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Well, I am glad to be here in the written format, and I will be handling the weekly MMA DFS Value Picks business here at RotoBaller for the foreseeable future. Make sure to follow me on Twitter @RotoBrady and tune in to the "Tap That" podcast every week for my picks and analysis on MMA & Combat Sporting events across the board.
I am kicking off my tenure on this piece with the highly anticipated UFC Saudi Arabia event, which has undergone a ton of changes since its original inception, and we are now officially down to 11 total fights for the card. There are plenty of heavy favorites on this card who are likely to be big scorers, and with a lot of medium-potential, closely matched fights filling in the middle, this is a week where it might just be worth a shot on one of those huge underdogs. Also, a heads-up: I think there is some fun betting potential between Gastelum vs. D-Rod and Pavlovich vs. Volkov, but with Gastelum having this fight changed to a 185-lb. bout at the last second and the strange circumstances of the reluctant Russia/Russia heavyweight matchup, there is just a bit too much uncertainty for me. If I felt a little more comfortable, either one of Pavlovich or Volkov could have ended up in one of my lineups, and Kelvin would very much be in play.
So, I am going to try to keep these value plays at about $8400 and below week by week. Although, technically, anyone can be a value if they are worth more than the asking price--and there will of course be varying price ranges across platforms (Robert Whittaker is $19 on FanDuel). We have two weeks in a row of massive events for the UFC, and it is going to be a whole lot of fun. With that, let's get down to it with four value plays on DraftKings for Saturday afternoon.
MMA DFS Value Pick #1 - Robert Whittaker, $8400
Ikram Aliskerov has definitely had an impressive three-fight run from the Contender Series into the UFC, finishing all three opponents in the first round, with wins over Phil Hawes and Warlley Alves. He is on the rise, coming in on short notice, and could easily place himself on a contender fast track with a win in the main event. However, the man he is facing in a potential five-round fight is Robert Whittaker, and to be able to get him at this price (not to mention -155 on the ML) is an absolute steal.
"The Reaper" has won two of his last three over Paulo Costa and Marvin Vettori, and although he didn't score great in those fights despite landing a combined 169 strikes, he totaled 122 points the last time that he went the distance in a five-round win (against Kelvin Gastelum, April 2021). Most importantly, Robert Whittaker has only three losses in the UFC since February of 2014: two losses to Israel Adesanya, and one major upset at the hands of the current middleweight champion Dricus Du Plessis.
We very well could be talking about the sudden decline and meteoric rise of Whittaker and Aliskerov, respectively, by Saturday night, but this is a case of simply too much fantastic history against not nearly enough on Ikram's side. It is always a curveball when you are talking about a late-notice main event replacement when you thought you would be fighting Khamzat Chimaev, but besides that, the circumstances are right for Robert Whittaker to get the win and score well with high-volume strikes over the course of five rounds.
With his takedown defense, I trust him to remain safe enough and get himself out of any tight spots. If Ikram gets the win, I'd say that it likely comes by KO, but Whittaker's loss to Dricus won't make me overreact to that degree. At $8400, Robert Whittaker is one of the top bargains on this card.
MMA DFS Value Pick #2 - Kyung Ho Kang, $7700
Any pick can make you feel silly in retrospect, but this is one matchup where I can not wrap my head fully around the price and odds for Kang. I am totally aware that he was born in 1987 and has been fighting in the UFC since March 2013 (debuting on Fuel TV no less), but this is still a fighter who has won two of his last three (and five of his last seven back to February 2019) by way of a 100-strike decision over Danaa Batgerel and a first-round RNC against Cristian Quinonez.
He is coming off of a very forgivable loss to John Castaneda where he was at least able to land 80 strikes. The issue in the loss to Castaneda and in his other most recent loss against Rani Yahya was getting taken down three times each, and that problem will definitely still be a factor on Saturday against Muin Gafurov.
Gafurov too has a loss to Castaneda, and he currently stands 0-3 at the DWCS/UFC level. I can get past losses to Castaneda and most recently to Said Nurmagomedov (easily), but the split-decision loss to Chad Anheliger takes more credit away than a devastating loss to a really good opponent could possibly add. Even if he is able to take Kang down multiple times, "Mr. Perfect" is crafty and well-rounded enough to get it done in this matchup in a variety of ways. He has remained a tough man to beat in the UFC for an off-and-on decade, and has totaled 187 points on DraftKings in his last two victories.
In 13 UFC fights, he has never officially lost two in a row, and I will take that track record over the favorite who is still looking for his first UFC win in his fourth try. For those reasons, Kang as a dawg and at $7700 feels like a no-brainer to me.
MMA DFS Value Pick #3 - Jared Gordon, $7200
Jared Gordon has three losses in nine fights since November 2019: one to Charles Oliveira, one to Grant Dawson, and a unanimous decision loss to Paddy Pimblett at UFC 282 where many people believe he was the rightful victor. "Flash" Gordon is this kind of play almost every time out. He can beat opponents up to a certain caliber in a variety of ways, and he is coming off of a KO in the first round over Mark Madsen seven months ago. He is averaging 110 points on DraftKings for his last two victories, and I am very comfortable in saying that he should have ended up with more than 58 against Paddy. He is just a rock-solid fighter for his tier of competition, and you love to see him at plus-money odds and as a less expensive choice than his opponent on any given day.
The question then is whether Nasrat Haqparast is beyond the tier of competition that Gordon can handle. While the last handful of fights for Gordon (including a no-contest against Bobby Green) have been a bit rollercoaster-like, but I am far from convinced on the ceiling of Haqparast. He has definitely notched some solid wins with losses to some pretty high-level competition in his UFC tenure, and he is riding a three-fight winning streak into this event.
However, those three wins came against John Makdessi (lost three of his last four fights), Landon Quinones (0-2 in the UFC), and Jamie Mullarkey (lost three of his last four fights). I think that this fight is much more evenly matched than the prices and odds would have us believe. Gordon is excellent at making the pace of the fight work for him and using his skillset to match and counter what his opponent is offering, and so he is very much a viable play for UFC Saudi Arabia. At $7200, putting Jared Gordon in your lineup will offer a lot of flexibility for the top of the menu.
MMA DFS Value Pick #4 - Nicolas Dalby, $7000
It is very easy to defend a $9200 play on Rinat Fakhretdinov (which I am making in a couple of lineups across the two major platforms), but how can you not be feeling "Danish Dynamite" right now? Nicolas Dalby first entered the UFC in 2015, and has been with the company consistently since returning in September 2019. He may be turning 40 years old later this year, but he has only one loss (with an overturned fight due to Jesse Ronson's failed drug test) in the last five years, which came to Tim Means (understandable).
He is currently on a four-fight winning streak , with three of those wins coming in 2023 with Dalby as the underdog. Most notably, he got the round-two TKO/KO against heralded welterweight prospect Gabriel Bonfim last November in a matchup that had him as the +455 dawg. In the fights against Bonfim, Muslim Salikhov, and Warlley Alves, Dalby combined for 290 points on DK (roughly 97 points per fight) with a great mixture of striking volume and control time.
Rinat's win against Bryan Battle was dominant and legit. However, his other two UFC wins against Kevin Lee and Andreas Michailidis do not inspire me, and his last fight--a majority draw against Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos--left him looking plenty vulnerable against competition who can withstand his persistent proclivity for takedowns and limit control time. It isn't an easy ask for Dalby to pull off another big upset, but he is certainly capable. Combine capability with the scoring that Dalby has been doing on DraftKings, and that is more than enough for me to take a chance on one of the cheapest options for Saturday's slate.
