After two straight weeks of 2-1 finishes with the main event letting us down, I am eager to hand out a sweep to set you up for success. UFC Fight Night 275 definitely sets things up nicely for us, as we get an epic main event with Jack Della Maddalenas and Carlos Prates facing off, while a plethora of big names enter the Octagon before them.
Watching the fights is enough fun by itself, but we can also win some cash at DraftKings if we land on the right MMA DFS picks. My core aims to balance GPP upside and safety to build a winning foundation, but you still need to figure out those other plays that can take you to the top. I’ll still point you to my favorite GPP picks (2-0 last week!) and other plays I like, giving you a runway to a winning DraftKings MMA DFS lineup. Let’s build!
🥊New to MMA DFS? Slate Overview
- Best value play: Carlos Prates. Crazy finishing ability, 5 round main event floor, yet not expensive.
- Best GPP pivot: Steve Erceg. Priced like other studs and is favored to beat an aging Tim Elliott, but not owned.
- Top stud: Jacob Malkoun. Top projection of the slate, most expensive, and crazy -1600 favorite.
- Safest fighter: Quillan Salkilld. Elite finisher, 2nd best projection, and -485 betting favorite.
- Biggest Upset risk: Prates. JDM is the tiniest of underdogs.
Best MMA DFS Picks for UFC Fight Night 257
- Quillan Salkilld ($9.4k)
- Marwan Rahiki ($9.6k)
- Carlos Prates ($8.2k)
🥊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.
Salkilld is a vicious finisher with an elite 11-1 record. He has eight finishes across 11 wins and he hasn’t lost a fight since getting submitted in his pro debut back in 2021. He’s been unstoppable ever since and he just keeps making heads roll.
Now he gets what looks to be a washed Beneil Dariush. Salkilld comes in with the second best projection of the slate and is a huge betting favorite. That tracks, seeing as the now 36 years old Dariush is just 1-3 over his last four fights and has gotten finished in each of those defeats.
I’m also pretty into Marwan Rahiki, but I want to be fully transparent and admit that this might be a “play both sides” situation. Rahiki does come in at a steep price, but he’s a huge -650 favorite since he’s taking on an inexperienced fighter who is just 4-2 and accepted this bout on short notice.
Rahiki, meanwhile, is a perfect 8-0 and has won every fight early. We are paying for a guy who is extremely likely to win and almost as likely to win early.
I’ll wrap things up with Prates, as both he and Jack Della Maddalena are both super interesting. They are both cheap, they both have finishing upside, and they have the 5 round floor if the fight does go the distance. JDM is the better boxer, but Prates has way more power and explosiveness. He’s a mild favorite, but after finishing his opponent in 12 of his last 13 fights, he’s not the type of value I want to get away from.
- 🟢 SAFE Salkilld. Dariush seems cooked. Even if Salkilld can’t get the finish I think he’s a very good bet to win.
- 🟡 BOOM/BUST Prates/Rahiki are elite finishers with massive upside. Rahiki is very expensive and inexperienced, while Prates does not have an easy matchup in front of him.
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.
- Ollie Schmid ($6.6k)
- Louie Sutherland ($7.6k)
- Steve Erceg ($9.3k)
I am pretty all in on Rahiki. He’s explosive, he’s undefeated, and he’s never had a fight of the distance. But he’s facing a total wild card in Schmid, who he probably knows very little about. I will be mostly on Rahiki, but I’ll have a dusting of Schmid, who is dirt cheap and is at least in good form with three straight wins (2 finishes) behind him.
Sutherland is my favorite underdog pick of the slate. The 32-year old is 0-2 so far in the UFC, but getting submitted by Valter Walker isn’t shameful. He really hasn’t been that tested yet, while he’s facing a guy in Tai Tuivasa that is aging and has dropped six fights in a row (4 by finish). Tai is the better fighter, but heavyweight bouts are often separated by very little.
Erceg is just an interesting spend that won’t be owned. Tim Elliott is still scrappy even at 39, but we have submission upside and strong win probability here. I don’t envision an explosive finish, but he’s an interesting pivot away from Salkilld/Rahiki if you want to get different.
UFC Fight Night 275 DFS Strategy
I am mostly locking in my three-man core and then targeting Sutherland a good deal. I created an underdog driven tool that I am still testing and the top three guys with “upside edge” are Schmid, JDM, and Sutherland.
I’ll get a dusting of all of them spaced out over several lineups. The tool focuses on identifying key differences between market win probability and the model’s win probability. Only time will tell if it’s remotely accurate, but this will be a fun week to give it a spin. There’s logic to those upset picks even outside the tool, though.
Further, we are testing projections and sims within our lineup tool and right now Rahiki and Salkilld are inside the top 5 in win probability. You can’t use it for MMA DFS yet, but feel free to use my picks and use the tool for NBA and MLB for now.
In general, this is a very top-heavy MMA DFS slate. I want to cram the studs in and then pick my spots elsewhere. The low mid-range has a ton of prices that are very tight, so there could be some upsets to target there.
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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