Somewhat up and down results from last week. The suggestions in this article for the upper salary range were pretty good aside from opting to avoid Bobby Green in tournaments in favor of Gabriel Bonfim. I took the couple hundred saved there and nose-dived down the rest of the slate. Win some and lose many, that’s my motto.
This time around we have a UFC Fight Night event taking place at the Bridgestone Arena in Nashville, Tennessee. The card is headlined with ranked bantamweight action between #4 ranked Cory Sandhagen and #7 ranked Rob Font. The rest of the card has numerous fights that should play out to be exciting as well.
For anyone that hasn’t read this article before, The Chalk Board is a DraftKings Daily Fantasy Sports article where I attempt to navigate the $9000+ salary range by offering you insight into who I will be using, considering, or fading from my personal lineups. In turn, this can help navigate the lower salary range as well by design. If you choose to alter your lineups based on any statements made by me in this article, please understand that I am not a professional gambler or DFS player, so that decision is on you. Live with the results YOU get from the decisions YOU make.
UFC Nashville has a similar $9K range to UFC 291, which could be a blessing or a curse depending on how you look at it. Hopefully, we can dial in on the best play from the range and avoid any potential traps along the way. Below you will find my opinions on the slate, let’s dive in.
$9600 – SEAN WOODSON (-180)
I am putting Sean Woodson here because this is the price he was originally released at and I have never seen DraftKings change a posted price before. I have also never seen a fighter’s opponent change three times during fight week either, so I don’t want to speculate that it would be impossible for DraftKings to do that.
Currently, Sean Woodson is set to fight Dennis Buzukja at UFC Nashville. If that changes by tomorrow I apologize, but as of now, that is his opponent. At this point I don’t know what to think. I thought Woodson was going to beat Butler, but then I somewhat thought Santos was going to be able to catch Woodson, and now I am just at the point where I am not sure I care enough to tape a new fighter. The price tag here is the issue, assuming he stays here.
Sean Woodson just isn’t worth $9600 in any world in my opinion. He might have some power, but it isn’t overwhelming power. He has only one first-round finish in his UFC career. Unless we get that here, preferably in the first minute, he doesn’t stand a chance of paying off this price tag. If his price drops down into the mid-range, then I would at least watch tape at that point, but at $9600 Woodson is a complete fade for me.
$9500 – TATIANA SUAREZ (-360)
This is the “no shit” play of the slate in my opinion. The ownership will likely agree with that statement as I expect Suarez to be on par, if not more owned, than main event favorite Cory Sandhagen. There is a reason for it though.
Tatiana Suarez is one of the few women in MMA capable of putting up monster DraftKings scores. Suarez averages over six takedowns per fifteen minutes and has never lost a fight in her professional or recorded amateur mixed martial arts career. Suarez has finished six of her nine professional fights. Even in the event she doesn’t finish, a wrestling-heavy decision is sure to score heavily for her. Suarez has a ceiling you can only get from a handful of fighters within the UFC. The bad news is everybody knows it.
In this matchup, Tatiana Suarez is fighting former champion, Jessica Andrade. Andrade has been on a bit of a slide lately after turning in a monster performance against an aging Lauren Murphy up a weight class from where this fight will be taking place. Andrade is on the smaller side but turns into a bully in the fights where she has seen her best success. In a technical striking match, she seems to struggle. In a technical wrestling/grappling match she also seems to struggle. I think her only hope in this fight will be to catch Suarez with something on the way in, and I would consider that to be a very unlikely thing to have happened with a wrestler as good as Suarez.
I think playing Tatiana Suarez is going to be mandatory this week for cash. I will also be using her in small-field single-entry tournaments that I enter as well. I think she puts up a very high score this week, only limited by how quickly she finishes Jessica Andrade. In very large tournaments I would consider using her opponent as well simply because the win condition would be a knock out in my opinion.
$9300 – CORY SANDHAGEN (-350)
Cory Sandhagen is one of the old reliables when it comes to DraftKings fantasy scoring. When Sandhagen wins he produces scores well over 100 points regularly. On top of that, Sandhagen is tough to finish, having only been finished once by submission against current champ Aljamain Sterling. Submission shouldn’t be a concern in this one.
If Tatiana Suarez doesn’t end up the most owned fighter I would have to believe it is because Cory Sandhagen is. Cory is the personification of mixed martial arts. He is a very pretty striker who cuts angles very well, has the ability to take you down if he wants to, and is a very effective grappler once he is on the ground…as long as he is driving the bus. Off his back, he is significantly less effective, but just like the threat of submission, that isn’t a concern in this one.
Sandhagen is fighting Rob Font. Font is coming off a big win over prospect Adrian Yanez that surprised many. Most of us thought Font wasn’t capable of actually stunning someone after seeing him land over 200 strikes on Chito Vera and there not be a mark on Vera. That mystery aside, Rob Font scores just as well as Sandhagen does when it comes to DraftKings. For me, I think that Rob Font will be a straightforward out for Cory Sandhagen, but when you consider the price tags I see a ton of merit on both sides here.
When it comes to cash games I don’t think it takes a genius to see the benefits of stacking this fight. On the tournament side though I personally will be loading up on Cory Sandhagen, finding every entry possible combining both Suarez and Sandhagen. If I were a multiple-entry player I would be sure to be nearly equally exposed to both sides of this fight though.
$9100 – IGNACIO BAHAMONDES (-225)
It is a damn shame that this fight will likely be such a dud for DraftKings purposes because the entertainment level should be pretty high with this one. Ignacio Bahamondes is fighting LOTW Hall of Famer, Ludovit Klein. This fight should be a striking clinic from bell to bell.
Ignacio Bahamondes is a long striker with near-perfect takedown defense. He uses his length well to keep the fight on his terms and is active enough to produce decent scores on DraftKings, but unless he gets an early finish he has virtually no grappling upside. Aside from that there is very limited opportunity for a finish here either in my opinion. Likely we will be staring down the barrel of a 90-something-point score in an active decision.
Bahamondes is taking what I believe to be a significant step up fighting Ludovit Klein, and if Klein can navigate the length of Bahamondes, he certainly has the skills to get Bahamondes in trouble. I doubt that happens though, as Bahamondes is pretty technically sound behind a great jab and some distance.
This fight is a complete fade for me in the contests I play. I could see maybe stuffing Klein into a cash lineup and just hoping that he doesn’t get finished, but Bahamondes is a hard one to justify anywhere other than a large tournament where you intentionally do wild shit in hopes of being different and the stars aligning.
$9000 – KYLER PHILLIPS (-212)
The final fighter in the $9K range is Kyler Phillips who trains at The MMA Lab in Arizona. Phillips will be coming back after a one-year layoff, following his submission win over Marcelo Rojo. Phillips is fighting Raoni Barcelos, who has been on a bit of a slide, losing three of his last four.
Kyler Phillips is pretty well-rounded. He is capable of generating power with his hands, his wrestling is very solid, and he has proven his ability to grapple as well. He does seem to have somewhat of a cardio concern in my opinion, which was evidenced in the fight he lost to Raulian Paiva by majority decision. I think that could end up hurting him here if he doesn’t manage to connect with power early.
Phillips is notoriously an under-whelming scorer on DraftKings, and being at the $9000 price point doesn’t help matters. The one saving grace would be that his opponent, Raoni Barcelos, does give up around 100 points on average in his losses. Barcelos is a mixed martial artist who is good pretty much everywhere but might possibly be feeling the effects of getting up in age over his last few fights. Barcelos should be able to limit the offensive wrestling from Phillips with his exceptional takedown defense, and then this becomes a one-dimensional stand-up fight.
To be honest, I don’t love either of them in that scenario. I believe that the fight should be lined very closely so I would be more inclined to use Barcelos than Phillips, but I could see taking a shot on Barcelos being at that age when things start to fall apart quickly for large tournaments where you want to be different than most others.
FINAL THOUGHT
The UFC 291 event sure was a great one, and to follow that up with a fight night of this caliber is making me feel warm and tingly inside. Normally after such a great card we get a snoozefest slate that I really couldn’t care much less about, but this time around the UFC has delivered in my opinion. I will make sure to get some drinks, prepare a great meal, and enjoy every minute of this event.
Hopefully, this Chalk Board article has helped you at least reduce the number of options in the upper salary range, and in turn isolate a few dogs you feel good about. I would like to take this time to again remind you to make YOUR OWN decisions. Don’t buy into anything I say unless it makes sense to you as well.
Good luck this week! If you need any help with your DraftKings entries you can join the free Discord server which has loads of very capable DFS players and I am sure you will find an opinion that will give you the confirmation bias that most people seek. If you need additional help then reach out to @WeWantPicks on Twitter, or you can shoot me questions as well if you like @WebGuyWWP. Thanks for reading, see you guys next week.
