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Fighter Notes:
Fight #10
Raul Rosas Jr.
5th UFC Fight (3-1)Rosas is fresh off a second round submission win over Ricky Turcios in a fight where Rosas was able to land four of his seven takedown attempts and finished with nearly six minutes of control time in a fight that only lasted a round and a half. That matchup had originally been booked four months earlier in Mexico City, but Rosas dropped out mid card. Prior to that withdrawal, Rosas landed a quick 54 second first round TKO against a terrible Terrence Mitchell, where we finally saw Rosas show a willingness to stand and trade on the feet opposed to immediately looking to wrestle as he had in his past fights. Given how bad Mitchell is, it makes sense that Rosas would use that opportunity to showcase his striking, especially after gassing out on the mat in his previous fight and suffering his first career loss against Christian Rodriguez. Rosas came out of the gates hot in that defeat and nearly locked up a rear-naked choke in the first round, but didn’t pace himself at all and then gassed out midway through round two. Rodriguez was able to take over at that point and control Rosas on the mat for the remainder of the fight, as he cruised to a unanimous 29-28 decision win. Prior to that, Rosas locked up a first round submission in his UFC debut against a suspect Jay Perrin, who went 0-3 in the UFC before being released. Just before that, Rosas saw the judges for the first time in his career in a decision win on DWCS when he was just 17 years old, becoming the youngest fighter to ever win a contract on the show. He amazingly was still in high school at the time, although he dropped out after getting the contract to pursue fighting full time. Rosas showed he knows how to escape guillotine chokes in that fight, as his opponent was constantly looking to wrap up his neck on takedown attempts.
Still just 9-1 as a pro, Rosas has two wins by R1 TKO, six submissions, and one decision victory. Six of his eight finishes came in the first round, with the other two ending just before the midway point of the second round. His lone loss ended in a decision and he’s never been finished. He’s only been in two fights that lasted longer than a round and half, with both of those going the distance (1-1).
Overall, Rosas is a relentless wrestler who’s typically looking to immediately get fights to the ground and hunt for submissions, but finally showed a willingness to stand and strike in his second most recent fight. However, he still only averages 1.12 SSL/min and failed to land more than 20 significant strikes in any of his last five fights. He amazingly went the full 15 minutes in his third most recent match and still only landed two TOTAL strikes in the fight. Between his four UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, he landed 12 of his 31 takedown attempts (38.7% accuracy), while he got taken down by his opponents twice on two attempts. He only turned pro in November 2021 and is just 19 years old, but the UFC has been pushing him hard. His first two UFC fights were both on PPV cards, while his next was on a UFC Noche card, and he’s already been added to the UFC video game. Now he’ll open another Noche card as he looks to set the tone for the Mexican fighters.
Aoriqileng
8th UFC Fight (3-3, NC)Aoriqileng’s last fight officially went down as a No Contest, but he was getting the breaks beat off him before he was given a way out in the second round following a low blow. He said he couldn’t continue after the illegal strike and the fight was stopped. He finished behind 81-45 in significant strikes, while no takedowns were attempted in the fight. Prior to that, Aoriqileng won a decision over a one-dimensional grappler in Johnny Munoz Jr., where Munoz landed 4 of his 11 takedown attempts, but Aoriqileng finished ahead in significant strikes 44-7 and in total strikes 120-31. That came after Aoriqileng suffered the first knockout loss of his career when he was finished by Aiemann Zahabi in just 64 seconds. Leading up to that loss, Aoriqileng kept his UFC hopes alive with a close decision win over Jay Perrin, following a R1 TKO win over a terrible Cameron Else. Before those two wins, Aoriqileng lost a high-volume decision in his April 2021 UFC debut against Jeff Molina and then got outwrestled by Cody Durden to lose another decision after that.
Now 25-11 as a pro, Aoriqileng has eight wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and 16 decision victories. He’s been knocked out once, submitted three times, 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 UFC debut and stayed at the weight class for his second UFC fight. However, after starting 0-2 at 125 lb he moved back up to 135 lb, where he’s since gone 3-1 with the organization.
Overall, Aoriqileng is a fearless striker who has no problem walking through the fire to land shots of his own, which often results in him absorbing a lot of damage. 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 seven UFC fights, he landed 7 of his 15 takedown attempts (46.7% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 12 of their 29 attempts (58.6% defense). He averages 5.31 SSL/min and 6.03 SSA/min. Aoriqileng has been training at Fight Ready since 2022 so he has a good team around him, although we’ve yet to see him defeat any decent opponents in the UFC.
Fight Prediction:
Rosas will have a 2” height advantage, while Aoriqileng will have a 2” reach advantage. Rosas is 12 years younger than the 31-year-old Aoriqileng.
This is a clear setup spot and the UFC is simply using Aoriqileng to build up a young prospect in Rosas. It feels like a punishment for Aoriqileng after he refused to continue to fight in his last outing following a low blow. Aoriqileng has been taken down three or more times in three of his seven UFC fights and only has a 58% takedown defense. He’s also been submitted three times in his career and has an absolutely terrible striking defense, averaging 6.03 SSA/min. So Rosas couldn’t ask for a much better spot and we fully expect him to submit Aoriqileng in under a round and a half.
Our favorite bet here is “Rosas/Aoriqileng Under 1.5 Rounds” at -115.
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DFS Implications:
Rosas has averaged 117 DraftKings points in his three UFC wins, with all three of those fights ending in under a round and a half. He’s generally looking to get fights to the mat as quickly as possible and does a good job of locking up rear-naked chokes once he gets there. However, he doesn’t land many strikes, which leaves him reliant on grappling stats and finishes to score well. While he gets another great matchup to find a finish here, at his high salary we could easily see him lock up an early submission and still get priced out of the optimal lineup. With that said, he’s head and shoulders above everyone else in terms of his odds of landing a finish, leaving him with the highest scoring floor of any fighter on the card. That makes him a great play in low-risk contests and he still has a good shot at ending up in tournament winning lineups even at his high salary. The odds imply Rosas has an 87% chance to win, a 69% chance to land a finish, and a 32% chance it comes in round one.
Aoriqileng has averaged 94 DraftKings points in his three UFC wins, with the last two of those both going the distance. While he only scored 65 points in his first UFC decision victory, he was able to score 93 points most recently with the help of a knockdown and two takedowns. He’s pretty well rounded and has the ability to put up big striking totals, wrestle, and find finishes, however, all of his wins have come against terrible opponents and now he’s walking into an ambush. Rosas is a young, relentless wrestler who will be looking to immediately take Aoriqileng down and choke him out. Aoriqileng is the biggest underdog on the card and has the highest chances of being finished. That leaves him with a nonexistent scoring floor and it would be surprising if he returned double digit fantasy points. He’ll need a miracle to pull off the upset, but if he somehow does, he would be an insane leverage play in tournaments. The odds imply Aoriqileng has a 13% chance to win, a 7% chance to land a finish, and a 3% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #9
Joshua Van
5th UFC Fight (3-1)Van is stepping into this matchup on less than two weeks’ notice and just nine weeks after he got knocked out by Charles Johnson in the third round of a July matchup. Johnson finished that fight ahead 88-67 in significant strikes, but the judges were split on who was winning leading up to the finish, with one judge scoring the first two rounds for Johnson, another scoring the first two for Van, and the third having it even at one apiece. That fight was also put together on short notice, after Van had a matchup canceled after weigh-ins a month earlier when Tagir Ulanbekov badly missed weight. Prior to that loss, Van had won eight straight fights and started out 3-0 in the UFC, with a pair of decision wins followed by a second round TKO victory over a debuting Felipe Bunes. In that finish, Van lost the first round on all three scorecards, just as he did in each of his first two UFC fights, but came back in round two and overwhelmed Bunes with pressure and forced a TKO stoppage in the final 30 seconds of the round. Bunes took Van down twice on six attempts, but melted under Van’s pressure and pace in round two. After only landing 14 significant strikes and 23 total strikes in round one, Van landed 69 significant strikes and 131 total strikes in round two. That came after Van won a high-volume decision over a debuting Kevin Borjas, where Van again started slow. However after only landing 20 significant strikes in round one, he landed 77 in round two and 59 in round three, to finish ahead 156-75. Just before that, Van once again started slow in his UFC debut against Zhalgas Zhumagulov, where Van dropped the first round but won each of the later rounds. Van finished that fight ahead 120-103 in significant strikes after only landing 26 significant strikes in round one. While two of Van’s four UFC fights went the distance, all eight of his regional fights ended early (7-1) with Fury FC. He won the Fury FC Flyweight belt in the last of those matches with a second round submission before getting the call up to the UFC.
Now 10-2 as a pro, Van has six wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and two decision victories. All eight of his finishes came in the first two rounds, with two in round one, and six in round two. His last four finishes all occurred in the second round. He was also finished in both of his losses, with a second round submission in his third pro fight and a third round TKO most recently. He faced a lot of questionable competition before joining the UFC, with only two of his opponents coming in with more than two pro wins.
Overall, Van is a 22-year-old Burmese kickboxer who only turned pro in October 2021. That shows in his wrestling, which is a work in progress, but he’s already made a lot of improvements to his takedown defense. In his four UFC fights, his opponents were only able to get him down on 3 of their 16 attempts (81.3% defense), but he also hasn’t faced any really good grapplers yet. On the other side of things, Van landed four of his eight takedown attempts (50% accuracy), showing improvements to his offensive wrestling as well. Van has shown some ability to look for submissions when the opportunities present themselves, but he generally relies on his striking to win fights. He doesn't cut a ton of weight and isn’t a huge Flyweight by any means, but that also allows him to stay active and take fights on short notice, and he also has great cardio. It will be interesting to see how he looks here as he makes a quick turnaround following a knockout loss without much time to prepare.
Edgar Chairez
4th UFC Fight (1-1, NC)Chairez had been set to face Kevin Borjas, but Borjas dropped out and Van was announced as the replacement a week and a half out. Chairez is coming off his first official UFC win, which ended in a round one submission over Daniel da Silva, who was finished in all six of his UFC fights. That was actually the second time those two squared off and Chairez submitted Da Silva in the first round both times. However, the first fight was overturned to a No Contest after review officials deemed the ref prematurely stopped the fight as Chairez locked in a standing guillotine choke. Da Silva’s arm went limp and his body slumped down, so it looked like a fine stoppage, but he then immediately protested and clearly wasn’t out once the ref jumped in to stop it. So it was a tricky spot, but we had no problem with the stoppage at the time. Prior to that No Contest, Chairez lost a decision loss in his short notice UFC debut against a really tough Tatsuro Taira. Chairez attempted multiple guillotines in the fight, but was unable to complete any of them, and he consistently sacrificed position for those submission attempts. That resulted in Chairez getting controlled for nearly 10 minutes in the fight. Leading up to that loss, Chairez landed a pair of submission wins, after losing a decision to Clayton Carpenter on DWCS in 2022. Chairez looked decent on the feet in that DWCS match and won the first round on all three scorecards, but once he got taken down late in round two, he wasn’t able to do anything off his back. He then got taken down twice more in round three, as Carpenter came back to win a decision. Following that defeat, Chairez returned to the Mexican regional scene and locked up a 63 second guillotine against a 37-year-old opponent. He then landed a fourth round submission in a fight that he appeared to be losing before the finish. That ending was crazy as he choked his opponent unconscious with a triangle choke but the ref refused to stop the fight, so he then transitioned to an armbar and his opponent seemed to wake up as he was getting his arm bent backwards, and it still took the ref a while longer before finally stopping things when his opponent finally tapped.
Now 11-5 as a pro, Chairez has four wins by KO/TKO and seven submission victories. Eight of his 11 finishes came in round one, two ended in round two, and one occurred in round four—not counting his first round submission win that was overturned to a No Contest. While he’s never been knocked out, he’s been submitted twice, and lost all three of the decisions he’s been to.
Overall, Chairez looks somewhat decent and at 5’7” he has good size for the Flyweight division—maybe too much size as he missed weight by five pounds for his last fight. He has decent striking and has looked durable and loves looking for guillotines to a fault. That has resulted in him getting controlled on his back at times and his wrestling hasn’t been very good. Between his three UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, Chairez didn’t attempt any takedowns, while his opponents got him down on 7 of their 12 attempts (41.7% defense). And even going back to his regional tape, only once did we see him look to wrestle offensively. So he’s only really an opportunistic submission threat when his opponents look to take him down, at least to this point in his career. He’ll be a guy to monitor closely during weigh-ins after his terrible weight miss in his last fight.
Fight Prediction:
Chairez will have a 2” height advantage and 6” reach advantage, while Van is six years younger than the 28-year-old Chairez.
This set up as a fun striking battle and neither of these two look to wrestle a ton. Chairez does love to look for guillotines, but those attempts come when his opponents try to take him down. Van will mix in occasional takedown attempts, but is a striker at heart and has only landed four takedowns in his four UFC fights. Maybe he’ll be foolish enough to attempt a takedown or two here, which could result in him getting stuck in a guillotine attempt, but there’s a good chance he never even tries to wrestle in this matchup. Chairez rarely looks for any takedowns of his own, with zero attempts in any of his UFC fights or his DWCS match. Van is the much higher volume striker and should be able to outland his way to victory as long as his chin isn’t compromised after his recent knockout loss just nine weeks ago and he doesn’t trip into a guillotine. However, Chairez has been really durable and we’d be surprised to see Van knock him out. So barring a hail mary finish for Chairez, we like Van to win a decision.
Our favorite bet here is “Joshua Van DEC” at +135.
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DFS Implications:
Van has averaged 107 DraftKings points in his three UFC fights/wins, despite two of those going the distance. He averages a slate-leading 8.55 SSL/min and has shown the ability to put up huge striking totals, while also mixing in occasional takedowns. However, it will be risky to look to wrestle in this matchup, as Chairez loves looking for guillotines and other submissions off his back. Van is also just nine weeks removed from the first knockout loss of his career and stepped into this matchup on only a week and a half’s notice, so there is some uncertainty surrounding him. Nevertheless, Chairez averages a healthy 4.10 SSA/min, rarely looks to wrestle offensively, and is 0-3 with the judges in his career. That leaves Van with a good chance of winning a high-volume decision and he put up 106 DraftKings points and 126 points on FanDuel in his last decision victory. However, he only scored 80 DraftKings points and 92 points in FanDuel in his other UFC decision win, so there’s still a decent chance he won’t quite return value without a finish at his high salary. While Chairez has been submitted twice, he’s never been knocked out and looks pretty durable, thus lowering the chances of Van getting him out of there early. The odds imply Van has a 68% chance to win, a 29% chance to land a finish, and a 14% chance it comes in round one.
Chairez has pretty crisp striking and while he rarely shoots for takedowns, he likes to look for submissions, especially guillotines and armbars. However, those are more defensive submissions that generally are not accompanied by a takedown, so they don’t score as well as your typical finishes—especially on DraftKings where you don’t get points for submission attempts. Now he’s facing a striker in Van, so there may be fewer opportunities for Chairez to look for a defensive submission. We did just see Van get knocked out in his last fight, but that’s also the only knockout loss of his career. Van has the ability to put up insane striking numbers, so it will be tougher for Chairez to win a decision and he looks reliant on landing a finish if he wants to pull off the upset and/or score well in DFS. The odds imply Chairez has a 32% chance to win, a 14% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #8
Yazmin Jauregui
5th UFC Fight (3-1)Jauregui is coming off a unanimous 30-27 decision win over Sam Hughes, where Jauregui finished ahead 94-83 in significant strikes and was also the one doing all the actual damage in the fight. Hughes failed to land any of her six takedown attempts and it was a near flawless performance from Jauregui outside of her inability to end things early. That came after Jauregui suffered the first loss of her career in a quick 20 second TKO against Denise Gomes. Prior to that, Jauregui landed a finish of her own in a second round TKO against Istela Nunes. However, Jauregui also got knocked down early in that fight and she’s now been dropped in the opening minute twice in her last three fights. Prior to that win, Jauregui put on an impressive striking performance in her UFC debut as she won a decision over a tough Iasmin Lucindo. A year to the day before making her UFC debut, Jauregui won three fights in a single night as part of the Last Latina Standing tournament with Combate Global. She won two of those matches by first round knockout after winning a one-round decision in the first leg of the tournament.
Now 11-1 as a pro, Jauregui has seven wins by KO/TKO and four decision victories. One of those decisions was just a single round as it was part of a single-day/multi-fight tournament and she’s only seen the third round three times in her career, with all of those fights going the distance. Five of her seven career knockouts came in round one with the other two ending in round two. The only loss of her career was a R1 TKO defeat. Jauregui made her 2018 pro debut at 125 lb, but dropped down to 115 lb for her second fight, where she’s stayed since.
Overall, Jauregui is a talented, uptempo Mexican striker, who averages 6.26 SSL/min and 5.12 SSA/min. She is still only 25 years old, but turned pro when she was 19. She’s primarily a boxer, but will mix in takedowns at times, although failed to land any of her three attempts in her four UFC fights. On the other side of things, she was also able to defend all eight of the attempts against her. She’s shown no problem going three hard rounds and the only weakness she’s shown has been her striking defense, but if she can clean that up she looks like an interesting young prospect with plenty of time to grow.
Ketlen Souza
3rd UFC Fight (1-1)Souza was recently given the easiest matchup she could ask for in Marnic Mann. While Souza was able to easily cruise to a unanimous 30-27 decision win, her inability to finish Mann is concerning for her outlook moving forward. Souza finished ahead 80-31 in significant strikes, although Mann finished ahead in takedowns 2-1. Ten months prior to that win, Souza was quickly submitted in her UFC debut against a dangerous Karine Silva, who didn’t take long to lock up a kneebar. That’s not the first time that Souza appeared to injure her left knee. She suffered a bizarre 2020 R1 TKO loss after getting kicked in the same knee. That was her second straight KO/TKO loss at the time, after she was finished from a third round body shot against Ariane Carnelossi just before that. Both of those losses took place at 115 lb, but then Souza moved up to 125 lb for the first time in 2021 and rattled off five straight wins, with the last three of those going the distance, including two five-round decisions for the vacant SFT and Invicta Flyweight belts. The last time Sozua finished anybody was in May 2021, when she knocked out an opponent who came in with an 0-0-1 record and never fought again. Just two weeks prior to that she landed another second round knockout, that time against a 1-0 opponent. After 12 of Souza’s first 13 pro fights ended early, four of her last five have gone the distance, with the one exception being her submission loss in her UFC debut. Following that loss, Souza dropped back down to 115 lb, where it appears she’ll stay.
Now 14-4 as a pro, Souza has eight wins by KO/TKO, one submission (R2 2018), and five decision victories. After the first four finishes of her career ended in the first round, her last five came in the later rounds, with four in round two and one in round five. All four of her career losses came early with two submissions and two KO/TKOs. Three of those four losses ended in the opening two minutes of the first round, with the other ending in round three. One thing to keep in mind with Souza’s record is that she faced a lot of suspect competition and when she has gone up against tougher opponents she’s generally been finished.
Overall, Souza is primarily a striker but will occasionally look for takedowns. Her defensive wrestling and grappling hasn’t been great and her last three opponents were all able to take her down, but she will look for submissions off her back and appears to have been awarded her BJJ black belt leading up to her UFC debut. She likes to throw a lot of kicks and big looping bombs and hasn’t been a super high-volume striker. She’s shown good cardio, with multiple five-round decision wins on her record. However, she still needs to prove she belongs in the UFC and she hasn’t been overly impressive to this point. After facing one of the worst fighters in the UFC in her last match, now she’ll face a massive step up in competition.
Fight Prediction:
These two are both listed at 5’3”, but that’s probably being generous for Souza. Jauregui will have a 1” reach advantage and is four years younger than the 29-year-old Souza. Jauregui is clearly the superior fighter in this spot as the odds suggest. She’s a much more technical striker than Souza and also has significantly better defensive wrestling. We’ve yet to see Jauregui land a takedown in the UFC on just three attempts, but defensive wrestling has been another area of weakness for Souza that Jauregui could potentially exploit if she decides to. Despite the fact that Jauregui has been knocked down twice in her last three fights, it would be pretty shocking to see Souza pull off the upset and the only real question we have is whether or not Jauregui can find a finish. All four of Souza’s pro losses ended early and she seems kind of like a quitter when facing adversity. So it’s not a bad spot for Jauregui to get her out of there early, although it’s still more likely this ends in a lopsided decision win for Jauregui.
Our favorite bet here is “Yazmin Jauregui R1/2 KO” at +440.
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DFS Implications:
Jauregui is a talented striker who pushes the pace and averages a healthy 6.26 SSL min. However, she’s yet to land a takedown in the UFC on just three attempts, which leaves her reliant on finishes to score well. She only scored 68 and 65 DraftKings points in her two decision wins and even on FanDuel where striking is more valuable she only returned scores of 76 and 72 points respectively. However, in her one UFC finish she scored a slate-breaking 129 DraftKings points and 139 points on FanDuel, so she has shown a huge ceiling when she can end things early. She also got knocked out once herself in just 20 seconds, scoring zero points in the process, so she’s shown an extremely wide range of scoring outcomes. While that makes it hard to trust her to score well, she looks like a great tournament option as she’s consistently low owned and facing an opponent who’s been finished in all four of her pro losses. There also isn’t much competition outside of Rosa at the top of the salary chart this week, leaving Jauregui with fewer opponents she’ll need to outscore to be useful. The odds imply Jauregui has a 79% chance to win, a 25% chance to land a finish, and a 13% chance it comes in round one.
Souza is coming off the easiest matchup she ever could have asked for and was still unable to find a finish or score well in a decision, as she only put up 80 DraftKings points. She looks like a Jessica Andrade stunt double minus the talent and has been very prone to getting finished in the past, as was evident in her UFC debut where she was submitted in just 105 seconds. All four of her pro losses ended early and we’ve seen her quit at times in the past. Now she’s facing a massive step up in competition and there will likely be times in this fight where she’s shown the door. That leaves Souza with an uncertain scoring floor and it would also be surprising to see her hit any sort of ceiling, despite the fact that Jauregui has been knocked down twice in her last three fights. It seems obvious that Souza is being brought in to lose to a Mexican on the Mexican Independence Day card and this is another ambush spot that we want to avoid the underdog in. The odds imply Souza has a 21% chance to win, an 8% chance to land a finish, and a 3% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #7
Manuel Torres
4th UFC Fight (3-0)Torres has finished six straight opponents in the first round and hasn’t even made it to the four minute mark in any of his last 10 fights (8-2). His most recent finish came in a submission over Chris Duncan, who looked to turn it into a wrestling match. However, Torres’ previous three wins all came by knockout, although he did have six straight fights end by submission before that. Torres has amazingly only been out of the first round once in his 17 pro fights, which was in a 2018 split decision win. He punched his ticket to the big show with a first round knockout on DWCS, where Torres’ opponent complained of an eye poke early in round one but Herb Dean did not stop the fight and Torres took advantage of that opportunity to unload with a flurry of strikes to force a stoppage. He then knocked out a washed up Frank Camacho and a suspect Nikolas Motta in his first two UFC fights, leading up to his recent submission win.
Now 15-2 as a pro, Torres has seven wins by R1 KO, seven more by R1 submission, and one decision. Both of his losses ended in first round leg lock submissions—one by kneebar and another by heel hook. His long skinny legs appear prone to that sort of attack, which will be something to consider when he faces grapplers. Take his impressive number of first round finishes with a grain of salt, as he hadn’t been facing the toughest competition on the Mexican regional scene. Torres started his career fighting between 139-146 lb, before moving up to 155 lb in 2018.
Overall, Torres is an ultra aggressive rangy fighter who has dangerous striking as well as the ability to choke opponents out. He doesn’t appear to offer much in terms of submission defense, and we haven’t seen his chin tested enough to really gauge his durability. Considering he’s only been out of the first round once in his career, and that was all the way back in 2018, it’s hard to fully evaluate his cardio. However, even though his debut only lasted three and a half minutes, you could already see Torres starting to breath heavily toward the end and we expect cardio to be a massive issue for him as he begins facing legitimate competition that he can’t quickly put away. Between his three UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, he landed two of his three takedown attempts (66.7% accuracy), while his opponents got him down once on nine attempts (88.9% defense). After dropping out of a March 2023 fight during weigh-ins, Torres is always a guy to monitor closely on the scale.
Ignacio Bahamondes
7th UFC Fight (4-2)Bahamondes is fresh off a first round knockout win over Christos Giagos, who’s been finished in four of his last five fights. Bahamondes finished ahead 40-17 in significant strikes in a fight that only lasted three and a half minutes. Prior to that, Bahamondes had a three-fight winning streak snapped in a decision loss to Ludovit Klein. Bahamondes came into that fight with a 95% takedown defense, but Klein was able to get him down three times on five attempts and control him for six minutes. That came after Bahamondes won an uneventful decision against Trey Ogden, who seemed to be sleepwalking through the fight. Bahamondes methodically picked Ogden apart for three straight rounds, outlanding him 99-42 in striking, while stuffing Ogden’s only takedown attempt. Bahamondes did a good job of mixing up his levels and landed 41 leg kicks in the fight. Ogden took that fight on short notice and looked like he just showed up for a paycheck with the goal of not getting knocked out. That came 14 months after Bahamondes secured the only submission win of his career against Rongzhu in the third round of a February 2022 match. He also nearly locked up a guillotine attempt earlier in that fight and appears to be adding some submission skills to his already dangerous striking. Bahamondes one other UFC win ended in a highlight reel spinning wheel kick KO against Roosevelt Roberts in the closing seconds of the third round, after he lost a split decision to John Makdessi in his 2021 UFC debut. So while his last fight ended in round one, his previous five all made it to the third round, with three of those going the distance.
Now 15-5 as a pro, Bahamondes has 10 wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and four decision victories. He’s never been knocked out, but he’s been submitted twice and has three decision losses. Both of those submission losses ended in the first round over his first six pro fights. One of those was against Preston Parsons, who’s now in the UFC. While all of his UFC fights have been at 155 lb, his two fights just before joining the UFC were both at 170 lb and he has bounced between the two weight classes earlier in his career. Both of his submission losses occurred at 170 lb and he’s never been finished at 155 lb.
Overall, Bahamondes is really tall and long for the Lightweight division, standing 6’3” with a 75” reach (the same height as Jalin Turner). He loves to throw a ton of kicks to maximize his length and his last three KO/TKO wins all came by head kick. He’s a dangerous striker and has shown improvements to his grappling from earlier in his career, both in his takedown defense and his submission abilities. With that said, he’s still a striker and we expect him to struggle when facing legitimate wrestlers. However, he’s still just 27 years old and at a stage in his career where we should be seeing improvements between every fight. He was born into fighting, as his father owns a martial arts school in Chile, but Bahamondes came to the United States to pursue his UFC dream at just 16 years old. He landed 99 or more significant strikes in four of his five UFC fights that made it past the first round and he averages an impressive 7.15 SSL/min and 4.38 SSA/min. Between his six UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, his opponents got him down on just four of their 28 attempts (85.7% defense), while he failed to land any of his own five attempts.
Fight Prediction:
Bahamondes will have a 5” height advantage and 2” reach advantage.
Both of these two are dangerous strikers, but Torres looks to have a grappling advantage, while we expect Bahamondes to have a significant advantage when it comes to cardio. We say “expect” because Torres hasn’t been past the first round since 2018 and we haven’t actually seen his cardio tested lately. So all we can do is speculate but he fits the profile of a gasser and we’ve even seen him start to look a little winded in the first round of fights. But there’s always a chance he could surprise us and have a better gas tank than we think. Nevertheless, we like Bahamondes’ chances in a longer fight and he has a history of landing late finishes, while all 14 of Torres’ finishes have come in round one. Torres is very dangerous early on in fights and will have a shot at either knocking Bahamondes out or submitting him early on, but if Bahamondes can survive then we like his chances of putting Torres away in the later rounds. Either way, we’d be surprised to see this go the full 15 minutes and we’ll take Bahamondes by knockout in the later rounds.
Our favorite bet here is “Ignacio Bahamondes R2/3 KO” at +480.
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DFS Implications:
Torres has landed six straight first round finishes going back to his regional days and finished all three of his UFC opponents in under three and a half minutes, averaging 107 DraftKings points in the process. He’s shown the ability to finish fights both on the feet and the mat and after knocking out his first two UFC opponents he locked up a submission in his most recent win. However, we’ve yet to see him tested by any high-level competition and he’s only been out of the first round once in his 17 fight career. So there are still a lot of unanswered questions surrounding him and we’re skeptical that his gas tank will hold up beyond the first round. We also saw him get hurt early in the first round of his last fight and his durability is unknown. This will be the toughest test of his career and we could see some of his potential weaknesses exposed. Torres has been 39%+ owned on DraftKings in all three of his UFC fights and the field is in love with him, so if he does lose, it could create a great leverage opportunity on this smaller slate. However, if he wins, it’s harder to see him getting left out of the optimal lineup at his reasonable price tag. The odds imply Torres has a 56% chance to win, a 40% chance to land a finish, and a 23% chance it comes in round one.
Bahamondes is a high-volume striker who averages 7.15 SSL/min and has an 85% takedown defense. However, he’s yet to land a takedown in the UFC and relies entirely on striking volume and finishes to score well. That makes him a better fit for the FanDuel scoring system compared to on DraftKings, and his two UFC third-round finishes were good for 136 and 125 points on FanDuel but “just” 99 and 104 points on DraftKings. Now he’s facing a dangerous finisher in Torres which leaves Bahamondes with an uncertain scoring floor, but we suspect that Torres will slow down after the first round if Bahamondes can simply survive the opening five minutes. That could create the perfect opportunity for Bahamondes to land another late finish and at his midrange price tag he doesn’t need to put up a slate-breaking score to end up in tournament winning lineups. We expect Bahamondes to be significantly lower owned than Torres, which just adds to his tournament appeal and he’s our preferred play in this matchup. It would be surprising to see this fight go the distance and the betting markets are expecting it to end early 75% of the time, which even that could be conservative. So whoever wins should score well and it looks like a great fight to target. The odds imply Bahamondes has a 44% chance to win, a 35% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #6
Irene Aldana
14th UFC Fight (8-5)Aldana is coming off a super high-volume three-round decision win over Karol Rosa, where Rosa finished ahead 204-145 in significant strikes. Rosa destroyed Aldana’s lead leg, landing an insane 95 leg kicks in the fight. However, after losing the first round on all three scorecards, Aldana bounced back to win each of the later rounds to take a unanimous 29-28 decision and Rosa walked away from the fight battered and bloodied in one of the wildest WMMA fights we’ve ever seen. Prior to that, Aldana lost a title fight to Amanda Nunes, where Aldana was never able to get anything going and was outlanded by Nunes 142-41 in significant strikes, while Nunes also took her town six times and controlled her for seven minutes. Leading up to that loss, Aldana landed a pair of knockouts against Macy Chiasson and Yana Santos, after losing a five-round decision to Holly Holm in 2020. The win over Chiasson was pretty bizarre as Aldana finished her with an upkick to the liver. Aldana nearly locked up an armbar in the opening five minutes, which was enough to win her the round, but Chiasson won round two on all of the scorecards and it was a close fight leading up to the finish. Chiasson was able to take Aldana down three times, but Aldana consistently looked for submissions on the ground. That fight notably took place at a 140 lb Catchweight after Chiasson realized she could not make 135 lb. Aldana checked in at 137.5 lb for the match, while Chiasson weighed 139.5 lb. Prior to that win, Aldana had back-to-back tough weigh-ins, missing weight by 3.5 lb in a 2021 R1 KO win over Yana Santos, after looking rough on the scale but making weight in a five-round decision loss to Holly Holm in October 2020 just before that. Leading up to that loss to Holm, Aldana landed another knockout, that time against Ketlen Vieira in the first round.
Now 15-7 as a pro, Aldana has eight wins by KO/TKO, three submissions, and four decision victories. She’s been knocked out twice (R3 2013 & R4 2015), and has five decision losses. All nine of Aldana’s fights prior to joining the UFC ended early (7-2), while nine of her 13 UFC fights went the distance (4-5), with three of those being split (1-2). However, after six of her first seven UFC fights made it to the judges, three of her last six ended early.
Overall, Aldana is a good boxer with heavy hands who relies mostly on her striking to win fights. However, she will look for submissions at times, even if she’s only completed one since 2015, which was in 2019. She nearly locked up an armbar against Macy Chiasson and finished the match with two official submission attempts. In her 13 UFC matches, Aldana only landed two of her four takedown attempts (50% accuracy), with all of those attempts coming in her first four UFC fights, and she hasn’t even looked for a takedown in her last nine matches. On the other side of things, her opponents got her down 16 times on 67 attempts (76.1% 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 14 times on 36 attempts (61.1% defense) in her last five matches as she’s faced tougher competition. She averages a healthy 5.24 SSA/min and 6.33 SSA/min, although she’s only topped 83 significant strikes landed in two of her last nine fights.
Norma Dumont
10th UFC Fight (7-2)Dumont is five months removed from a unanimous 29-28 decision win over a 39-year-old Germaine de Randamie, who was coming off a three and a half year layoff. Dumont took De Randamie down six times on eight attempts and finished with 10 minutes of control time, while De Randamie finished ahead just 16-11 in significant strikes and 91-49 in total strikes. That was Dumont’s eighth straight fight to go the distance (7-1), after she was knocked out in the first round of her 2020 UFC debut against Megan Anderson. Dumont’s only loss over her current stretch of decisions was against Macy Chiasson in 2022 and Dumont responded by winning four straight since then.
Now 11-2 as a pro, Dumont has two career R1 submission wins and nine decision victories. She’s also been knocked out once and has one decision loss. Her two submission wins came in her first three pro fights against opponents who entered with records of 0-0 and 0-2 and Dumont has never finished an opponent with a win on their record. Dumont has fought at both 135 lb and 145 lb in her career, but was forced to move down to 135 lb after the UFC got rid of the 145 lb division. Following the loss to Anderson in Dumont’s debut at 145 lb, she attempted to drop down to 135 lb but never even came close to hitting the mark, weighing in at 139.5 for her one fight to actually happen at 135 lb and having another fight canceled because she missed weight so badly. Her next six fights were all at 145 lb, before she returned to 135 lb for her last fight and actually made weight for once. Amazingly, she’s even missed weight trying to make 145 lb, so she’s always someone to monitor closely at weigh-ins.
Overall, Dumont is a BJJ brown belt and a black belt in Sanda, which is a form of Chinese kickboxing, so she’s fairly well rounded. She’s never knocked anybody out and hasn’t looked like any sort of submission threat at the UFC level, but her biggest issue is her non-existent IQ and she’s just completely clueless about pretty much everything. She has all of the physical tools required to make a run in the division, but it almost seems like she consciously chooses not to use them at times. She only averages 3.11 SSL/min and 1.89 SSA/min and has been content with grinding out boring decisions and then calling for title shots. In her nine UFC fights, she landed 17 takedowns on 25 attempts (68% accuracy), while her opponents got her down on 7 of their 25 attempts (72% defense). After failing to land more than two takedowns in any of her first seven UFC fights, she combined to land nine in her last two matches so maybe her coaches finally reversed her lobotomy and convinced her to use her wrestling more.
Fight Prediction:
Aldana will have a 2” height advantage and 1” reach advantage, while Dumont is three years younger than the 36-year-old Aldana.
The key to this matchup will be whether or not Aldana can keep her back off the mat and the cage, as she’ll have a striking advantage out in space. While Aldana has been prone to getting leg kicked, that’s not one of Dumont’s primary attacks and she’s only landed 52 leg strikes in her entire nine-fight UFC career (0.42/min). Aldana has a respectable 72% takedown defense, although at times has struggled with being taken down by certain fighters. Amanda Nunes got her down six times, Macy Chiasson took her down three times, and even Holly Holm was able to land five takedowns against her. However, Aldana’s other 10 UFC opponents only combined to land two takedowns against her. Dumont should be looking to test Aldana’s defensive wrestling early and often, although Dumont is also dumber than a bag of rocks and can never be trusted to make smart decisions. However, to her credit, she has been looking to wrestle more lately so maybe she’s evolving. If she can even just tie Aldana up against the fence she could grind out another boring decision win, although she will be dealing with a pro-Mexican crowd and control time isn’t being valued like it used to by the judges. So a split decision where Dumont finished ahead in control time but Aldana led in strikes would not be at all surprising. Aldanan will also have a shot at knocking Dumont out if she can avoid being controlled and Dumont doesn’t have the best chin, while she also cuts a lot of weight. While a decision could go either way, when you factor in Aldana’s finishing upside we prefer her side of things in a fight that’s lined as a pick’em.
Our favorite bet here is “Irene Aldana ML” at -110.
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DFS Implications:
Aldana has averaged 90 DraftKings in her eight UFC wins and has shown a solid scoring floor, but failed to top 88 points in her last five wins that made it out of the first round. She won a super high-volume decision in her last outing, but still “only” scored 88 points in the process, after putting up 74 points in a third round knockout win just before that. The only two times she’s topped the century mark were in her two first round finishes, where she returned DraftKings scores of 117 and 110 points respectively. Now she’s facing an opponent who should be looking to hold her against the fence and take her down, which will make it almost impossible for Aldana to score well without a well timed finish. Working in her favor, Aldana is a dangerous striker and will also look for submissions on the ground, leaving her with multiple ways to finish Dumont, who’s looked a little chinny at times and was knocked out in the first round of her UFC debut. We give Aldana more of a chance to land a finish than the oddsmakers do, but it’s still far more likely that this ends in a low-volume decision. Also worth pointing out, FanDuel completely botched the pricing in this fight, setting Aldana at just $14 and Dumont at $13 for no apparent reason. That adds to Aldana’s appeal over there, where the scoring is already better suited for her style of fighting. The odds imply Aldana has a 51% chance to win, a 13% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.
Dumont has fought to eight straight decisions after getting knocked out in her UFC debut and has yet to show any sort of finishing upside at the UFC level. However, she will look to wrestle and often accrues large amounts of control time, which boosts her scoring on Draftkings, where she’s averaged 83 points. She scored 90 or more points in three of her last four decision wins, but all of those were favorable matchups and she’ll face a tougher test here against a former title challenger in Aldana. While Aldana has a pretty decent 76% takedown defense, we have seen her give up multiple takedowns at times and she’s primarily a striker. So Dumont will have a chance of grinding out a boring decision win on the fence and the mat, which at her cheap price tag could be enough for her to sneak into winning DraftKings lineups, although she’ll need a finish or a crazy number of takedowns to be useful on FanDuel. The line has moved in her favor taking her from a slight underdog to a pick’em, so she’s now underpriced on both sites. That makes her a good low-risk play on DraftKings, but we’re still disinterested in playing her on FanDuel. The odds imply Dumont has a 49% chance to win, a 12% chance to land a finish, and a 5% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #5
Ronaldo Rodriguez
2nd UFC Fight (1-0)Rodriguez is coming off a late second round submission win in his UFC debut against a fraudulent Denys Bondar, who was still able to take Rodriguez down four times and finished ahead 41-31 in significant strikes, while also winning the first round. That win came in front of Rodriguez’s home Mexican crowd, where he had previously been competing on the regional scene, winning five straight fights leading up to his UFC debut. He originally tried to crack the UFC roster through DWCS in 2020 but lost a decision to a terrible Jerome Rivera, who then went 0-4 in the UFC with three losses within six minutes. Rodriguez’s last win on the regional came in a third round doctor stoppage after his 11-11 journeyman opponent injured his leg late in round two and could barely walk in the third round. Prior to that, Rodriguez jumped guillotine in the second round of a close fight to finish things, after winning a pair of decisions.
Now 16-2 as a pro, Rodriguez has seven wins by KO/TKO, five submissions, and three decision wins. He’s never been finished, with both of his losses ending in close decisions when he was just 18 and 21 years old respectively. Rodriguez spent almost all of his career at 135 lb, but did drop down to 125 lb when he went on DWCS and had a 130 lb Catchweight fight just before that. He recently dropped back down to 125 lb for his UFC debut, where it appears he’ll stay. He notably missed weight for each of his last two 135 lb fights, tipping the scale at 137.6 lb for the first of those and then 139.6 lb after that, so it’s somewhat surprising he can even make 125 lb and is always someone to watch on the scale.
Overall, Rodriguez is a somewhat well rounded fighter and has also looked pretty durable to this point in his career. However, he can be overly patient at times and we’ve never seen him put up a big striking total or land more than two takedowns in a fight. He’s still only 25 years old so he should be continuing to grow and improve all the time and he’s spent time training with Daniel Zellhuber and Manuel Torres in the past, who he’ll be fighting alongside on this card.
Ode Osbourne
10th UFC Fight (4-5)Osbourne is coming off two straight submission losses and has been finished within two rounds in three of his last fights. His only win over that stretch was a close/questionable split decision over Charles Johnson, who was stepping in on short notice. He got dominated on the mat and finished via rear-naked choke by Jafel Filho and Asu Almabaev in his last two fights, who are both dangerous grapplers. Osbourne also got knocked out in the first round by an aging Tyson Nam just before defeating Johnson and all five of Osbourne’s UFC losses ended early, including four in the first round. While he also has two first round knockouts of his own in the UFC, those came against ultra low-level opponents in Zarrukh Adashev and Jerome Rivera—who notably has a win over Ronaldo Rodriguez. Osbourne’s other two UFC wins both ended in close decisions, which are the only two times he’s been to the judges since 2016. Osbourne punched his ticket to the UFC with a 2019 first round submission win on DWCS and then got submitted in the first round of his UFC debut against Brian Kelleher, with both of those fights taking place at 135 lb. Osbourne then planned on dropping down to 125 lb to fight Jerome Rivera, but ended up dropping out. He was then booked against Denys Bondar two and a half weeks later at a 140 lb Catchweight, but Bondar dropped out and then Rivera stepped back in on short notice, with the fight being moved up to 145 lb. After all the shuffling, Osbourne landed a 26 second knockout against the extremely fragile Rivera, and then resumed his move down to 125 lb, where he’s stayed since outside of one 130 lb Catchweight match in 2023.
Now 12-7 as a pro, Osbourne has five wins by KO/TKO, four submissions, and three decision victories. He’s been knocked out twice, submitted four times, and has one decision loss. His last six losses all ended in under nine minutes, while his lone decision loss occurred back in 2016 in his first trip to the judges. Both of Osbourne’s early wins in the UFC came against very low-level opponents and only two of his seven pre-UFC finishes came against opponents with winning records, so take his finishes with a grain of salt. Up until he moved down to 125 lb for his last seven fights (3-4), Osbourne had competed at 135 lb (6-3) and 145 lb (3-0), and he only has one career finish at 125 lb. While Osbourne’s second most recent fight ended in round two, his other most recent 17 fights all either ended in round one (8-5) or went the distance (3-1). He won the last three decisions he went to, but all of those were close and two of them were split.
Overall, Osbourne is a good athlete with quick striking, but has terrible defensive wrestling and seems pretty clueless when it comes to defending submissions. He’s looked less explosive since dropping down to 125 lb and slows down some as fights go on. Only one of his nine career finishes came beyond the first round and that was 70 seconds into the second round of his 2015 pro debut. While Osbourne technically has a background in wrestling, you wouldn’t know it by watching him fight and between his nine UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, he only landed 5 of his 18 takedown attempts (27.8% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 6 of their 17 attempts (64.7% defense). Everyone who tried to take him down landed at least one of their attempts and he’s been submitted four times in his career. So his ground game has been far from impressive despite the fact he wrestled in both high-school and college. Leading up to his last fight he claimed to be working on his wrestling, although he said he was working with a bunch of high-school wrestlers, so who knows the level of training he’s actually getting on the mats. He also hasn’t been very durable and part of that can be attributed to the fact that he keeps his chin high and his hands low. He claims to struggle with his weight cuts on the road because he doesn’t have the help of the UFC PI, but he’ll get to stay at home in Vegas for this next fight.
Fight Prediction:
Osbourne will have a 1” height advantage and 8” reach advantage, while Rodriguez is seven years younger than the 32-year-old Osbourne.
It will be interesting to see how much Rodriguez looks to wrestle in this fight, as Osbourne has looked terrible on the mat recently and is very prone to being submitted. While Rodriguez will mix in wrestling at times, he failed to land any in two of his last three fights and is more of a striker and an opportunistic submission threat. So if the fight does hit the mat, he’ll have a decent shot at locking something up, but we’re not overly confident that he’ll be looking to wrestle a ton. Rodriguez has looked durable and has never been finished, lowering the chances that Osbourne can finish him. That could leave Osbourne more reliant on outlanding his way to a decision if he wants to pull off the upset and it’s always hard to trust a guy who absorbs more strikes than he lands on average (3.46 SSL/min vs. 4.44 SSA/min). With that said, Rodriguez isn’t a very high-volume striker either and it could be hard for either of these two to really separate themself from the other on the statsheet, which could result in a close split decision. Just keep in mind that Osbourne has only been to two decisions in the last eight years and there’s a good chance that Rodriguez can finish him. While we’re not really sold on Rodriguez, we’re even lower on Osbourne, so we’ll pick Rodriguez to win and think he’ll have a decent shot at getting Osbourne out of there before the judges are required.
Our favorite bet here is “Ronaldo Rodriguez ML” at -138.
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DFS Implications:
Rodriguez is coming off a late second round submission win that was good for 106 DraftKings points, but only because he secured a flukey number of reversals in the match (3). In general, he doesn’t land enough striking volume or takedowns to really get us excited about playing him in DFS and a lot of his fights end in lower volume decisions. Another big red flag for Rodriguez is that he lost a decision to a terrible Jerome Rivera on DWCS. With all that said, Rodriguez has decent power and okay submission skills and is now facing an opponent in Osbourne who’s been incredibly prone to being finished. Rodriguez has multiple ways to end this fight early, but the longer it lasts the tougher time he’ll have returning value due to his lack of output. To really score well, he’ll likely need a finish in the first round. The odds imply Rodriguez has a 60% chance to win, a 36% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.
Osbourne has been a R1 finish or bust fighter throughout his career, but 11 of his last 14 fights ended in the opening five minutes. However, he only has two finishes in nine UFC appearances and those came against absolutely terrible opponents in Jerome Rivera and Zarrukh Adashev, who combined to go 1-7 in the UFC with five early losses. Osbourne finished each of them in 61 seconds or less, scoring 127 and 103 DraftKings points respectively. However, in his two decision wins, Osbourne scored just 70 and 69 DraftKings points, and both of those decisions were really close. Even at his cheaper price tag, he’s unlikely to score enough to be useful without a finish, and he’s also been finished himself in six of his seven career losses, leaving him with a nonexistent scoring floor. Also working against Osbourne is that Rodriguez has never been finished. However, this is a pretty low-level fight overall, which carries some inherent volatility and Osbourne at least has a history of quick finishes. The odds imply Osbourne has a 40% chance to win, a 24% chance to land a finish, and a 12% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #4
Daniel Zellhuber
5th UFC Fight (3-1)Zellhuber is coming off a high-volume decision win over Francisco Prado in a pure striking battle where no takedowns were attempted. Zellhuber finished ahead 120-90 in significant strikes and one judge even gave him a 10-8 in round two. That’s Zellhuber’s third straight win, after he lost a decision to Trey Ogden in his 2022 UFC debut. Zellhuber bounced back from that loss with a decision win over UFC veteran Lando Vannata, where Zellhuber was robbed of a first round finish after he had Vannata badly hurt and covering up on the mat as Zellhuber rained down punches. However, Vannata survived with a long leash from the ref and the later rounds were far less eventful as Zellhuber cruised to a decision win. Zellhuber followed that up with a second round submission win over the highly submittable Christos Giagos in his next fight, leading up to his recent decision win over Prado. Zellhuber originally punched his ticket to the UFC with a decision win over Lucas Almeida on DWCS in 2021 and four of his last five fights went the distance after 9 of his first 11 pro matches ended in early wins on the Mexican regional scene.
Now 15-1 as a pro, Zellhuber has seven wins by KO/TKO, three submissions, and five decision victories. Two of his three submission wins occurred in the first round, with the other ending in round two. He has three first round knockouts, three more in round two, and one in round three. He’s never been finished, with his only loss going the distance in his UFC debut.
Overall, Zellhuber is a tall, rangy fighter who’s a solid striker with dangerous kicks and also likes to look for leg locks on the mat. While he typically relies on his striking, he’s also a BJJ black belt who can win fights both on the ground and the feet. He has the ability to put up big striking numbers, while mixing in occasional takedown attempts and also has a solid takedown defense. Between his DWCS appearance and his four UFC fights, he landed one of his three takedown attempts (33.3% accuracy), while he’s only been taken down once on 18 opponent attempts (94.4% defense). He’s still only 25 years old and should be improving all the time, as he trains out of Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas, after growing up in Mexico City.
Esteban Ribovics
4th UFC Fight (2-1)Ribovics is fresh off a quick 37 second first round head kick knockout win over Terrance McKinney, which was Ribovics’ first finish in the UFC. That came 10 months after Ribovics notched his first UFC win in a decision over the cardiovascularly challenged Kamuela Kirk, where Prado lost the first round and then won each of the later rounds. Kirk immediately took Ribovics down in round one and controlled him on the mat for the entire round. However, Kirk only landed 2 of his 13 takedown attempts in rounds two and three and Ribovics was able to return to his feet on both of those later takedowns. While Kirk unsurprisingly slowed down in the later rounds, Ribovics pushed a solid 15 minute pace, outlanding Kirk 65-35 in significant strikes in round two and 49-19 in round three, while also landing a takedown of his own in each of those rounds. Ribovics finished ahead 115-56 in significant strikes. Prior to that, Ribovics suffered the first loss of his career when he dropped a decision in his March 2023 UFC debut against Loik Radzhabov. Radzhabov took Ribovics down 11 times on 21 attempts with over seven and a half minutes of control time. Leading up to that loss, Ribovics finished his first 11 pro opponents with the last of those wins coming in a first round knockout on DWCS. His last four finishes all ended in quick knockouts in 90 seconds or less, with three of those coming in the opening 37 seconds of fights. Six of his last eight wins ended in round one and after looking to grapple more early in his career, he now seems content with looking for knockouts.
Now 13-1 as a pro, Ribovics has seven wins by KO/TKO, five submissions, and one decision victory. Seven of his wins came in round one, one ended in round two, and four occurred in round three. His last six victories all ended in knockouts, while he landed three straight kimura finishes from 2016 to 2019.
Overall, Ribovics is an aggressive Argentinian brawler who’s all offense and no defense. He comes out swinging and the only defensive grappling technique he knows is to look for kimuras. His takedown defense has looked bad, but he’s done a decent job of using kimura attempts to reverse positions on the mat. Between his three UFC fights and his DWCS appearance, he landed two of his three takedown attempts (66.7% accuracy), while his opponents got him down on 14 of their 35 attempts (60% defense). He averages an impressive 6.20 SSL/min and even in his UFC debut where he got taken down 11 times and controlled for over seven and a half minutes, he still landed 66 significant strikes. And despite getting controlled on the mat for the entire first round in his next match and having 14 takedowns attempted against him, he was still able to land 115 significant strikes. Ribovics has been training at Kill Cliff FC and is still just 28 years old, so he should also be making improvements between every fight.
Fight Prediction:
Zellhuber will have a 3” height advantage and 8” reach advantage.
This sets up as an exciting striking battle between two young prospects. Ribovics biggest weakness has been his defensive wrestling, but Zellhuber has only landed one takedown on three attempts in his last five fights and is generally content with keeping fights standing. Ribovics is more of a reckless brawler, while Zellhuber is much more tactical with his approach, but can still put up big striking totals. Zellhuber is so tall and long, that he’ll be able to snipe Ribovics from distance, and Ribovics may have trouble constantly closing the distance. Neither of these two have ever been finished and we like Zellhuber to outland his way to a decision win.
Our favorite bet here is “Daniel Zellhuber DEC” at +140.
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DFS Implications:
Zellhuber has only averaged 80 DraftKings points in his three UFC wins, with two of those going the distance. Even in his lone finish, he still only scored 85 points in a second round submission and his lack of offensive wrestling has really limited his upside. Despite landing 120 significant strikes in his last win, he still only scored 78 DraftKings points and he never even attempted a takedown. Despite being a BJJ black belt, he’s content with keeping fights standing and generally uses his grappling more for defensive purposes, as he only landed one takedown on three attempts in his last five fights. So while he’s facing an opponent who’s struggled with being taken down, we definitely can’t trust Zellhuber to exploit that. That likely leaves Zellhuber reliant on landing a knockout to return value at his high price tag and Ribovics has never been finished in his career. The odds imply Zellhuber has a 66% chance to win, a 25% chance to land a finish, and a 13% chance it comes in round one.
Ribovics is coming off his first UFC finish where he landed a highlight reel head kick knockout in just 37 seconds against Terrance McKinney. With the help of the Quick Win Bonus, Ribovics scored 127 DraftKings points in that knockout, after he put up 92 points in a decision victory just before that. So he’s shown solid scoring potential with or without a finish and he averages an impressive 6.20 SSL/min, despite the fact that he’s struggled with being taken down and controlled. Now he’s facing an opponent who rarely looks to wrestle and who averages 5.06 SSA/min, which is encouraging for Ribovics’ chances of putting up a solid striking total. With that said, Zellhuber is a talented fighter with really good size and Ribovics could struggle to find his range in this matchup. Zellhuber has also never been finished, which lowers the chances that Ribovics can get him out of there early. Furthermore, Zellhuber trains in Las Vegas and is one of the Mexican fighters on this card, which probably gives him a leg up when it comes to crowd support and judging on this Mexican Independence Day themed card. Nevertheless, at Ribovics cheap price tag he may not need to put up a huge score to be useful and if we get a card with very few underdog winners he would even have a slight chance of being useful in a high-volume decision loss. The odds imply Ribovics has a 34% chance to win, a 14% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #3
Diego Lopes
6th UFC Fight (4-1)This fight had been booked on UFC 303 back in June, but after Ortega requested it be moved from 145 lb to 155 lb the night before weigh-ins, he then dropped out on fight day and was replaced by Dan Ige at the last minute. Naturally the change was announced until after the card had started. Lopes went on to win a 29-28 decision over Ige, although notably slowed down late in the fight and lost the third round after looking close to locking up a submission in the first two rounds. Prior to that, Lopes had finished three straight opponents in 98 seconds or less. The most recent of those finishes came on the UFC 300 card in a first round TKO against Sodiq Yusuff. Lopes dropped Yusuff with an uppercut in the opening minute of the fight and then just swarmed him with a barrage of strikes until the ref pulled him off. It was arguably a quick stoppage but things likely wouldn’t have changed even if the ref had let it go on a little bit longer. Lopes originally burst onto the UFC scene in May 2023 when he made his debut on short notice against the undefeated Movsar Evloev. While Lopes wasn’t able to pull off the upset as a massive +600 underdog, he gave a good account of himself as he finished with four official submission attempts and looked close to finding a finish at multiple points. He then took on Gavin Tucker and locked up an impressive first round armbar after Tucker foolishly looked to take Lopes down. For context, Tucker was coming off a two and a half year layoff following a 22 second R1 KO loss to Dan Ige and hasn’t won a fight since 2020. Nevertheless, it was a slick submission by Lopes. Next, Lopes took on a high level grappler in Pat Sabatini and knocked him out in just 90 seconds. Sabatini has looked kind of chinny at times in the past, so the results weren’t entirely shocking, but it was another impressive first round finish nonetheless. Lopes originally tried to crack the UFC roster through DWCS in 2021 against a really dangerous Joanderson Brito, and looked close to locking up a submission there as well, but ultimately lost a technical decision following a third round eye poke that he sustained. That forced him to return to the regional scene, where he then compounded the misstep when he lost a five-round split decision, before bouncing back with a pair of late-round KO/TKO victories that resulted in the UFC giving him a shot.
Now 25-6 as a pro, Lopes has 10 wins by KO/TKO, 12 submissions, and three decision victories. He has a pair of second round KO/TKO losses (2014 & 2018), and four decision defeats. Seven of his last eight wins came early, while his last three losses all went the distance.
Overall, Lopes is a Brazilian grappler and BJJ black belt who loves looking for submissions off his back and has also looked very dangerous on the feet recently. At 5’11” he’s got good size for the 145 lb division, but doesn’t fight especially long. He has a dangerous lead left hook and throws nasty uppercuts, while also mixing in leg kicks. He generally doesn’t land a ton of volume and only averages 3.24 SSL/min, but he makes his strikes count when he does land. He trains at Lobo Gym and is Alexa Grasso’s jiu jitsu coach, so clearly he’s a respected grappler and will be fighting just before Grasso on this card. Between his DWCS appearance and his five UFC fights, Lopes got taken down by his opponents 8 times on 15 attempts (46.7% defense), while landing just one takedown of his own on four attempts. He can be a little too content with playing jiu jitsu off his back, which has resulted in him going just 3-4 with the judges in his career, and he fights to finish, not to win on the scorecards.
Brian Ortega
13th UFC Fight (8-3, NC)Ortega’s last fight against Yair Rodriguez couldn’t have started out much worse for him, as he rolled his ankle during introductions and then got dropped a minute into the fight. However, he was able to buy time to recover on his back on the mat and Rodriguez appeared to punch himself out going for the finish in a fight that took place at a really high elevation in Mexico City. That allowed Ortega to turn the tables in round two as he controlled Rodriguez on the mat. Ortega took Rodriguez down again early in round three and submitted him shortly thereafter. That win came 19 months after those two squared off for the first time back in July 2022. That fight abruptly ended in the first round due to an Ortega shoulder injury that resulted in multiple surgeries and a 19 month layoff. That followed a September 2021 five-round title fight decision loss to Alexander Volkanovski, where Ortega suffered a life-shortening amount of damage. Other than his recent victory over Rodriguez, Ortega’s only other win since 2018 was a 2020 five-round decision win over The Korean Zombie, who was clearly on the decline. While Ortega is just 2-3 in his last five fights, he went undefeated in his first 15 pro matches, including his first seven in the UFC. However, a first round win in his UFC debut was overturned to a No Contest when he tested positive for steroids and he fully admitted to taking them. However, he came back a year later and finished six straight opponents, before suffering his first career loss in a post R4 doctor stoppage against Max Holloway in 2018. Following the loss, Ortega switched camps but didn’t fight again for 22 months after suffering a partially torn ACL during training in November of 2019. He’s struggled with inactivity since that 2018 loss to Holloway, fighting just four times since. Ortega’s last five fights were all scheduled to go five rounds and this will be his first three-round fight since 2018.
Now 16-3 as a pro, Ortega has three wins by KO/TKO, eight submissions, and five decision victories. He has two TKO losses on his record and one decision defeat. While 10 of Ortega’s 12 UFC fights ended early, 9 of his last 11 matches made it to the second round, with the two exceptions being a 2018 R1 KO win over Frankie Edgar and a 2022 R1 TKO loss due to injury. Seven of his eight UFC wins ended early, with five of those finishes coming in round three. Four of his last five fights made it to the third round, with three of those going into the championship rounds, and two ending in five-round decisions.
Overall, Ortega is a BJJ black belt and dangerous submission threat who mostly looks to lock in guillotines and triangle chokes. However, he’s only landed 12 of his 44 takedown attempts in 12 UFC fights (27.3% accuracy). On the other side of things, his opponents got him down on 11 of their 26 attempts (57.7% defense). However, after only landing one takedown on seven attempts in his first seven UFC fights, he landed 11 on 37 attempts in his last five matches, getting all of those opponents down at least once. He’s also improved his striking in recent years and we’ve seen his striking volume increase as his UFC career has gone on. His biggest issue has simply been staying healthy, but he’s still only 33 years old. He had been talking about moving up to 155 lb, but instead got this 145 lb fight rebooked.
Fight Prediction:
Lopes will have a 3” height and reach advantage, while also being four years younger than the 33-year-old Ortega.
This is an interesting matchup, as both guys are really solid grapplers and also decent strikers. Lopes has looked like more of a knockout threat, but Ortega has far more UFC experience and this will be a step up in competition for Lopes. While Lopes is a really dangerous submission threat, he rarely lands many takedowns and tends to spend time being controlled on the mat while he looks for finishes. It’s sort of the same deal on the feet, as he doesn’t land a ton of striking volume, but looks to knock opponents out with the shots he does land. His style of fighting is fun to watch and often results in finishes, but typically doesn’t score as well with the judges. That presents an opportunity for Ortega to control him on the mat for periods of time and win a decision. Both guys are skilled enough on the ground that we’d be surprised to see either of them submit the other unless someone is severely compromised first. So we either see this ending in a knockout or a decision and we don’t really think Ortega knocks Lopes out. Therefore, if it does end early, it’s most likely because Lopes knocks Ortega out. And if it goes the distance, we like Ortega’s chances of getting his hand raised. We were more bullish on Lopes’ chances of landing a knockout the first time the fight was booked when Ortega was cutting a ton of weight on two weeks’ notice, but the new circumstances are more favorable for Ortega and we’ll say he wins a close decision.
Our favorite bet here is “Brian Ortega DEC” at +380.
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DFS Implications:
Lopes’ scoring finally came back down to Earth in his last win, where he only scored 70 DraftKings points in a decision win over Dan Ige, who was filling in at literally the last minute in an unprecedented turn of events where a matchup was changed after the slate locked. Prior to that, Lopes had landed three straight first round finishes and was quickly running through everyone the UFC put in front of him. However, his series of quick finishes also masked his lack of striking volume and takedowns, and he’s also been prone to being controlled on the mat. That generally leaves him reliant on landing well timed finishes to score well in DFS and he’s just 3-4 with the judges in his career. He’s facing a step up in competition here and Ortega is a fellow BJJ black belt and high-level grappler, which lowers the chances of Lopes completing a submission. That leaves Lopes as a KO or bust option who could still fail to return value with a poorly timed finish in the later rounds. The odds imply Lopes has a 64% chance to win, a 34% chance to land a finish, and an 18% chance it comes in round one.
Ortega has a long history of landing late finishes that don’t score very well. Seven of his eight UFC wins ended early, but he only averaged 86 DraftKings points in those eight victories and that number is bolstered by a five-round decision win over The Korean Zombie that was good for 118 points. If we remove that, his average drops to just 81 points and amazingly, he scored 85 or fewer DraftKings points in six of his seven early wins. The one exception was a 2018 first round knockout against Frankie Edgar that scored 110 points. That was the last time Ortega knocked anybody out and now he’s facing a fellow high-level grappler who has never been submitted. That lowers Ortega’s chances of landing a finish and leaves him more reliant on winning a wrestling-heavy decision to score well on DraftKings. That’s certainly possible here, as we’ve seen him look for more takedowns recently and Lopes has just a 42% takedown defense and tends to get controlled on the mat for periods of time while he looks for submissions off his back. However, that leaves us less interested in Ortega on FanDuel, where that style of fight won’t score as well. The odds imply Ortega has a 36% chance to win, a 20% chance to land a finish, and a 9% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #2
Alexa Grasso
13th UFC Fight (8-3-1)Grasso is almost exactly a year removed from a draw against Shevchenko in their second fight. Shevchenko entered as a -165 favorite and was able to take Grasso down four times in the fight and finished with eight and a half minutes of control time, but Grass edged her out in significant strikes 84-80 and in total strikes 262-199, while also knocking her down in round two. All three judges agreed that Shevchenko won rounds one and three and that Grasso won rounds two and five. However, round four was understandably split and then one judge somehow gave Grass a 10-8 in round five to force the draw. Shevchenko would have won the decision had one more judge scored round four in her favor or if there hadn’t been a rogue 10-8 fifth round. Prior to that, Grasso won the belt against Shevchenko with a late fourth round submission in a fight where she was behind on the scorecards leading up to the finish. Shevchenko entered that first matchup as a massive -900 favorite and was able to find success on the mat in that fight, as she took Grasso down four times and controlled her for five and a half minutes, while also finishing ahead in significant strikes. However, Shevchenko didn’t look like herself on the feet and Grasso seemed to be the one landing the bigger shots in the striking exchanges. Nevertheless, Shevchenko led 29-28 after three rounds, before Grasso surprisingly pulled off just the second submission of her career. Grasso has yet to lose a UFC fight since moving up to 125 lb in 2020, after she went 3-3 at 115 lb in her first six Octagon appearances.
Now 16-3-1 as a pro, Grasso has four wins by KO/TKO, two submissions, and 10 decision victories. Three of her four KO/TKO wins came in her first three pro fights against opponents who entered with no experience and the other was in her 6th pro match, back in 2014. She’s never been knocked out and the only time she’s been finished was in a 2018 R1 submission loss to Tatiana Suarez. Her other two losses both went the distance.
This will be the 4th five-round fight of Grasso’s career, with the previous three coming in her last three matches. The first of those ended in a decision win over Viviane Araujo, the second ended in a 4th round submission win over Valentina Shevchenko, and the third ended in a draw. So they all made it into the championship rounds and she’s shown no issues with going the full 25 minutes and still looking for finishes late.
Overall, Grasso is a solid boxer and has talked about how she’s been working on her grappling to become a more well rounded fighter. The stats back that up to some extent, as Grasso only landed one takedown in her first six UFC fights, but has landed four in her last six matches. Also, both of her career submission wins occurred in her last four fights. In terms of her defensive grappling/wrestling, she’s been taken down 25 times on 61 attempts (59% defense) in her 12 UFC fights, and her last eight opponents who tried to take her down all landed multiple of their attempts. She’s been training with solid wrestlers/grapplers like Loopy Godinez and Diego Lopes at Lobo Gym, and at 31 years old she’s in the prime of her career.
Valentina Shevchenko
18th UFC Fight (12-4-1)Following Shevchenko’s draw against Grasso, the two fighters went on to coach The Ultimate Fighter against one another. Prior to losing the belt to Grasso, Shevchenko nearly lost another title fight, as she barely scraped by in a close split decision against Taila Santos. Shevchenko appeared to lose the first three rounds in that fight, but got bailed out by two of the three judges, who gave her round two despite getting taken down and controlled for nearly four minutes, while also getting reversed on the mat at one point. That was Shevchenko’s ninth straight win at time after she moved down to 125 lb following her second loss to Amanda Nunes at 135 lb back in 2017. Shevchenko started that winning streak with a second round submission win over Priscila Cachoeira in 2018, before winning the Flyweight belt over Joanna Jedrzejczyk later that year and then defending it seven times before losing it to Grasso. Five of her nine UFC wins at Flyweight came early, with all of those finishes occuring in the later rounds, including three in round two, one in round three, and the other in round four. The last four of those finishes all ended in KO/TKOs and she hasn’t submitted anybody since 2018 in her first fight after dropping down to Flyweight.
Now 23-4-1 as a pro, Shevchenko has eight wins by KO/TKO, seven submissions, and eight decision victories. She’s been finished twice, with a 2023 fourth round submission loss to Alexa Grasso and a 2010 second round doctor stoppage after Liz Carmouche landed an upkick that split Shevchenko open above her eye. Shevchenko’s other two losses both ended in decisions against Amanda Nunes when Shevchenko was still fighting up at 135 lb. The most recent of those was a five-round split-decision for the Bantamweight belt. After fighting almost all of her early career at 135 lb, Shevchenko dropped down to 125 lb following the second loss to Nunes. All 17 of Shevchenko’s UFC fights made it out of the first round, with 12 seeing round three, and nine going into the championship rounds.
This will be the 11th straight and 14th five-round fight of Shevchenko’s career (10-2-1), and the last time she took part in a three-round match was in 2018. She had won eight straight five round fights leading up to her loss to Grasso, with four of those ending early and four going the distance. Here are all of her five-round fights:
2023 R5 Draw vs. Alex Grasso (125 lb title fight)
2023 R4 SUB L vs. Alex Grasso (125 lb title fight)
2022 R5 DEC W vs. Taila Santos (125 lb title fight)
2021 R4 TKO W vs. Lauren Murphy (125 lb title fight)
2021 R2 TKO W vs. Jessica Andrade (125 lb title fight)
2020 R5 DEC W vs. Jennifer Maia (125 lb title fight)
2020 R3 TKO W vs. Katlyn Cerminara (125 lb title fight)
2019 R5 DEC W vs. Liz Carmouche (125 lb title fight)
2019 R2 KO W vs. Jessica Eye (125 lb title fight)
2018 R5 DEC W vs. Joanna Jedrzejczyk (125 lb title fight)
2017 R5 DEC L vs. Amanda Nunes (135 lb title fight)
2017 R2 SUB W vs. Julianna Pena (135 lb fight)
2016 R5 DEC W vs. Holly Holm (135 lb fight)
Overall, Shevchenko offers a dangerous combination of striking and grappling, but is now 36 years old and underwhelmed in each of her last three performances. It’s been three years since she put on a dominant performance and you have to wonder about the current rate of her decline. She amazingly turned pro all the way back in 2003 when she was just 15 years old and has a lot of wear and tear on her body. Historically, she’s done a good job of seamlessly stitching together combinations of punches and kicks, while doing a great job of controlling the distance and counter striking. She’s also landed at least one takedown in all of her UFC fights except her second match against Amanda Nunes. Since moving down to 125 lb, Shevchenko landed 39 takedowns on 57 attempts (68.4% accuracy). On the other side of things, in her 11 UFC Flyweight fights she’s been taken down five times on 15 attempts (66.6%). Also notable since dropping down to Flyweight, the only two opponents to land more than 55 significant strikes against Shevchenko were Joanna Jedrzejczyk and Alex Grasso.
Fight Prediction:
Both fighters are 5’5” with a 66” reach, but Grasso is five years younger than the 36-year-old Shevchenko.
Looking at their first two fights, Grasso was able to win the majority of the striking exchanges, but Shevchenko showed a clear wrestling advantage. However, they each showed the ability to hunt for submissions on the mat and be dangerous from top position. The 50 million dollar question is how will Shevchenko look at 36 years old and after a year away. Sure she was ahead in the first fight before getting submitted and arguably won the second fight, but both of those were close and it definitely looks like she’s on the decline. However, she’s also shown the ability to get Grasso down with relative ease, so there’s still a clear path to victory for Shevchenko on the mat. However, we’ve seen that one slipup can lead to serious problems for Shevchenko and if she has lost a step then it may be tougher for her to avoid another fight losing mistake over the course of 25 minutes. Grasso has shown the ability to hurt Shevchenko on the feet and lock up submissions on the mat, leaving her with multiple ways to end things. And we saw last year that the judging on Mexican Independence Day shockingly leans towards the Mexicans. With age and the judges on her side, Grasso will have every opportunity to close out the trilogy with a win if she can stay off her back, although that could be easier said than done given her 59% career takedown defense. With that said, Shevchenko entered the first matchup as a -900 favorite and the second as a -175 favorite, but is now a +115 underdog coming into the third fight, so all the betting momentum is in Grasso’s favor. With Grasso continuing to make improvements in her prime and Shevchenko likely on the decline, the shift in odds seems justified. We like Grasso’s chances of winning and it wouldn’t be shocking to see her finish Shevchenko once again given how quickly she’s been able to take her back and fish for rear-naked chokes when given any opportunity. However, it’s still more likely that this ends in a relatively close decision with Grasso finishing ahead on the feet and Shevchenko finding some wrestling success.
Our favorite bet here is “Alexa Grasso DEC” at +200.
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DFS Implications:
Grasso has shown a solid scoring floor but not much of a ceiling for most of her UFC career, averaging 88 DraftKings points in her eight wins, despite six of those ending with the judges. Her first five UFC victories all ended in three-round decisions that scored between 71 and 92 points, but two of her last four wins came by submission. The only time she’s hit the century mark on DraftKings was in a 2022 first round submission win over Joanne Wood, and she “only” scored 91 points in her fourth round submission win over Shevchenko. However, she scored 94 points in a draw in the rematch against Shevchenko, showing the potential for a big score had the decision gone her way. She also put up 99 points in a five-round decision win over Viviane Araujo, which isn’t a huge score but could easily still be enough for her to be useful at her reasonable price tag. Shevchenko is now 36 years old and seemingly on the decline, while Grasso has already finished her once. So there are plenty of reasons for optimism with Grasso, although her 59% takedown defense is concerning. Shevchenko was able to get her down and control her in each of their first two fights, where she landed a combined eight takedowns. So we can’t necessarily call Grasso a safe play, but momentum seems to be in her favor and the fight is favored to go the distance, which should provide a decent floor for both fighters. The odds imply Grasso has a 56% chance to win, a 23% chance to land a finish, and a 7% chance it comes in round one.
Shevchenko has averaged 109 DraftKings points in her 12 UFC wins, scoring 108 or more in each of the last four of those. She scored 91 points in the draw against Grasso, which seemingly should have gone her way, and if it had she would have put up 121 points. And despite losing their previous fight, Shevchenko was on pace to score 133 DraftKings points and 117 points on FanDuel if she had won a decision instead of getting submitted late in the fourth round. Prior to that, Shevchenko won her first nine UFC Flyweight fights, averaging 115 DraftKings points in the process, with seven scores of 107 or more and three slate-breaking totals of 134 or greater. Despite getting taken down three times and controlled for nearly nine minutes by Taila Santos in her last win, Shevchenko still scored 115 DraftKings points in a five-round split-decision. While it’s fair to debate the extent and rate of Shevchenko’s decline, you can’t argue with the fact that she does a great job of filling up the stat sheet and landing a ton of total strikes, even if her significant striking totals are more modest. That typically results in her scoring better on DraftKings than Fanduel and while her last decision win was good for 115 DraftKings points, it only scored 89 points on FanDuel. After seeing how the first two fights against Grasso played out, we expect Shevchenko to come in looking to wrestle once again, so this looks like another spot where she’s a safer play on DraftKings than FanDuel. However, at her reasonable price tag you can definitely use her on both sites and she could even sneak into the DraftKings winner in a loss if we don’t get many underdog winners on the card. The odds imply Shevchenko has a 44% chance to win, a 14% chance to land a finish, and a 4% chance it comes in round one.
Fight #1
Sean O'Malley
13th UFC Fight (10-1, NC)O'Malley is coming off his first UFC title defense in a dominant five-round decision win over Marlon Vera. That was the first time that O'Malley had been in a fight that lasted longer than 15 minutes, but he looked career best and won every round on every scorecard and finished ahead 230-89 in significant strikes in the one-sided affair. Prior to that, he won the belt in an early second round TKO over Aljamain Sterling, where O'Malley pulled off the upset as a +200 underdog. Sterling barely looked to wrestle, failing to land either of his two attempts and it was all around a pathetic performance on his part. That came after O'Malley won a controversial split-decision over Petr Yan, which arguably could have just as easily been scored 30-27 for Yan as 29-28 for O'Malley. Yan was able to take O'Malley down six times on 13 attempts and control him for nearly six minutes, while O'Malley finished ahead in significant strikes 84-58. While two of O'Malley’s last three fights went the distance, those are the only decisions he’s been to in his last 10 fights.
Now 18-1 as a pro, O'Malley has 12 wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and five decision victories. His lone submission win came in the first round of his third pro fight back in 2015, while eight of his knockout wins occurred in round one, two ended in round two, and two came in round three. While six of O’Malley’s 10 UFC wins ended in knockouts, most of those were struggling and low-level opponents and he’s never knocked anybody out that hadn’t previously been knocked out before. O'Malley’s only career loss was a 2020 R1 TKO against Marlon Vera, who shut down O'Malley’s foot with a leg kick that led to the stoppage.
This will be the 3rd five-round fight of O'Malley’s career. His first ended in a second round TKO win over Aljamain Sterling, while his second went the full 25 minutes and ended in a decision victory over Marlon Vera.
Overall, O'Malley is an exciting striker who averages 7.63 SSL/min, while only absorbing 3.52/min. He hasn’t landed a takedown since his UFC debut, and only even attempted one in his last 11 fights. Between his 12 UFC fights and his DWCS appearance he landed 3 of his 7 attempts (42.9% accuracy), with all but one of those attempts coming in his UFC debut. On the other side of things, his opponents got him down on 12 of their 32 attempts (62.5% defense). While it’s rare to see O'Malley grapple in the UFC, he is a BJJ brown belt and will look for submissions off his back when he gets taken down. However, neither his wrestling nor his grappling have impressed us to this point. We also wonder about O'Malley’s durability, which hasn’t been tested much, but looked kind of suspect when it was against Petr Yan. O'Malley has also been injury prone in the past, although has remained healthy for the last four years. O'Malley just showed the ability to go five rounds in a striking battle where he could dictate the pace, but now he’ll face a much different test against a relentless wrestler who pushes an insane pace.
Merab Dvalishvili
13th UFC Fight (10-2)Finally getting his long awaited title shot, Dvalishvili has won 10 straight fights, with the last three of those all coming against former champions. His most recent victory ended in a three-round decision win over an aging Henry Cejudo, who’s 0-2 since coming out of retirement in 2023. Dvalishvili lost the first round and got clipped early on, before coming back to win each of the later rounds. Even against an Olympic gold medalist wrestler, Dvalishvili was still able to land five takedowns on 11 attempts and also finished ahead 74-29 in significant strikes and 167-54 in total strikes. Prior to that, Dvalishvili impressively won a unanimous 50-45 decision against another former champ in Petr Yan. Dvalishvili melted Yan with his non-stop pressure for 25 straight minutes, as he attempted a UFC record-setting 49 takedown attempts, landing 11 of them. Yan came into that fight with an elite 90% takedown defense and to his credit, defended 38 of the 49 attempts from Dvalishvili. However, it didn’t even come down to how many takedowns Dvalishvili landed or how many Yan defended, it simply came down to the pace Dvalishvili was setting, which no other human could hope to keep up with. Dvalishvili blended his striking and wrestling so well that it was just a constant barrage of strestling that Yan had no answer for. We’ve never seen anyone else make Yarn look that lost in a fight. That came after Dvalishvili won a three-round decision against Jose Aldo, despite Aldo successfully defending all 16 of Dvalishvili’s takedown attempts. Aldo is known for his elite takedown defense and just like Yan entered with a 90% career defense. Dvalishvili somehow started 0-2 in the UFC with a split decision loss to Frankie Saenz and a controversial post R3 technical submission stoppage against Ricky Simon. However, he hasn’t lost a fight since. Nine of his 10 UFC wins went the distance, with his only UFC finish coming against Marlon Moraes, who has been knocked out in seven straight fights. Ironically, Moraes is the only fighter to put Dvalishvili in much danger over his current winning streak and nearly had him out of there early in the first round before punching himself out looking for the finish.
Now 17-4 as a pro, Dvalishvili has three wins by KO/TKO, one submission, and 12 decision victories. Three of his four finishes came earlier in his career before he joined the UFC and his second most recent early win was all the way back in 2017. He’s never been knocked out, and the only time he’s ever been finished came in a weird post round three technical submission loss to Ricky Simon in 2018. His other three losses all ended in decisions, with two of those occurring in his first three pro fights.
This will be the 2nd five-round fight of Dvalishvili’s career. The first ended in a super high-paced decision win over Petr Yan in 2023.
Overall, Dvalishvili is a relentless wrestler with an endless gas tank. He’s also improved his striking over the course of his UFC career, largely out of necessity as he’s faced tougher competition that he can’t ragdoll for entire fights. In his 12 UFC fights, Dvalishvili landed 79 takedowns on an insane 215 attempts (36.7% accuracy). On the other side of things, he’s only been taken down by his opponents five times on 26 attempts, (80.8% defense), although only three of his last 10 opponents even tried to take him down. Unsurprisingly, we have seen his takedown efficiency suffer as he’s begun facing tougher competition. In his first six UFC appearances, Dvalishvili landed 52 of his 104 attempts (50% accuracy). However, in his last six fights, Dvalishvili landed just 27 of his 111 attempts (24.3% accuracy). However, that’s where his improved striking and non-stop pressure come into play and he’s proven that even failed takedown attempts are an effective way of weaponizing his cardio.
Fight Prediction:
O'Malley will have a 5” height advantage and 4” reach advantage, while also being four years younger than the 33-year-old Dvalishvili.
This is a pretty straightforward matchup where O'Malley will have a massive striking advantage, but Dvalishvili has a huge edge when it comes to wrestling. Dvalishvili is also a master of weaponizing his insane cardio. However, as the much smaller fighter, Dvalishvili could have issues closing the distance and O'Malley is also the much quicker fighter. So if O'Malley can keep his distance, he should be able to pick Dvalishvili apart from the outside and likely knock him out. O'Malley also throws really dangerous knees up the middle and we’ve seen Dvalishvili hurt at multiple points, and he was nearly finished by the corpse of Marlon Moraes. Dvalishvili suffered a cut above his eye in training just a few weeks ago and it’s entirely possible that O'Malley could open that back up and force a doctor stoppage. It’s no secret that O'Malley is a favorite of Dana White and a marketing machine for the UFC, so they are financially motivated to see him win. And on such a unique card at this one, which will take place at The Sphere, who knows what kind of voodoo mind games the UFC will be playing with the LED backdrop. They definitely have more control over the environment than they ever have before, so if you’re into funny business, it doesn’t get much funnier than this. Dvalishvili hasn’t looked like any sort of finishing threat, leaving him reliant on winning a decision if he wants to come out victorious. That’s always tougher when you’re going against the champ, as the judges generally favor the incumbent. Dvalishvili has also never faced anyone as tall as O'Malley in the UFC, so this is a new type of test for him. So while we love Dvalishvili’s pace and wrestling, he does seemingly have everything else working against him and this kind of feels like a setup. When you combine O'Malley’s finishing upside with his potential to win a close decision, it’s understandable why he’s a slight favorite. Dvalishvili will have a real shot at simply outworking his way to a decision win, but with five rounds to work we lean slightly towards O'Malley finishing him.
Our favorite bet here is “Sean O'Malley Finish Only (If Decision No Action)” at -360.
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DFS Implications:
O’Malley has averaged 101 DraftKings points in his 10 UFC wins, and that number jumps to 111 points if we remove his trio of three-round decision victories. He scored 122 DraftKings points and 158 points on FanDuel in his recent five-round decision win over Marlon Vera, showing tons of scoring upside even without a finish in five-round fights. While he doesn’t offer much of anything when it comes to wrestling, he averages an eye-popping 7.63 SSL/min and landed 230 significant strikes in his last fight. The concern for him here is that he’s going against a relentless wrestler with a never ending gas tank, but we’ve also seen Dvalishvili hurt at multiple points. And on the flipside, Dvalishvili hasn’t looked like any sort of finishing threat himself, which should at least leave O’Malley with some kind of scoring floor even if he loses a decision. That leaves O’Malley as a high floor, high ceiling play and he’s especially appealing on FanDuel where the scoring system is perfect for his striking-heavy approach. The odds imply O’Malley has a 56% chance to win, a 37% chance to land a finish, and a 14% chance it comes in round one.
Dvalishvili continues to show insane scoring potential despite his lack of finishing ability. Nine of his 10 UFC wins went the distance, but he still averaged a face-melting 124 DraftKings points in those 10 victories and scored 164 or more points in two of his last four fights. He’s only been in one five-round fight, but showed that he could keep his regular pace up for 25 minutes as he attempted an other-worldy 49 takedown attempts against Petr Yan. While he only completed 11 of those, he still scored 167 DraftKings points and 174 points on FanDuel in the unanimous 50-45 decision win. He will get a tough test here against a much larger opponent than he’s used to facing and we could see Dvalishvili struggle to close the distance at times against O’Malley. That could force Dvalishvili to try and walk through the fire to get into wrestling range, leaving him vulnerable to being knocked out. We almost saw the corpse of Marlon Moraes finish Dvalishvili and even an aging Henry Cejudo was able to hurt him early on in his last match. However, Dvalishvili has still never actually been knocked out in his career and will never quit in a fight. And if he wins here, he’s definitely going to end up in the optimal lineup at his cheap price tag. There are also scenarios where he loses a decision and can still provide a useful score if we don’t see many other underdog winners and stacking this fight is one way to reduce dupes on this small 10 fight card. The odds imply Dvalishvili has a 44% chance to win, a 13% chance to land a finish, and a 3% chance it comes in round one.
Good luck to everyone this week, we hope you win big! Tag us on Twitter @dfs_mma with your winnings so we can see how you did!