Ketlen Viera and Holly Holm headline UFC Fight Night 206 on Saturday. All of the action begins at 4:00 p.m. ET, so be sure to have your lineups ready early.
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 fight 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 as to which fighters we should target based upon the game type — maximizing ceiling in GPPs, for example.
You can check out the projections for every fighter on Saturday’s card below.
UFC DFS Model
The Main Event
Holly Holm ($9,100) vs. Ketlen Viera ($7,100)
The former champion Holm is one of the card’s bigger favorites, with -250 odds on DraftKings and a correspondingly high salary. It feels like it will be tough for her to pay off that salary in GPPs since this fight +165 to end inside the distance.
Generally, one of the appeals to rostering female fighters is the higher work rates on the feet. That isn’t the case with this one, with neither woman throwing strikes much above the UFC average level. That means big scores likely come from stoppage bonuses, with takedown upside being a big factor as well.
Most of that takedown upside belongs to Viera, who averages 1.76 per 15 minutes in her UFC career. Holm has excellent takedown defense, though, so bringing her to the mat will be a challenge. On the other hand, with 25 minutes to work with, Viera will have more opportunities to score some.
Regardless, any Viera win likely places her in the optimal lineup thanks to her cheap salary. Holm will need to end this one early to be worthy of hers. That makes Viera my preferred GPP play — in addition to the fact that five-round underdogs are generally plus-EV as a rule. I like Viera more than market anyway, she’s a full decade younger, and Holm is likely on the downswing of her career.
While smaller slates lend themselves well to “stacking” both fighters in a fight, I’ll be keeping that strategy only to my cash lineups. I don’t see enough activity to produce two winning scores here, and there’s a better option elsewhere on the card. I do want to have both of them in my cash lineup, though, for the usual reasons. They both rank inside the top five in Pts/Sal projection on the slate.
Sean Zerillo and I broke down this fight and more on the latest edition of our UFC Betting Podcast:
The Easy Chalk
Jailton Almeida ($9,400)
Almeida is the heaviest favorite on the card at -600 on DraftKings as he steps up to heavyweight to take on Parker Porter ($6,800). Almeida is expected to make quick work of Porter, as he’s a slight favorite to end this fight in the first round. He’ll likely need to do just that to justify his salary, which is the highest on the slate at $9,400.
I actually have my concerns with Almeida given the potential weight disparity come fight time. While Almeida is a strong striker, his best skill is his grappling ability. It will be hard to find takedowns if he’s giving up the 50+ pounds I expect him to be. (Porter is a massive heavyweight and will probably be over 280 pounds come fight time. The 265 he weighs in at isn’t his actual weight.)
Still, Almeida has tremendous speed and athleticism advantages and should be able to put Porter away with strikes. Almeida is both taller and longer as well, which mitigates some of the size concerns, at least on the feet. Almeida feels like a lock for cash games, with a relatively weak higher end of the salary scale.
In tournaments though, I want some exposure to Porter. He’s an extremely active striker, attempting 89 significant strikes per round. Ironically (based on their physiques), Porter should also have the cardio advantage. It will be interesting to see if Almeida has 15 minutes of output while carrying extra weight. Given his cheap salary and high output, he could make it to the optimal simply by surviving to the final bell, though a win obviously gets him there too.
Almeida leads our projections for median and ceiling by a fairly wide margin. He’ll likely be the most popular play on the slate.
The Upside Plays
Chidi Njokuani ($8,700)
Betting markets are giving us tons of clues that “Bang Bang” is one of the best plays on the slate. He’s a tremendous value from a win equity per dollar standpoint since he was only a -165 favorite when salaries were released but has since moved to -240. Accordingly, he’s a -105 favorite to win this one inside the distance, with a knockout (+110) making up most of that.
He has a great matchup against Dusko Todorovic ($7,500), over whom he has six inches in reach. Todorovic will likely be trying to bring this fight to the ground, but Njokunai has excellent takedown defense. Njokunai is likely to land a high volume of strikes from the outside before putting Todorovic away.
Njokunai also has some sneaky grappling upside, using his length as a weapon that allows him to get his opponent’s backs and finish them with a variety of chokes. Todorovic won’t just automatically win this one if it hits the canvas, and he’s struggled to take his opponents down in the UFC (two for seven in his career).
I’d be less high on Njokuani if he were priced in the range appropriate to his betting odds, but at $8,700, he might just be too good to pass up. He ranks third in our median projections with 77.8 points.
The Value Plays
Tabatha Ricci ($8,300)
While usually, I look to female underdogs for my cheaper value plays, Ricci is my preferred choice this week. She’s a slight (but growing) favorite over Polyana Viana ($7,900), opening at -120 and now -135 on DraftKings. This should be a fight that favors Ricci stylistically, with Viana picking up both of her UFC wins by submissions — but Ricci being a high-level BJJ black belt.
Ricci’s striking defense has been a major issue in her UFC run, taking over six significant strikes per minute. This is a good fight to cover up that weakness, though, with both women hunting takedowns fairly aggressively in their UFC careers. “Baby Shark” has never had to defend a takedown, but Viana’s defense rate is a mediocre 50%.
There should be plenty of takedowns and control time points in this one, with the win bonus putting the winner in the optimal lineup on a small slate. I expect that to be Ricci, who also has major submission upside as one of the UFC’s best female grapplers.
I do want some exposure to Viana as well, but I expect to be over the field on Ricci.
Sam Hughes ($7,700)
Hughes is the more traditional cash game option, with a reasonable price tag and the lowest stoppage odds on the slate. She’s taking on Elise Reed ($8,500) in the opening bout on Saturday. Both fighters are coming off of split/majority decision wins in their last contests, which was the only UFC win for either woman.
That makes this a fairly low-level fight, but one where “Sampage” has some upside. She has solid takedowns and could control Reed on the ground in a similar fashion to how Sijara Eubanks did in Reed’s UFC debut. Both women also have absorbed more punches than they’ve landed in their UFC careers, so there will be plenty of striking points to go around as well.
Hughes has seen the markets move her way, opening at +145 but currently a +135 underdog as of Friday. That’s a good deal at only $7,700. She could put up a decent score in a loss — much like Amanda Ribas last week — given her edge in the grappling department as well. That makes her an ideal cash game play.
A win at her price tag probably means she ends up in the optimal lineups, so I want some GPP exposure too.
The Contrarian Approach
Chase Hooper ($7,600)
Still just 22 years old, Hooper has been a UFC fighter since 2019, shortly after his 20th birthday. That’s relevant here because Hooper could — and should — be getting significantly better with each passing fight. He’s a moderate underdog to Felipe Colares ($8,600) for this one.
This feels like a tough matchup for Colares, though. He’s primarily a grappler, which is Hooper’s strength as well. Hooper has struggled to bring fights to the ground, with just an 18% takedown success rate in the UFC. That may not be a problem against Colares, who attempts nearly three per round.
Hooper’s a bit of a scary pick because if Colares wants this to be a standup fight, it most likely will be. Hooper’s striking is pretty poor — to be generous. I don’t think that’s what happens, though, with Colares falling back on his wrestling at some point here.
With Hooper having a year off, we can also expect him to have developed a bit — physically and skills-wise — since his last fight. It’s also helpful that Colares normally fights at bantamweight and is stepping up to featherweight for this one. Hooper has been manhandled a bit by fellow featherweights, but that’s less of an issue here.
Given his striking issues, we need a submission of ground and pound finish for Hooper to pay off his salary, or at least a dominant grappling clinic. I don’t think that’s unlikely for this one, making him a strong GPP play.
The Swing Fight
Michele Pereira ($8,200) vs. Santiago Ponzinibbio ($8,000)
This fight looks to be the most exciting of the night, with the big power of Ponzinibbio going against the wild striking of Michele Pereira. Both men are aggressive strikers with solid power and activity rates. Ponzinibbio almost certainly has the power edge, with roughly .3 knockdowns per round in his UFC career.
Pereira is the better grappler and has very adeptly mixed in takedowns in order to steal rounds in recent fights. That’s part of why he’s the favorite in this one, in addition to far better recent form. The 35-year-old Ponzinibbio has lost two of his last three following a seven-fight win streak, while Pereira has won four in a row against increasingly stiff competition.
The line has also widened a bit in Pereira’s favor throughout the week, with him going from -120 when salaries dropped to -135 by the time of writing. That makes him the better value, though he’s fairly scary for cash games given the power he’s facing.
I’ll want to have at least one of these two in each of my GPP lineups and mix in a few stacks. This fight is now -150 to go to a decision, thanks to the durability of both fighters. We could easily see multiple knockdowns and takedowns in this fight, leading to a ton of total scoring across the board. Make sure to set your optimizer setting to “at least” one of these two (rather than exactly one) so you can get some exposure that way.
This one should be a banger.
