Welcome to the first official slate of 2025 for the UFC with a solid fight night at The Apex. We have a 14 fight card which is awesome for DFS as it will spread ownership out instead of the condensed 11-12 fight cards. There are some monster favorites on this one, with two last week fill-ins for fights where someone dropped out, and we have a couple of debuts from the contender series that are fresh on everyone’s minds. There is also going to be some gravitation towards the cheap women underdogs because of the insane ML odds for the favorites, and it seems like clockwork that the heavy favorite fails (I.E. Cong) and it will skew ownership to their opponents.
For anyone who hasn’t read this article before, this series will be released every week on Wednesday and will cover the slate by isolating the fighters that I like within the various salary groups. Please be aware that these plays are subject to change as the week goes on. You can unlock my Saturday Morning Slate Sleuth article that contains my exact plays, and access to the entire suite of DraftKings DFS tools available with Premium Membership – Click Here To Join – Use code ‘ADP’ for 10% off your first month!
$9,000+ PRICE POINT
This is kind of a weird range this week due to having multiple debutants in this range, and then Kline who is a -950 ML at 9800 at the top end of the price range. I will go over my two favorites in this price range for DFS purposes.
I do not typically like picking the shiny new toy fresh off the DWCS, but Jacobe Smith looks like the real deal with tremendous wrestling upside, and for DFS we love the guys who will chain wrestle. It is a limited sample, but Smith is averaging nearly 7 significant strikes per minute and damn near a takedown per minute. The upside is just insane, and yes he has not done it against guys in the UFC, but Parsons is not a world beater.
My next favorite play in this range has a little bias in it, but I love Roman Kopylov. He is such a dynamic striker who has destroyed people on the feet getting finishes in 85% of his wins. He elected to wrestle against Almeida last fight, but when you look at the fact that Almeida is a world champion kickboxer (claim to fame beating Poatan in it) you see that he made the business decision to get a win to rebound from the Fluffy loss. He is averaging 97 DK points in his wins, and does not have to worry about any takedown threat from Curtis as he has yet to shoot once in his UFC career. I believe Kopylov has more paths to victory, as Curtis tends to rely on his counter striking and we will see the next step in the evolution of Roman with him getting a finish ITD and going 10X on his price tag.
$8,000 – $8,900 PRICE POINT
The fighters in this range tend to be the most popular for cash builds, and I was really on the fence with going with another debutant in Bashi, but I am going to instead drop down the $100 salary and pick Magomed Gadzhiyasulov as my first fighter in this range. He won his debut with 5 takedowns and scored 93 in a decision. There will be a theme here whenever a fighter who looks like they will wrestle when they understand it’s their path to victory. Takedowns giving 5 points per add up, and we should see Magomed work them in and get Bruno to the ground. Even if he only scores 93 again, that is over 10x and what you need. If he can chain wrestle and wear Bruno out and get a finish, he has the opportunity to break the slate.
Ribas is going to be my next pick, even though I love Dern (who doesn’t?) I think we see another instance where the fighter I want to target is going to initiate takedowns, and Dern has a putrid 30% takedown defense going for her. She will try her heart out, but I think we see Ribas control this fight and if we get 5 full rounds where she gets 6+ takedowns with all the control time, she is going to smash at her price of 8500.
Under $8,000 PRICE POINT
This range is always tricky, as the fighters are priced here because when salaries are released they are betting underdogs. The first fighter in this range I am going to write up is Trey Ogden. Moises is a little chinny, and Ogden is coming off some nice wins, minus the Bahamondes fight, which makes sense the more we see Bahamondes fight, and has been shooting for more takedowns in his last few fights against Moises 55% takedown defense. Ogden has also moved to a slight betting favorite, which coupled with the upside of the takedowns with his prowess to get submissions, means we are going to target the 7900 fighter who in his last 2 wins has over 90+ DK points.
Felipe Bunes will be the next underdog I want to target, for a lot of the same reasons as the fighters listed throughout this article. He averages a little over a takedown per round, and landed 2 on Van before ultimately getting KO’d by Josh. The difference here is Johnson does not have the same kind of hands that Van has displayed, and Bunes will take advantage of the 39% takedown defense Johnson sports to control the fight. He will have to overcome the 5 inch height difference, although it is only a 2.5 inch reach advantage. Johnson is a low output fighter, Bunes more than doubles him in output with significant strikes per minute, so give me the dog who looks to be better in all facets of the fight.
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