UFC Vegas 34 DFS Picks

Welcome to my DFS breakdown for UFC Vegas 34: Cannonier vs Gastelum. After a rare week off, The UFC is back at the Apex in Las Vegas following UFC 265 in Houston two weeks ago which saw Ciryl Gane capture a piece of UFC gold. This card is currently scheduled to have 12 fights, though as anybody who’s been following the UFC over the last few months knows, anything can happen with weigh-ins and late week shenanigans. I’ll be in the FTNBets Discord leading up to Saturday’s slate to discuss last-minute changes and general slate strategy!

If you’re interested in DFS and betting takes for every fight on this card, you can check out The Undisputed MMA Show with Jon Kelly and me.

In this weekly article, I will outline three fighters who present strong floors and ceilings for your DraftKings lineups. 

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High tier: Mark Madsen $9100

Before we get into this week’s writeup, I just want to point out the fact that there are a grand total of zero fights on this week’s card that feature a fighter priced as a -200 betting favorite. As most of you know, on normal MMA slates there are fighters in the $9K range on DraftKings that are priced as large favorites who have implied chances to win over 75%. However this week, there are no “locks” or fighters who I make massive favorites. Because of this, there is no need to try and jam in two super expensive plays, nor spend the entirety of your salary. That said, in terms of fighters who are priced towards the top of the pricing range I am looking to target the best grappler possible, as usual. This week, that comes in the form of Mark Madsen, a former silver medalist wrestler who has averaged over eight takedowns per fifteen minutes in his shortened UFC sample size. Madsen has a tough matchup this weekend in  fellow wrestler and veteran Clay Guida, but Madsen is pretty reliable to shoot takedowns in bulk and should be at an athleticism advantage early in this fight. Again, he is not the same type of big favorite that we’re used to seeing in this portion of the article, but Madsen should have a strong first eight to ten minutes in this fight that are filled with multiple mat returns. One knock on Madsen is that he doesn’t do a ton of damage in terms of total strike count, but he lands so many takedowns that it somewhat nullifies the lack of other cumulative scoring.

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Mid-tier: Roosevelt Roberts $8400 

In the mid-range this week I’m finding myself really liking Roosevelt Roberts to bounce back into the win column and put up a solid score against Ignacio Bahomondes this week. Bahamondes is an extremely lengthy kickboxer, but we haven’t seen a ton of other parts of his game. While Roberts has let DFS players down on a few occasions, including back-to-back losses as a significant favorite, this is a good matchup for him. Roberts is nearly as tall as Bahomondes, which should lead to competitive stand-up sequences, but where the upside really lies here is in the grappling. Roberts averages just under two takedowns per fifteen minutes and while he’s not the same world-class level wrestler as Madsen, Roberts is a solid MMA grappler and I would not be surprised at all if he were able to win by submission in this spot. 

Low tier: Brandon Royval $7300

I mentioned in the introduction to the high-tier portion of this article that we don’t have a ton of massive favorites this weekend, but despite that, I’ve found myself largely picking favorites to win the fight. That trend continues here in a flyweight bout between Alexandre Pantoja and Brandon Royval, where I’m picking Pantoja to win as a moderately sized favorite, however I love the fight as a whole from a DFS perspective, and Royval is one of my favorite underdogs on the slate. If you haven’t seen Royval fight before, imagine a chicken with its head cut off that just does not stop running. That’s Brandon Royval. Royval is not the most talented guy in the world, but he constantly pressures his opponents and is in a state of putting himself into danger just in the hopes of securing a finish, which we love as MMA DFS GPP players. On the feet, Royval has pretty solid offensive boxing but is very hittable and likely to be cracked a few times by Pantoja counters. In terms of grappling, Royval can only be considered what is called a “submission over position” grappler, which means he constantly sacrifices dominant wrestling positions in order to try and snatch a neck or limb of his opponents. Royval is a high variance fighter, and that is exactly who we want to be targeting in DFS. If Royval wins, it very likely comes by finish, and this fight is going to have such an insane pace that if he loses a close decision and no other underdogs win, he’d live to be an optimal play even in a loss. The most likely scenario here though in my opinion is a finish for either Pantoja or Royval, and I’ll be exposed to both sides.