We have quite possibly the best card of the year this Saturday, with UFC 290 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. It features title fights at featherweight and flyweight, as well as plenty of intriguing prospects and a middleweight number-one contender matchup.
Contests lock at 6:00 p.m. ET on Saturday for the 14-fight card, with the main card set to go off at 10 p.m.
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
Alexander Volkanovski ($9,200) vs. Yair Rodriguez ($7,000)
While this is technically a title unification bout with Rodriguez as the interim champion, the best featherweight in the world has a name…and it’s Alex Volkanovski. Volkanovski hasn’t lost a fight at 145 lbs ever and gave lightweight champion Islam Makhachev the toughest test of his career in his bid to become double champion.
Rodriguez has a puncher’s — or kicker’s — chance here, with a high-flying tae kwon doe style that features plenty of flashy attacks. Volkanovski has been wobbled at various points in his past fights but has always found a way to recover without incident.
Outside of catching him with a wild attack early, I don’t really see a path for Rodriguez here. Volkanovski might have the best cardio of any UFC fighter ever, pushes an incredibly fast pace, and has a massive edge in the clinch and on the ground.
I’ll sprinkle a Rodriguez lineup or two in my portfolio this weekend but will be much heavier on the champ. He leads the slate in median projection as a -350 or so favorite with five rounds to work with.
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Co-Main Event
Brandon Moreno ($8,500) vs. Alexandre Pantoja ($7,700)
The flyweight championship bout is the more intriguing matchup of the night, with Brandon Moreno finally taking on new challengers following his tetralogy with Deiveson Figueiredo. Moreno went 2-1-1 in that series, with both of his wins coming inside the distance and his lone loss via decision.
He takes on another longtime foe in Pantoja on Saturday. Pantoja defeated Moreno on The Ultimate Fighter and again in 2018 in an official matchup. We don’t see many trilogies with the same fighter winning each of the first two bouts, but those fighters are 6-2 in the third meeting in UFC history.
That’s a good sign for Pantoja, who is also my preferred DFS option. He has more ways to finish this one, with a relentless grappling game and a better knockdown rate. He’s also the more voluminous striker, though I’d argue Moreno is more technically sound in that area.
How Moreno justifies his favoritism here is his cardio and durability, which should give him a massive edge if this one sees the later rounds. That’s unlikely to produce a “have to have it” DFS score, though, so I’m prioritizing Pantoja for GPPs.
I’m also considering fading Moreno in cash games, as the salary relief could be helpful in getting up to some of the card’s massive favorites.
The Easy Chalk
UFC 290 is absolutely jam-packed at the top of the salary scale. There are three fighters with moneyline odds of -1000 or better and a fourth at -600 that could challenge for that mark by fight time. I’m expecting all of them to carry somewhat similar ownership here, as their projections are reasonably close.
As such, none of them individually will be all that chalky, but the broad idea of building your lineups around one or possibly two of them will be. It’s difficult to fit two and nearly impossible to go beyond that — since the cheapest fighters are, by definition, their opposition.
With that said, I’ll mention each of them briefly, with some pros and cons on all of them in order of their salaries. Choosing them is extremely difficult for cash games and single entry contests, but for multi-entry, the best course of action is probably to mix your exposure between them.
Bo Nickal ($9,800)
The UFC’s uber-prospect lost his original opponent (Tresean Gore), against whom he was already a massive favorite. Now he draws Val Woodburn ($6,400), a UFC newcomer who took the fight on five days notice. Nickal is -280 to win this one in the first round.
The biggest drawback on Nickal is that he’s so dominant with his grappling he’ll probably only need one takedown to end things. If that doesn’t come within the first minute, there’s a solid chance one of the other heavy favorites posts a better score with more volume.
Jack Della Maddalena ($9,700)
Like Nickal, JDM is fighting a short-notice call-up. His opponent is Josiah Harrell ($6,500), who, like Woodburn, is a 7-0 regional fighter. For my money, Harrell is the best of all the replacement fighters this weekend, but he’s also a natural lightweight stepping up 15 lbs for this one.
Della Maddalena is -200 to finish things in the first round, though his striking-based approach is probably better for DFS, as knockdowns are worth more than takedowns. He’s my favorite tournament play of the group if we ignore salary considerations.
Editor’s Note: Jack Della Maddalena’s fight has been removed from the UFC 290 card due to a medical issue with his opponent.
Tatsuro Taira ($9,600)
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Taira is one of the UFC’s most promising prospects who was originally slated for a much tougher fight…but now draws a short-notice replacement making his UFC debut. Just like Nickal and Maddalena, Taira is a massive favorite overall.
He’s “only” -105 to win in the first round, but that might be a good thing. Taira could end up lapping the field based on takedown volume if his opponent Edgar Chairez ($6,600), is able to return to his feet a couple of times. He ranks behind JDM but ahead of Nickal for me — though we’re splitting hairs a bit.
Cameron Saaiman ($9,400)
Saaiman is the honorable mention of this group, as he’s “just” a -600 or so favorite. Like the rest of the bunch, he originally had a tough fight booked against Christian Rodriguez but is now fighting the debuting Terrance Mitchell ($7,000).
Saaiman doesn’t have the one-punch knockout power of JDM or the elite grappling of Taira or Nickal, but he should still be head and shoulders ahead of the competition. When factoring in salary, he’s probably my favorite of the bunch, especially for cash games.
The Value Play
Marcin Prachnio ($7,200)
While Prachnio is my favorite cheap fighter this weekend, that doesn’t make him a cash game option. His floor is effectively zero, as he takes on the powerful brawler Vitor Petrino ($9,000). Petrino could easily end this one early — but it should be all Prachnio us he survives the opening flurry.
That’s because Prachnio has a much less taxing style, using footwork and leg kicks to snipe from range rather than exerting himself with big shots. He’s used that style to great effect in similar matchups against William Knight and Ike Villanueva — both power punchers who Prachnio picked apart.
His karate-based style is also great for counterattacks, which will serve him well against the aggressive Petrino. I don’t see an early stoppage or massive volume from Prachnio here — so don’t expect a huge score — but any win at his salary likely gets him in the optimal lineup.
The Upside Plays
Jalin Turner ($8,800)
On most other slates, Turner would be projected as the top overall option. He’s a -300 or so favorite, with -165 odds to end things early against Dan Hooker ($7,400). Of course, with all of the much longer odds on the slate, he’ll likely be a bit overlooked.
This is a mistake, as Turner was on an epic run before his last fight, a split-decision loss to top-five lightweight Mateusz Gamrot. Turner had scored at least 106 DraftKings points in each of his previous five outings; all wins within the first two rounds.
He’s also a horrible matchup for Hooker. Hooker has bounced back and forth between 145 and 155 in his career, and Turner is the biggest lightweight on the roster. For a fighter like Hooker, who typically has a height and reach edge, that’s a tough out.
Turner is my favorite GPP play on the slate, as he comes in at just cheap enough that he can be paired with Volkaovski and one of the massive favorites.
The Contrarian Choice
Dricus Du Plessis ($7,100)
DDP has an extremely difficult path ahead of him as he takes on the perennial second-best middleweight in the world in Robert Whittaker ($9,100). Whittaker hasn’t lost to anyone but Israel Adesanya in nearly a decade, and none of his other losses came at middleweight.
On the other hand, Du Plessis is 5-0 in the UFC, with four of his wins coming inside the distance. He has massive power, averaging nearly a knockdown per 15 minutes in his UFC tenure. His grappling is underrated as well, averaging nearly three takedowns per fight and with solid submission ability to boot.
Whittaker is the better technical striker in this matchup, but all Du Plessis needs is one punch to land. We’ve seen Whittaker dropped before — by Adesanya, Yoel Romero, and Stephen Thompson at welterweight. As Whittaker gets older, those knockdowns are likely to get a bit more frequent.
It helps for DFS that Du Plessis likely needs a finish to win here, as that would be accompanied by a very strong score. However, at his salary, any win gets the job done from a DFS perspective.
The Swing Fight
Jim Crute ($8,200) vs. Alonzo Menifield ($8,000)
The $8,200-$8,000 fight is always a good one to target for DFS, as the winner has a high probability of making their way to the optimal lineup. Especially when that fight has -400 stoppage odds — the longest on the slate outside of the one-sided squash matches mentioned earlier.
With that said, these two made it all 15 minutes to a draw in their last meeting. Menifield won two of the three rounds but lost a point due to some blatant fence grabbing. Even without a stoppage, it was a great fight for DFS, though, as Menifield scored two knockdowns and Crute six takedowns.
I’m on Crute here, as I detailed in my breakdown earlier in the week. The betting lines have shifted his way since then as well, suggesting sharp money is on his side, too.
However, I want a healthy dose of both in DFS this weekend. A Crute win probably means plenty of takedown points, while Menifield’s best chance is early in the fight.
Sean Zerillo and I discussed a couple of angles for this one on the Action Network UFC Podcast.
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