The UFC takes a Fight Night event on the road with UFC Austin this weekend. It’s a surprisingly fun card for a free event, headlined by top-ten lightweights Beneil Dariush and Arman Tsarukyan. Not only does the headliner have serious title implications, but it’s between two of the most entertaining fighters for hardcore fans of the sport.
All in all, we have a 13-fight card, kicking off at 4:00 p.m. ET.
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
Arman Tsarukyan ($9,200) vs. Beneil Dariush ($7,000)
I’m unreasonably excited for this fight, which features two elite-level grapplers at the top of their games. Both fighters are ranked inside the top 10 of the UFC lightweight division. They would likely be favored over much of the old guard ranked ahead of them, and are reasonably close to earning a title shot with a win this week.
Despite both being known primarily for their grappling, their styles are drastically different. Tsarukyan is a wild scrambler who is never content to settle in a position. His athleticism and flexibility allow him to beat opponents to the spot. Dariush is a classic jiu-jitsu stylist, and a former world champion at blue, purple, and brown belt over the course of an absurd three-year run.
Fortunately for Dariush, his style translated well to MMA, thanks to his excellent takedown ability. While his takedown stats aren’t particularly impressive, they don’t tell the whole story. His takedown rate is just 1.91 per 15 minutes — because his opponents are rarely able to get back to their feet from under his stifling top pressure.
Tsaukyan could put that to the test, though. He has a considerable edge in overall athleticism and is the younger man by seven years. I’m not confident that Tsarukyan can put Dariush in bad spots on the ground, but at worst, he can avoid being put there himself.
Which means this could come down to the striking. Both men’s striking styles mirror their grappling, with Tsarukyan darting in and out of the pocket with heavy shots. Dariush is more measured, happy to plant his feet and throw combos, which he frequently punctuates with spinning back fists. Both fighters have enough faith in their grappling to kick at will, trusting their ability to defend takedowns from caught kicks.
A few factors have me leaning towards Dariush here, at least relative to their prices. The first is that he’s a lefty — and Tsarukyan leaves himself open to some classic southpaw attacks, as outlined by my colleague Dan Tom in his “southpaw report.”
🧵 #TheSouthpawReport for #UFCAustin:
Arman Tsarukyan, who faces Beneil Dariush, is 1-1 opposite UFC-level lefties (W: OAM; L: Makhachev)
He shows lead-foot awareness/actually uses lead hand to prod and counter southpaws but mainly looks to set up power shots from the open side pic.twitter.com/H9o4F3QpcB
— Dan Tom (@DanTomMMA) November 29, 2023
The second is the five-round nature of this fight. Tsarukyan has excellent cardio, but his more frenetic style is hard to maintain for 25 minutes. He won the first two rounds in his fight with Mateusz Gamrot (and I would’ve given him the third) before fading in the championship rounds.
Finally, Dariush actually opened as a slight favorite here, with tons of money coming to Tsarukyan (now a -310 favorite) over the past few weeks. I trust the oddsmakers over the public on this one to an extent.
Of course, this is an obvious stacking fight for cash games, as the output from both men should lead to a solid score even for the loser. For GPPs, though, there’s an edge in being overweight on “Benny.”
The Easy Chalk
Punahele Soriano ($9,400)
It’s relatively crowded at the top, with three fighters priced north of Tsarukyan, and fairly strong cases to be made for each of them. We can’t fit them all, so choices must be made.
My most confident heavy favorite on this card is Soriano, who started the week as a -270 favorite over Dustin Stoltzfus ($6,800). He’s now -305 on DraftKings, with longer odds on other books. Soriano is 9-3 as a professional, with six of those wins via knockout, including all three that came in the UFC.
Stoltzfus is just 1-4 in the Octagon, and he’s been finished in three of the four. He has a considerable power disadvantage against Soriano, without the technical striking or wrestling prowess to overcome it. While he has a “puncher’s chance,” he was flat-lined in 19 seconds in his last outing.
He trails only Rodolfo Bellato ($9,600) in moenyline odds on the card, but the extra $200 could matter here, and it’s hard ot trust the debutante Bellato at his price tag. I’ll have a heavy dose of Soriano here.
The Upside Play
Zach Reese ($9,300)
Two of the three most expensive fighters on the slate are making their UFC debuts, with Reese joining Bellato with that distinction.
Which is why I have him listed as an upside play rather than Easy Chalk. Well, that and the massive -550 odds that this fight ends inside the distance. That number implies a higher ceiling for Reese, if not a bit more risk to go along with it.
He’s fighting Cody Brundage ($6,900), who snapped a three-fight losing streak in his last bout by taking a shot to the back of the head while on the verge of being finished, then pretending it was the illegal strike that did the damage rather than the many other blows he absorbed, causing his opponent to be disqualified.
That fight was barely two months ago, and had it been correctly ruled a knockout loss, he wouldn’t have even been medically cleared to fight, much less back in the Octagon already. This isn’t a great sign against Reese, a powerful striker with four first-round knockouts in his six professional wins.
Reese is -175 to win this one by finish, and I’d be fairly surprised if it took him more than a round or two to do it. He’ll be a priority in my lineups along with Soriano this week.
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The Value Play
Miesha Tate ($7,500)
I’m not happy about playing Tate this week in the 37-year-old return to bantamweight. She has just one win in 2016 — against a retiring fighter, no less — and is coming off two lackluster decision losses in her last two fights.
However, all of the numbers point to her being a great cash game salary saver. Her fight with Julia Avila ($8,700) is +165 to end inside the distance, the longest odds on the slate at the time of writing. Her moneyline odds have also dipped to +114, making her about $400 cheaper than she would be if her line opened at that price.
She’s also facing an opponent in Avila, who’s been taken down in three of her four UFC fights, including all of her fights that went more than 22 seconds. Tate should be able to work some of her wrestling here, giving her a solid points floor even if she can’t pull off the win.
I don’t have much faith in her ceiling, as even in a win, she’s likely to have a fairly uninspiring score. But if trying to save salary in cash games to roster multiple expensive fighters — she makes a lot of sense.
The Contrarian Choice
Joseph Solecki ($7,900)
There’s a ton of underdogs I want to play this week, among them Solecki. An accomplished grappler, he has eight submissions in twelve career wins, with a 5-1 UFC record.
He’s fighting Drakkar Klose ($8,300). Klose typically relies on his wrestling in his fights, which could be a problem against the more polished overall grappler. Klose is also 35 and hasn’t fought in 17 months due to recovery from a torn ACL. PRior to that, he had another two-year layoff due to injury.
That’s tough to overcome for a fighter at his age, with his style also not doing him any favors. Despite this, the moenyline has moved a bit towards Klose throughout the week. That makes Solecki a bad play from a pure value standpoint — which will further suppress his ownership.
This fight is also fairly likely to see the judges, which makes Solecki a solid floor play if you have the salary to come up from Tate. My main interest is in GPPs, though. A submission win would easily provide enough points to cover his salary.
Bobby Green ($7,600)
Bobby Green was set to fight Dan Hooker in the UFC Austin main event. A hooker injury forced the switch to Jalin Turner ($8,900), who surprisingly came in as a heavy favorite.
That created a situation where the fighters combined for a salary of $16,500, as opposed to the traditional $16,200. Both fighters are thus a bit overpriced, keeping ownership low on them both to various degrees.
Still, I’m interested in Green. He’s won his last two fights — both inside the distance — while Turner comes in on a two-fight losing streak. Both split decisions to top competition, but a losing streak nonetheless. More importantly, Green also has the benefit of a full camp here.
Turner has never had solid cardio, with tough weight cuts creating issues. That’s going to be even tougher this time, with Green pushing a fast pace. Plus, Turner didn’t seem too interested in taking this fight. The negative value makes this a tough click for cash games, but I want some tournament exposure.
The Swing Fight
Sean Brady ($8,200) vs. Kelvin Gastelum ($8,000)
This is an extremely interesting fight for both fighters. Brady is coming off of his first career loss — a knockout at the hands of Belal Muhammad — before which he was rapidly ascending to a title shot. There’s no shame in the loss to Muhammad, who’s long overdue for a title shot of his own. Still, it’s hard to predict how fighters will rebound after losing their undefeated status.
On the other side of the cage is Kelvin Gastelum. After a solid run at welterweight, where he had more trouble with the scales than many opponents, Gastelum moved to middleweight. He did well enough there to earn a title shot, giving Israel Adesanya a run for his money.
However, Gastelum struggled after that loss, going 2-5, including a very questionable decision win over Chris Curtis. Now he’s returning to 170 lbs, with major questions about his ability to make the weight.
Those question marks make this an extremely difficult fight to predict. There’s far more to this one than both fighters’ technical abilities. Both have also dealt with somewhat recent injuries on top of everything already mentioned. In my betting preview of the fight, I outline paths to victory for both fighters, both of which seem reasonably equally probable.
Those paths also would lead to strong DFS scores, with a Brady stoppage or a Gastelum volume fight both producing big scores. My lean is toward Brady, though, for a couple of reasons. I tend to lean towards the grappler in “striker vs. grappler” matchups, especially with the athletic edge Brady has.
From a game theory standpoint, his slightly higher price tag and the line movement towards Gastelum should also see Brady as the lower-owned fighter. Of course, I’ll be mixing in both across my GPP portfolio — and staying far away in cash games.
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