UFC Vegas 71 goes down at the Apex Center in Las Vegas, with a main event featuring a possible #1 contender fight between heavyweights Curtis Blaydes and Sergei Pavlovich. It’s a smaller 12-fight card, with DFS lineups locking at 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Saturday.
We have built out a full player-projection model using the FantasyLabs Tools and Player Models to help put together some winning DFS lineups in UFC. You can use our optimizer to build optimal lineups using these projections.
The model, created by our own Sean Koerner, is based on 10,000 simulations of all the fights. He then pulled the DraftKings score from each bout to create floor, median and ceiling projections for every fighter. Here is how he defined each projection:
- Floor: Fighter has an 80% chance of going over this score, 20% chance of going under
- Median: Fighter has a 50% chance of going over this score, 50% chance of going under
- Ceiling: Fighter has a 20% chance of going over this score, 80% chance of going under
These should give us a better sense of which fighters we should target based on the game type – maximizing ceiling in GPPs, for example. We’ve also added ownership projections by yours truly, to help find leverage spots for GPPs.
You can check out the projections for every fighter on Saturday’s card in our UFC Models.
Main Event
Curtis Blaydes ($8,800) vs. Sergei Pavlovich ($7,400)
There’s been a slew of my least favorite type of fight to predict lately — a surging fighter who’s been dominant against lower-level competition against an established contender. Pavlovich is filling the role of up-and-comer here with five straight knockout wins against an ever-increasing level of competition.
Blaydes is the established top contender, with a 12-3 career record in the UFC. Those losses have been to former champ Francis Ngannou (twice) and Derrick Lewis. While Pavlovich beat Lewis, Blaydes fought “The Black Beast” at the height of his career, with Pavlovich fighting a somewhat diminished version.
This one feels like a pretty binary fight, with Pavolvich’s massive power going against Blaydes’s elite (for the division) wrestling. If Blaydes can find a takedown or two, he should have a reasonably easy time of it against Pavolvich. However, all fights start on the feet, where Pavlovich has the edge, and Blaydes has been knocked out in the past.
Both are great DFS plays, owing to the strong probability of a finish (-1100) as well as the takedown potential from Blaydes. However, I prefer Pavlovich as a GPP option. His likeliest win condition is early in the fight, which would lead to a massive price-considered score.
Both Sean Zerillo and I are seeing this one the same way, as we discussed in the latest edition of our Action Network UFC Betting Preview:
The Easy Chalk
Montel Jackson ($9,700)
This is another card without many huge favorites — with the exception of Jackson. He’s -600 on DraftKings, with the next-best fighter coming in around -350. Jackson is 6-2 in the UFC with a pair of finishes and is currently riding a four-fight win streak.
His opponent Rani Yahya ($6,500), is on a winning streak of his own, though it stands at just two and dates back nearly two years. The 38-year-old hasn’t been very active in recent years and is surely on the downslope of his career arc at this point.
None of which makes Jackson a lock for GPPs, though, as he’s not a prolific finisher but probably needs a stoppage to find the optimal with his massive salary. He’s the safest pick on the card, though, and with salary not being super tight this week should be considered a must in cash games.
The Value Play
Christos Giagos ($7,200)
Giagos is a solid floor play this weekend, thanks to his high volume of takedowns (3.21 per 15 minutes) and the plus-money stoppage odds in this fight. He’s coming off a pair of losses where he posted disappointing DFS scores, but there were extenuating circumstances.
He fought Arman Tsarukyan in one of those fights — an extremely high-level wrestler he was unable to take down, and Thiago Moises — a jiu-jitsu black belt he didn’t want to take down — in the other. Ricky Glenn ($9,000) is a considerable step down in competition for Giagos on Saturday.
This isn’t to say I think Giagos wins this, as his notoriously poor gas tank likely hurts him in the later rounds. Still, he could do enough early on to post a reasonable price-considered DFS score, with an outside shot of a win propelling him easily into the optimal lineup.
The Contrarian Choice
Bruno Silva ($7,300)
I’m big on Silva as an underdog this week for reasons I spoke about on the podcast and outlined in my Luck Ratings this week. Essentially, Silva would be a considerable favorite here if not for a terrible performance in his most recent fight, an ugly submission loss to Geral Meerschaert.
Prior to that, he was 3-1 in the UFC with three first-round finishes and took former champion Alex Pereira 15 minutes (scoring 42 DraftKings points in the loss). He’s an aggressive striker who also has a BJJ black belt and has all the finishing upside in his bout against Brad Tavares ($8,900).
Something looked off physically in his fight with Meerschaert, as Silva gassed early and looked very sloppy in the striking exchanges. Given his salary/betting odds, I’m willing to take the risk of declaring him an outlier and instead look at his body of work in the UFC.
That all points to him being the better fighter here, making his price tag a massive bargain.
The Upside Play
Jeremiah Wells ($8,400)
Wells is mostly an “I Know Better” style pick for me here. He and I ran in the same circles in the regional MMA scene, having once been booked to fight each other (the event fall apart). What I’ve learned from tape study on him then and following his career since is: that boy good.
He’s a high-level BJJ black belt out of Renzo Gracie Philly, one of the tougher jiu-jitsu gyms around. He’s also an explosive striker with massive power in both hands. That’s a tough combination to deal with, as opponents wary of being taken down sacrifice striking defense, and vis versa.
His fight with Matthew Semelsberger ($8,000) is roughly a pick ’em, making Wells not a great value by the numbers. However, he has three straight first-round stoppages in three UFC fights. Semelsberger is a great athlete (former college football player) but is the less skilled fighter in every realm here against Wells.
I’m loading up on Wells in all contest types, but he’s a better GPP play this week.
The Swing Fight
Junior Tafa ($8,200) vs. Muhammad Usman ($8,00)
Two sloppy heavyweights with big knockout power, as TUF 30 champion meets former professional kickboxer Junior Tafa. This one has -330 inside-the-distance odds, second only to the main event for the likeliest bout to end with a finish on the card.
On top of that, it also has the closest betting lines/DFS salaries, making a stoppage victory from either man a near lock to end up in the optimal lineup. (Whereas a late stoppage from Blaydes could fall short of the needed score, depending on the rest of the card.)
My lean here is Tafa, who, despite having less MMA experience, has a far deeper combat sports background, fighting for top kickboxing promotions throughout the world. Usman theoretically has the grappling upside here, but we didn’t see him wrestle much during his stint on TUF.
It’s not a strong take, though, and betting markets have remained stagnant throughout the week, so we don’t get any help there either. I’ll be mixing in a roughly equal amount of both in my GPP portfolio this week.
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