DFS UFC Kansas City Fight Night Odds and Leverage for Draftkings Tournaments

dfsedric
Apr 26
3 min read

I haven't done an official UFC post in a while, but because this event is local to me (down the street from my house), and because Ian Garry came into my coffee shop, I had to represent one time in 2025. One thing to note is that I do not have ownership projections for UFC these days which is partly why I dont post it much. However I will make it do what it do.

Ian Garry and folks getting a Thursday afternoon lunch in, shooting for an ESPN2 event.

Potentially UnderOwned Fighters vs Upside

I haven't figured out how to best represent this in a visualization so I'm going to give it to you like this. I use the projections, averages, and history to calculate the upside of fighters. Then I get the odds of a fighter getting a finish vs a decision, their percentage of times they appear in the optimal lineup, and then the percentage chance they reach the score that is needed to be in a good lineup.

What I will do here is recommend the fighters with upside from top to bottom that stand out the most.

Ikram Aliskerov - not coming up optimal very often, but has the highest calculated upside on the slate. That means that you will feel uncomfortable building with him at his 9,700 price tag, but if he does the thing, he could give you a leveraged build.
Jaqueline Amorim - similar as the above. I doubt you can get to both of them but that would be something.
Matt Schnell - the cheapest in the 9K range that makes this list. I think that having 1 of the 3 is a must in lineups to be contrarian. I may start by trying to squeeze two and due to price, he may be the 2nd of two.

Noting: I could see Jimmy Flick being the most popular cheap guy on the slate. High chances of a finish and highly optimal at only 7000 Draftkings salary.

Randy Brown or Josylene Edwards are two fighters I am thinking need to be potentially faded (at least one of the two). They may win but it is highly likely by decision, which limits their actual upside.

Violence vs Decision Fights

Fights 6, 2, 7, 12, 1, and 4 all have a more violent expectation than say fights 5, 14 and 9. You can sync up the fighters in each fight number in the above chart, which again suggests Edwards to win by decision. Anytime you put a fight in the judges hand's bad things can happen so I blindly avoid unless I am taking an underdog for a potential upset. These fighters (if fighting at a high paced matchup) can still get to 100 points in decision wins but none of them project as high volume to me.

Fighter Value per Odds

Value means that I have fighters above the trend line. This leads to a few underdogs (Flick, Parates, etc) standing out a bit. I'm more inclined to take a cheap fighter who may be highly owned than an expensive one.

Size Mismatches

Anytime someone has over 3 inch reach advantage, I imagine their fist punching the other guys face a lil bit easier than those with the disadvantage. Those advantages can get negated by good takedown accuracy though, as ground and pound/submission closes the distance. I went through all of these advantages and didnt see any clear takedown advantages for the disadvantaged fighters so these advantages could be significant for any fight that stays on the feet.

Random Insights

Looks like Onama done planned an after party tonight. WIll this insight help us win a GPP? Absolutely not, but I would love to see the success rate of a guy going into a fight with a party in mind. Could be a sign of confidence, or could be a sign of distraction.