last five fights. Of some concern, Nunes is now 35 years old and doesn’t have much left to prove after winning her 135 lb belt back in her last fight. She’s also still hanging onto the 145 lb strap, although that’s practically a novelty prop based on the state of the division and its uncertain future. She’s raising a small child and has another one on the way, while her wife Nina Nunes recently retired to focus on their family and have another kid. Nunes appears to be thoroughly enjoying her life outside of fighting at the moment, so you do have to wonder how much longer she plans on competing.

Irene Aldana

12th UFC Fight (7-4)

Aldana had been preparing since April to fight Raquel Pennington in the main event on May 20th, but that matchup was scrapped after Nunes needed a new dance partner, with Aldana getting the call up and Pennington serving as the backup.

Aldana is nine months removed from a bizarre third round knockout over Macy Chiasson where Aldana finished the fight with an upkick off her back to the liver of Chiasson. Aldana nearly locked up an armbar in the opening five minutes, which was enough to win her the round, but Chiasson won round two on all of the scorecards and it was a close fight leading up to the finish. Chiasson was able to take Aldana down three times, but Aldana consistently looked for submissions on the ground. That fight notably took place at a 140 lb Catchweight after Chiasson realized she could not make 135 lb. Aldana checked in at 137.5 lb for the match, while Chiasson weighed 139.5 lb. Prior to that win, Aldana had back-to-back tough weigh-ins, missing weight by 3.5 lb for her previous fight all the way back in July 2021, after looking rough on the scale but making weight in a five-round decision loss to Holly Holm in October 2020. The last time Aldana made Bantamweight championship weight (135 lb) was all the way back in 2019. Aldana’s last three wins all ended in knockouts, with two occurring in round one and one in round three, while all four of her UFC losses went the distance, with two of her last three decision losses being split. Aldana hasn’t been very active lately, fighting just once a year for the last few years.

Now 14-6 as a pro, Aldana has eight wins by KO/TKO, three submissions, and three decision victories. She’s been knocked out twice (R3 2013 & R4 2015), and has four decision losses. All nine of Aldana’s fights prior to joining the UFC ended early (7-2), while seven of her 11 UFC fights have gone the distance (3-4), with three of those being split (1-2). However, after six of her first seven UFC fights made it to the judges, three of her last four have ended early.

This will be the 3rd five-round fight of Aldana’s career and 2nd in the UFC. The first five-round fight of her career was with Invicta in 2015 and Aldana got finished on the mat with ground and pound in the fourth round. Her only UFC five-round fight ended in a lopsided decision loss to Holly Holm, who won every single round, doubling Aldana up in striking and taking her down five times on 14 attempts. So Aldana has lost all three of the championship rounds she’s been to in her career.

Overall, Aldana is a good boxer with heavy hands who relies mostly on her striking to win fights and only has one submission win since 2015, which was in 2019. However, she nearly locked up an armbar in her last match and finished the fight with two official submission attempts. In her 11 UFC matches, Aldana has only landed two of her four takedown attempts (50% accuracy), with all of those attempts coming in her first four UFC fights, and she hasn’t even looked for a takedown in her last seven matches. On the other side of things, her opponents have gotten her down 10 times on 53 attempts (81.1% defense. However, after only getting taken down twice on 31 attempts (93.5% defense) in her first eight UFC fights, she’s been taken down eight times on 22 attempts (63.6% defense) in her last three matches. She averages a healthy 5.39 SSA/min and 5.71 SSA/min, although she’s only topped 83 significant strikes landed in one of her last seven fights.

Fight Prediction:

Aldana will have a 1” height advantage, while Nunes will have a 1” reach advantage. Nunes is actually two months younger than Aldana, despite turning pro four years earlier.

This fight likely comes down to one thing—what version of Amanda Nunes shows up? If Nunes comes in looking like her normal self, we expect her to lean on her grappling advantage and dominate this fight on the mat. However, if Nunes hasn’t been taking training quite as seriously now that she’s at her own private gym where she’s in charge of everything and doesn’t have a full team around her constantly pushing her, then we could see a lesser version of her show up on Saturday. Unfortunately, all we do is speculate going into the fight and we won’t know her current form until it’s too late to do anything but live bet. While we have some reasons for doubt with Nunes, it’s not enough for us to pick her to lose, only enough for us to approach the fight somewhat cautiously. Aldana has the power to knock Nunes out and also has the ability to look for submissions on the mat, but her previously elite takedown defense has looked vulnerable recently as the last two opponents to try and take her down both landed three or more of their attempts. And that’s where we see her losing this fight, as Nunes has landed six or more takedowns in each of her last three fights to make it past the second round. While it’s possible Nunes finishes Aldana, Nunes’ only finish since 2019 was against a terrible Megan Anderson and Aldana hasn’t been put away early since 2015, prior to joining the UFC. With three of Nunes’ last four wins coming in five-round decisions, and with only one finish beyond the first round in her entire UFC career, we like Nunes to rely on her wrestling to win another decision here as long as she hasn’t completely gone off a cliff since the last time we saw her.

Our favorite bet here is “Amanda Nunes DEC” at +300.

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DFS Implications:

Nunes has averaged 122 DraftKings points in her 10 UFC title fight victories. Breaking that down further, she averaged 130 points in her four five-round decision wins and 116 points in her six finishes, with five of those ending in round one. The only late round finish of her UFC career was a 2018 R5 TKO against Raquel Pennington, where Nunes scored 118 points on DraftKings. Only twice in those 10 fights did Nunes fail to score at least 107 points. One of those times was in her last early win where she efficiently submitted Megan Anderson in the first round without landing any takedowns or knockdowns and only scored 99 points. The other was in a low-volume 2018 decision against Valentina Shevchenko, where Nunes only scored 80 points. In Nunes’ three most recent decisions she averaged a face-melting 146 DraftKings points, scoring at least 126 in each of those. Outside of that one blip in the radar against a fellow hall of famer, Nunes has shown both a massive scoring floor and a ridiculous ceiling through a combination of striking (4.40 SSL/min) and grappling (2.75 TDL/15 min), combined with her history of landing first round finishes. Obviously the field is fully aware of that and in her last three fights Nunes was 63%, 63%, and 44% owned on DraftKings. The only ownership discount we got was after her loss to Pena, and after revenging that loss with a 153 point decision win we expect to see her ownership rise back up to where it had previously been. That creates some merit in looking for ways she fails when building tournament lineups, just keep in mind you’ll likely be drawing dead in lineups that fade here if she wins. The odds imply she has a 74% chance to win, a 50% chance to land a finish, and a 21% chance it comes in round one.

Aldana has averaged 91 DraftKings in her seven UFC wins, but failed to top 80 points in four of her last six victories. The two times she’s really scored well were in a pair of first round knockouts, while she only scored 74 and 79 respective DraftKings points in her two third round finishes. That shows one potential path for how she wins this fight and still fails to crack winning tournament lineups. However, as the cheapest fighter on this smaller card, it’s still possible she could serve as a value play with a similar score here. Considering Nunes’ last three early losses all ended in rounds two and three and two of Aldana’s last four finishes also ended in round three, if Aldana does pull off the upset, it’s certainly not crazy to think it will come from a mid-round finish. There’s also a good chance Nunes controls her early on in the fight, further limiting Aldana’s scoring chances. We’d be really surprised to see Aldana win a decision, as she’s gone just 3-4 with the judges in her career and never looks to land any takedowns, while Nunes has won all five of the decisions she’s been to in the UFC. That likely leaves Aldana reliant on landing a finish in the first two rounds to score well. After Aldana’s teammate Alexa Grasso pulled off the stunning upset over the 125 lb GOAT in Valentina Shevchenko, perhaps Aldana will have a little extra confidence going into this matchup. Whether she does or not, that Grasso win should result in some vicarious confidence from underdog backers in this spot. And it’s not just Shevchenko’s loss, we’ve seen a sea of champions lose their belts in the last year. So the days of seeing Nunes’ opponents with single digit DraftKings ownership are likely over. Nevertheless, Aldana will still be a solid leverage play if she pulls off the upset against the most popular fighter on the card and scores enough to be useful. The odds imply Aldana has a 26% chance to win, a 15% chance to land a finish, and a 4% chance it comes in round one.

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• Amanda Nunes OVER 112.5 Pts

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