UFC Fight Night 276 gives us a fun featherweight main event as Arnold Allen vs. Melquizael Costa headlines Saturday’s card from the Meta APEX in Las Vegas. This slate has plenty to sort through for MMA DFS picks, with finishing upside, salary value, and fight environment all playing a major role.
Last week’s MMA Core was solid (2-1), while you could have cashed with those three plays as your foundation. A 3-0 sweep is always the goal, though, and I aim to deliver that again this week. Let’s build.
🥊New to MMA DFS? Slate Overview
- Best value play: Costa. 5 round main event, cheap, and has elite finishing upside.
- Best GPP pivot: Dooho Choi. 13 KOs in 16 wins; instant leverage on chalky Santos.
- Top stud: Daniel Santos. Not even that expensive, but owns top projection of the slate.
- Safest fighter: Bukauskas. Facing inferior replacement fighter. Big favorite and not pricey.
- Biggest Upset risk: Malcolm Wellmaker. Disappointed last time and is facing a red hot fighter.
Best MMA DFS Picks for UFC Fight Night 276
- Modestas Bukauskas ($8.3k)
- Arnold Allen ($8.6k)
- Tommy Gantt ($9.1k)
🥊New to MMA DFS? Core plays are the guys you put in most or all of your lineups. They have strong matchups, are usually favored to win, and score takedowns/rack up strikes/and or have a clear path to an early finish. The goal with an MMA Core isn’t to save you cash. It’s to get you three high upside wins that leave enough room to build out the rest of your lineup.
I think Bukauskas is a pretty easy click. For one, he’s not even that expensive, and he sports a projection north of 100 fantasy points. His original bout also got cancelled, and while he was a light favorite there, he now gets to face a worse opponent on short notice and his odds tripled.
It’s a pricing play, but he’s in a pretty good groove (4-1 over his last five). He did get stopped b Nikita Krylov last time out, but he’s been super active and has fared well against some solid names. His opponent, Christian Edwards, is just 8-4 against weaker competition and simply on his level. The odds should honestly be much worse than they are. I think this is kind of a free square on this slate.
He will be owned – so you could fade and hope he doesn’t get a big score – but I think it’s good chalk.
I am pretty into Arnold Allen here. The field seems to be super into Costa, his opponent, and I get it, as he’s $1k cheaper and is an explosive finisher. But Allen has never been finished in 24 fights. It’s not like that’s just something to say, either, as he’s survived some pretty nasty guys lately like Jean Silva, Giga Chikadze, Movsar Evloev, and Max Holloway.
He only went 1-3 in those fights, but the fact that nobody in that murderer’s row could end the fight early is a testament to his toughness and skill. Allen needs this win more. His form isn’t as good in terms of getting wins, but he’s the more technically sound fighter. I think this one is a reasonable bet to go the distance, but we get five rounds so I’m OK with playing him, especially since I get an ownership edge compared to Costa.
Lastly, let’s fire up some Tommy Gantt. This is weirdly not a slate where I feel super compelled to get get more than one guy over $9k, but he’s the one I’m choosing. He’s not breaking the back like a Gautier might, either, as he’s just $9.1k. Regardless, he’s a strong wrestler who should have a clear wrestling and grappling advantage against Artur Minev, while he’s also undefeated with 10 finishes in 11 wins.
Gantt should at the very least be able to control and win this bout, if not flat out dominate en route to a big finish. I’m willing to pay the price to find out.
This is a riskier core than usual, but this card is also quite volatile from top to bottom. Let’s embrace the chaos and get a big win on Saturday night!
I am also quite high on Daniel Santos. He’s the top projecting fighter of the slate and will be very owned, but I’ll probably get to him a ton.
- 🟢 SAFE Bukauskas. Big favorite against a weaker opponent. Only question is method of victory/ceiling.
- 🟡 BOOM/BUST Allen and Gantt. Tough fight for Allen and Gantt is kind of in an unpredictable setting.
Sneaky MMA DFS GPP Pivots for UFC FN
🥊New to DFS? GPP stands for Guaranteed Prize Pool — the big tournaments. To win tournaments, your lineup has to be different from everyone else’s. A “GPP pivot” is a player who will be lower-owned than his/her upside deserves, giving you a tournament edge if he performs well.
- Doohoo Choi ($7.8k)
- Juan Diaz ($7k)
- Khaos Williams ($8.3k)
Santos is favored to win and he’s the top projecting play of the slate, but that also means Choi is instant leverage. Choi is no scrub. He owns a solid 16-4-1 record, has a whopping 13 wins by knockout, and just got done waxing Nate Landwehr via TKO.
His record has been spotty lately (2-3-1), but he’s a talented and explosive fighter. I think his inactivity and recent form have him slightly mispriced, so there’s upset potential here. But the elephant in the room is the insane leverage you can get. If you have him and fade Santos, you gain an edge on a massive chunk of the field.
The same could be the case for Diaz, who is pretty sneaky at a dirt cheap $7k price tag. This will be his UFC debut, but he’s a clean 15-1-1 and is on fire with eight consecutive wins behind him. He has never gone up against someone on Wellmaker’s level, but he’s also never been finished.
Diaz made quite the impression with a spinning back elbow KO in Dana White’s Contender Series and he will hope to make another splash here. The thing here is he’s just going to keep applying pressure and won’t back down, and that’s the exact type of opponent Wellmaker just lost to. Did he learn his lesson? I’m willing to bet he didn’t.
There’s also Khaos Williams, who is in a virtual pick’em against Nikolay Veretennikov. Khaos is four years younger, has three inches in reach advantage, and has a clear striking edge. He’s a solid mid-range play that I think should win and won’t garner a lot of ownership.
If you need more help with your basic strategy, check out our MMA DFS guide.
🥊Not Sure Where to Start?
If you’re newer to MMA DFS and feeling overwhelmed, here’s how to approach it:
- Know what contest you’re entering before you pick a single player. Cash games (50/50s, head-to-head) pay out the top half of the field. Your goal is a safe, reliable lineup. GPP tournaments pay out the top 15-20%, with most of the prize pool at the very top. Your goal there is ceiling. These two goals require completely different lineups.
- Narratives can be a thing. Guys fighting for a title shot. Fighters battling in front of their home crowd. UFC debuts. The list goes on. Know what goes into each bout and what is on the line for every fighter before you click their name.
- Know fighter styles. MMA DFS is very nuanced. What style fighters use, how often they get finishes, how their defense is – all of this plays into their salary, projection, value, and odds of winning. Make sure you know the fighting styles and path to production for both fighters before making your pick.
- Understand floor vs. ceiling before you decide who to play. Floor is the minimum you can reasonably expect from a player. Ceiling is the maximum upside if everything goes right. In cash games, you want floor — guys who almost certainly hit their value. In tournaments, you want ceiling — guys who can go nuclear.
- 5 round fight. The main event offers a little more upside, depending on the fighter. In theory, the more rounds you fight, the more points you can accrue. But don’t forget about fighter styles and how they generate points. For instance, if your fighter doesn’t get takedowns, he better get a lot of strikes or land a finish at some point.
- Upset special. Upsets happen in MMA (a lot). Not every upset is worth targeting, though. Try to put a good amount of logic/reasoning behind big swings. Ie, what is the path for this underdog to win, and how likely is it? Just as importantly, if they don’t win, how likely are they to get upset, or can they accrue points in a Decision loss?
- Who to target: Lastly, make sure you prioritize fighters who can get takedowns, rack up strikes, secure control time, end fights quickly, and grind out wins. All of those things matter and if you can combine some of them, even better. If your pick can only get you one of those things, you might want to keep looking. If they can’t get you any of those things, your decision is made a lot easier.
Playing DFS since the days of DraftStreet, Kevin knows the ins and outs of DFS, specifically for NFL and NBA. He’s also been helping people win in fantasy football leagues for 15+ years and is one of many experts featured at FantasyPros.
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