For the UFC's Saturday card headlined by Curtis Blaydes ($23) and Alexander Volkov ($16), some clear-cut top options have emerged for daily fantasy.
Across 12 fights, only two fighters have win odds better than 75%, and they both carry odds greater than 50% to win by knockout or submission. Those are Blaydes and Frank Camacho ($16).
Those two guys are the definitive options for DFS. After them, though, it's bordering on a shrug emoji.
Although there are some fighters with intriguing win odds relative to their salaries, none of them check the two main boxes as emphatically as Blaydes and Camacho. This means we've got to dig through the numbers, find some fighters who could emerge from the blob, and build from there.
The data below can at least help in that pursuit.
Below are each of the fighters on the card sorted by their FanDuel salary. The big numbers there are the betting lines via UFC odds. The win odds have the vig removed from the equation, and the knockout or submission odds are via the double-chance bets at FanDuel. Given the big bonuses for early wins in the scoring, finding fighters who can finish is a key, even if it's not overly easy on this slate.
The rest of the data is all from UFCStats.com. "SubAp15" is submission attempts per 15 minutes, "TDp15" is takedown attempts per 15 minutes, and "SSLPM" is significant strikes landed per minute. All of those categories directly translate to FanDuel points, and they've been blended together as FanDuel points per minute (FDPPM) to show which fighters could produce points via volume even if they don't get the finish.
Also listed are the takedown defense (TDD% and oTDD%) for both the fighter and their opponent, showing the percentage of times they successfully ward off a takedown attempt. A takedown defense is another category that earns you FanDuel points, and this can also show which fighters might be successful in getting their opponents to the mat.
As a note here, this is the first official UFC fight for Max Rohskopf ($16) and Justin Jaynes ($11), so they have no individual data in the chart. This is the second fight for Brianna Van Buren ($18), so her data is from just one official bout.
| Fighter | Opponent | Salary | WinOdds | KO/SubOdds | SubAp15 | TDp15 | oTDD% | TDD% | SSLPM | FDPPM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Curtis Blaydes | Alexander Volkov | $23 | 79.2% | 70.6% | 0.0 | 6.63 | 76% | 25% | 3.74 | 2.88 |
| Roosevelt Roberts | Jim Miller | $20 | 69.2% | 43.5% | 1.1 | 1.83 | 46% | 58% | 3.12 | 1.29 |
| Bobby Green | Clay Guida | $19 | 70.4% | 37.0% | 0.3 | 1.12 | 69% | 74% | 4.95 | 0.85 |
| Brianna Van Buren | Tecia Torres | $18 | 67.9% | 16.9% | 0.0 | 3.00 | 52% | 33% | 4.80 | 1.49 |
| Belal Muhammad | Lyman Good | $18 | 53.5% | 22.2% | 0.2 | 2.15 | 75% | 83% | 4.37 | 1.19 |
| Raquel Pennington | Marion Reneau | $17 | 61.2% | 16.7% | 0.8 | 1.13 | 51% | 67% | 3.32 | 0.92 |
| Shane Burgos | Josh Emmett | $17 | 56.7% | 33.9% | 0.2 | 0.36 | 50% | 90% | 7.09 | 0.64 |
| Oskar Piechota | Marc-Andre Barriault | $17 | 50.0% | 32.3% | 1.9 | 0.76 | 68% | 41% | 3.19 | 1.13 |
| Max Rohskopf | Austin Hubbard | $16 | 64.2% | 43.5% | -- | -- | 45% | -- | -- | -- |
| Roxanne Modafferi | Lauren Murphy | $16 | 52.6% | 20.4% | 0.1 | 1.45 | 66% | 41% | 3.06 | 0.80 |
| Gillian Robertson | Cortney Casey | $16 | 50.5% | 25.0% | 1.3 | 3.44 | 39% | 0% | 2.18 | 1.94 |
| Frank Camacho | Justin Jaynes | $16 | 80.6% | 58.3% | 0.0 | 1.18 | -- | 72% | 6.68 | 0.87 |
| Alexander Volkov | Curtis Blaydes | $16 | 20.8% | 16.7% | 0.2 | 0.75 | 25% | 76% | 5.36 | 0.69 |
| Cortney Casey | Gillian Robertson | $15 | 49.5% | 23.8% | 0.7 | 0.34 | 0% | 39% | 4.72 | 0.65 |
| Marc-Andre Barriault | Oskar Piechota | $15 | 50.0% | 27.0% | 0.0 | 0.33 | 41% | 68% | 3.53 | 0.34 |
| Josh Emmett | Shane Burgos | $15 | 43.3% | 37.0% | 0.2 | 1.50 | 90% | 50% | 3.63 | 0.88 |
| Lyman Good | Belal Muhammad | $14 | 46.5% | 33.3% | 0.0 | 0.38 | 83% | 75% | 5.32 | 0.47 |
| Austin Hubbard | Max Rohskopf | $14 | 35.8% | 20.0% | 0.0 | 1.00 | -- | 45% | 3.02 | 0.58 |
| Lauren Murphy | Roxanne Modafferi | $13 | 47.4% | 13.3% | 0.0 | 1.03 | 41% | 66% | 3.76 | 0.64 |
| Marion Reneau | Raquel Pennington | $13 | 38.8% | 13.3% | 1.1 | 0.35 | 67% | 51% | 3.46 | 0.71 |
| Jim Miller | Roosevelt Roberts | $12 | 30.8% | 24.4% | 1.9 | 1.69 | 58% | 46% | 2.83 | 1.48 |
| Clay Guida | Bobby Green | $12 | 29.6% | 14.3% | 0.7 | 3.39 | 74% | 69% | 2.45 | 1.74 |
| Justin Jaynes | Frank Camacho | $11 | 19.4% | 14.3% | -- | -- | 72% | -- | -- | -- |
| Tecia Torres | Brianna Van Buren | $11 | 32.1% | 10.0% | 0.1 | 0.67 | 33% | 52% | 4.04 | 0.54 |
Based on that data, you should be able to see why Blaydes and Camacho are the main priorities. But there are also some value fighters with decent odds to at least get a win bonus, and that matters if you're trying to jam in Blaydes' $23 salary.
It's definitely not easy to find other fighters who separate beyond those top two. These numbers, though, can at least lend a crutch in helping you identify the fighters who have a chance to put your lineups over the top.