RADIO
This upcoming weekend's event will kick-start a month-long run of UFC cards that will carry us through the month of March until we reach UFC FN 188 in April. That latter card is currently expected to happen on Apr. 10, but it is still to be confirmed if it will happen, and when it will do so (if it stays put on that date we'll have a two-week bridge between Mar. 27 and that one). But let's not look so far down the road and rather keep our eyes on what will be going on this weekend in Las Vegas.
For the second time in a row, it will be about them spicy heavyweights entering the Octagon come Saturday night. With Derrick Lewis taking on the no. 2 place in the HW ranks after his W last weekend, it is time for Rozenstruik to capitalize and get a win for himself this weekend over no. 7 Ciryl Gane to jump no. 3 Curtis Blaydes and potentially even Lewis on the HW pecking order, getting closer to that coveted title fight he's after. Other than that, a lot of other top-15 fighters will make an appearance this weekend in the likes of Nikita Krylov, Magomez Ankalaev, Pedro Munhoz, Jimmie Rivera, and Angela Hill. Not bad.
In this article, I will be providing you with my daily fantasy MMA, UFC lineup picks for DraftKings for UFC Vegas 20: Rozenstruik vs. Gane on 02/27/21. You can check out our FanDuel MMA DFS picks as well. These DFS lineup picks can vary from higher-priced players and elite options to lower-priced fighters and value picks on DraftKings. Give me a follow on Twitter @chapulana. Good luck!
DraftKings MMA Heavyweight - UFC DFS Lineup Picks
Ciryl Gane, $9000 - vs. Jairzinho Rozenstruik
Jairzinho aka Biggie Boi has logged all of 2,435 seconds or 40 minutes inside a UFC octagon. Remove his five-rounder against Alistair Overeem back on Dec. 2019 and all of the time he's been in there gets down to under 16 minutes. In five fights. That's insane. That's also what happens when you destroy fools in a matter of 30 seconds three times, and less than 10 minutes the other two. It's also what happens when Francis Ngannou drops you in 20 ticks of the clock, though.
Gane himself is no joke, either. Four fights, four wins, three early stoppages. That's Gane's resume so far since he debuted as a UFC fighter back in Aug. 2019. He knows no defeat and he has never scored fewer than 62 FP in any of his fights, relying heavily on those bonus finish-points.
These are two unmovable walls going against each other. Biggie Boi's hype went a bit down in his loss against Ngannou, but he's still a freak. Gane is low-key building a strong run that might bring him way up the leaderboard if he scores his fifth win in a row and keeps a perfect record. Gane, in fact, is so overwhelmingly the favorite here that it doesn't make much sense to go against him this weekend.
DraftKings MMA Light Heavyweight - UFC DFS Lineup Picks
Magomed Ankalaev, $9300 - vs. Nikita Krylov
How things change... Ankalaev went into a UFC octagon for the first time in March of 2018 to face Paul Craig. He wasn't bad at it, resisting all but one second before surrendering to a submission just this close to making it a full three-round fight. While his foe went home with the W, the fight was kinda close and Ankalaev still reached near 50 FP on the day. Since then, though, he has won every fight he's been part of and four of those five via KO. Damn, son.
Krylov, on the other hand, has been around since 2013. It's funny, because the start to his UFC career looks very close to Ankalaev's, as Nikita dropped two of his first three bouts but then went on to win five in a row, all inside the first two rounds. After that, though, he's been a bouncy carousel with an L-W-L-W log from 2018 to Mar. 2020.
While Krylov attempts 3+ TDs per fight and lands more than half of them, Ankalaev does it all on pure striking more often than not. Krylov is the biggest dog on the slate, which tells you all you need to know about this one. Ankalaev has been unstoppable for three and a half years, and odds are that doesn't change this weekend.
DraftKings MMA Women's Flyweight - UFC DFS Lineup Picks
Montana De La Rosa, $7800 - vs. Mayra Bueno Silva
While these two are not new to the promo, they are fairly fresh in terms of how long their fighting resumes are at this point. Montana has the edge over Mayra with four fights to three from the latter, but none of them debuted prior to Sep. 2018 and De La Rosa has no UFC fight before Feb. 2019.
Their results are also close, with Montana carrying a 2-2 record without stringing two wins or losses in a row yet (she comes off a loss), while Mayra is on a two-fight losing streak after winning her debut via submission and is looking to right her path before she sees himself on the verge of leaving the promo if her results don't get any better soon.
This will probably not be the flashiest of fights on the card, far from it, but it should at least be close and put two women fighting for their long-term UFC careers against each other. Given the difference in salaries and how close their lines and win probabilities are, Montana doesn't look like the worst of contrarian plays this weekend to snatch a W here, plus she's got a rather high advantage when it comes to the ground game over Mayra.
DraftKings MMA Bantamweight - UFC DFS Lineup Picks
Jimmie Rivera, $8300 - vs. Pedro Munhoz
This week's battle of veterans on the low. Sure, Jimmie comes off a win against Cody Stamann last July while Pedro has lost in his last two in a row, but before that W Rivera had dropped a couple himself to much-better Petr Yan and Aljamain Sterling. Rivera will try to string a couple of victories this weekend trying to boost his chances at an eventual title-run down the road as he's still just 31 years old.
Pedro, as written above, is on a two-fight losing streak and carrying a 2-3 record since the start of 2018. The truth is, though, that Pedro has a rather higher floor when it comes to fantasy contests, having finished five of his last seven fights with at least 40 FP compared to Rivera's 1-of-6 in that same span.
Vegas has both fighters way close for this Saturday's fight. The difference in salaries is not high at all, at fewer than $500, and the only thing making Rivera a more appealing play this weekend, to my eyes, is his last fight W compared to Munhoz's ongoing two-loss skid. I'd go with Munhoz pulling the slight upset here and getting back to the W column for the first time since March 2019.
DraftKings MMA Women's Strawweight - UFC DFS Lineup Picks
Angela Hill, $9200 - vs. Ashley Yoder
I think I have never seen such a difference in terms of projections as the one between Hill and Yoder for this weekend's event. Looking at each fighter's history, though, you wouldn't arrive at that conclusion. Hill has lost her last two fights, and is 4-4 since the start of 2019. That's correct. Angela has fought eight times in a span of just 18 months from Mar. 2019 to Aug. 2020, which is borderline insane.
Yoder, on the other hand, has been on a steady two-fights-per-year schedule and is a similarly balanced 3-3 since the start of 2018. She's fought for all possible 105 minutes, as all of her six career fights went the distance and ended in a decision.
Hill doubles Yoder in SS per fight, and she's done so even counting the three fights she was part of that didn't even reach the two-minute mark of the third round--even if they reached the third round at all. She can do it on takedowns too, although it is not that she relies a lot on them (edge Yoder there). If we go by a "wisdom of the crowd" approach, there is no way you play Yoder this weekend: just 2% of fantasy lineups feature her and she has the lowest win probability of the card at just 26%. Yikes.
