The UFC heads to Qatar with a 14-fight card featuring Arman Tsarukyan taking on Dan Hooker in the main event. Both the main event and the co-main feature a possible #1 contender fight (for at least one man in each bout), as Ian Garry takes on former champion Belal Muhammad in the co-main.
The 14-fight card has a special early start time of 10:00 a.m. ET.
We have built out a full player-projection model using the FantasyLabs Tools and Player Models to help put together some winning DFS lineups in UFC. You can use our optimizer to build optimal lineups using these projections.
The model, created by our own Sean Koerner, is based on 10,000 simulations of all the fights. He then pulled the DraftKings score from each bout to create floor, median, and ceiling projections for every fighter. Here is how he defined each projection:
- Floor: Fighter has an 80% chance of going over this score, 20% chance of going under
- Median: Fighter has a 50% chance of going over this score, 50% chance of going under
- Ceiling: Fighter has a 20% chance of going over this score, 80% chance of going under
These should give us a better sense of which fighters we should target based on the game type – maximizing ceiling in GPPs, for example.
You can check out the projections for every fighter on Saturday’s card in our UFC Models.
Main Event
Arman Tsarukyan ($9,500) vs. Dan Hooker ($6,700)
Arman Tsarukyan’s style makes him one of the best DFS fighters in the sport. He averages over three takedowns per 15 minutes and has a knockout in four of his nine UFC wins. Outside of his debut — where he took on now two-division champ Islam Makhachev on short notice — he’s even scored reasonably well in defeat, putting up 59 points despite a controversial decision going against him when he fought Mateus Gamrot.
Now he gets a somewhat strange booking against Dan Hooker, who comes in on a three-fight winning streak that involved two split decisions and a stoppage against an unranked opponent. Hooker is now 35 and hasn’t fought in more than a year and has been finished in his three most recent losses.
With Tsarukyan favored at north of -500, he’s a fairly high-floor and high-ceiling play. The case for the underdog is that the powerful Hooker is able to work back to his feet in between takedowns from Tsarukyan and potentially land a big shot while exchanging strikes.
That’s a long shot against a younger, more athletic opponent who has never been knocked down in the UFC and absorbs less than two significant strikes per minute. Coupled with the stronger values only slightly above Hooker’s price range, I don’t feel a real need to stack this one for cash. For GPPs, I’ll be at close to 100% exposure to the favorite.
The Easy Chalk
AbdulRakhman Yakhyaev ($9,800)
AbdulRakhman Yakhyaev’s only real limitation in this matchup is his salary. He’s been given an extremely friendly UFC debut opponent in Rafael Cerqueira ($6,400), who is 0-3 in the UFC with two of those losses coming via knockout.
Which is interesting, since Yakhyaev got a similar setup on the Contender Series this summer. He took on software engineer Alik Lorenz as a roughly -1100 favorite — which is just shy of his massive odds for this one. In that bout, he performed as a -1100 favorite should, dispatching Lorenz in just 30 seconds.
While that didn’t give us much information about his style or abilities, that’s exactly how huge favorites should take care of business. Given Cerqueira’s talent for first-round exits, it’s fairly likely that we see a similar run-out this time. Yakhyaev is -175 to pick up a first-round finish.
He might need that to come in the first minute, or with plenty of significant strikes, to make the optimal lineup at his huge salary. However, that depends on how many other big scores show up on the card, as I’m projecting Yakhyaev for a median of nearly 100 DraftKings points. At absolute worst, he’s an extremely safe play. At best, he gets things done quickly and posts the highest score on the slate.
The Upside Play
Saygid Izgakhmaev ($9,300)
I admittedly don’t know a ton about Saygid Izgakhmaev. The 31-year-old hasn’t fought in just over three years, as he had a contract dispute with his previous employer (ONE FC) before escaping his contract. He’s appeared in one grappling match this year (picking up a submission victory), but prior to that hadn’t been seen since knocking out nearly 40-year-old Shinya Aoki.
What gives me a reasonable level of confidence in the UFC newcomer is that his debut opponent, Nicolas Dalby ($6,900), turned 41 last week and is coming off a brutal knockout loss from six months ago. Dalby is a fighter who often overperforms his betting odds thanks to his durability/recoverability and cardio, but it seems fairly likely that the ship has sailed on at least one of those traits.
Plus, Izgakhmaev’s record suggests he brings plenty of grappling upside, with submission wins in three of his four fights prior to knocking out Aoki. Dalby has just 58% takedown defense in the UFC and gave up five takedowns in the fight prior to his knockout loss, so there could be multiple paths to upside for Izgakhmaev here.
The lack of experience against UFC-level opponents and the long layoff make him a bit scary for tighter builds, but given his massive ceiling, he’s a solid upside option for GPPs, especially as a pivot from Yakhyaev that saves $500 in salary.
Updated on 12/15/25
The Value Play
Ryan Loder ($7,700)
There are a ton of cheaper options I’m interested in this week, depending in large part on the type of contest you’ll be entering them in. For GPPs, one of my favorite options is TUF 32 winner Ryan Loder, who has seen some solid line movement his way after opening as a +136 underdog against Ismail Narudiev ($8,500).
Loder is a former D1 All-American wrestler and current wrestling coach who didn’t take a pro MMA fight until he was 30 years old. As you would expect, he has a fairly limited overall game and has gone 1-1 in the UFC with a dominant ground-and-pound win followed by a knockout loss against a former kickboxer whom he was unable to take down.
He gets the perfect matchup in Narudiev, who has gone 3-3 in the UFC across two stints, previously as a welterweight but now at middleweight. He’s been taken down multiple times in four of those fights, including in all three of his losses. Finding yourself facing a former D1 All-American when you have to avoid takedowns in order to win is a tough position to be in.
Loder’s striking is suspect enough that I also wouldn’t be shocked if he gets hurt before he can get this to the mat, which is why I’m looking at him as more of a GPP play. For cash games, Belal Muhammad ($7,400) and Shem Rock ($7,000) are better options, with both of their fights favored to go to a decision.
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The Contrarian Choice
Kyoji Horiguchi ($7,600)
Former Bellator and Rizin champion Kyoji Horiguchi is making his long-awaited return to the UFC, a decade after his unsuccessful title challenge against Demetrius Johnson and nine years since his last Octagon appearance.
Horiguchi could easily have come into the UFC with a direct title shot like his past opponent Kai Asakura did. Asakura’s poor performance in that fight is probably why Horiguchi didn’t get that opportunity, despite his knockout victory in the more recent of the two fights between the Japanese champions.
Instead, he gets Tagir Ulanbekov ($8,600), who holds a 6-1 UFC record with four decisions. His two finishes have both come via submission, which is a relatively unlikely method of victory against Horiguchi. The only man to submit him in 39 pro fights is Johnson, and he’s the greatest male flyweight of all time.
Horiguchi and Ulanbekov are roughly the same age, and Horiguchi’s only noticeable decline in recent years has been his chin. Since Ulanbekov has just one career knockout (ironically, over fellow UFC Qatar competitor Assu Almabayev ($8,700) in a regional fight), that’s not much of a concern.
Since the betting line has shifted to Ulanbekov, I’m expecting very little ownership on Horiguchi, who at worst is an excellent floor play, thanks to this fight’s long odds to see the judges. An upset at his salary doesn’t quite guarantee a spot in the optimal lineup, but his odds would be fairly high.
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The Swing Fight
Bekzat Almakhan ($8,200) vs. Aleksandre Topuria ($8,000)
Bekzat Almakhan made his UFC debut on short notice, and he was able to knock down the second-best bantamweight in the world, Umar Nurmagomedov. While he got dominated from that point on, it was still quite the statement at the start of his UFC career. He made an even bigger one in his sophomore outing, starching Brad Katona — who hadn’t been finished in any of his previous 18 fights — in just 64 seconds.
Across from him is Aleksandre Topuria, older brother of Ilia Topuria, who is similarly hard to get a read on. Aleksandre made his debut against a fighter coming in with just a few days notice, winning a solid if uninspiring decision victory. That also didn’t give us much information, since gauging the level of preparedness from his opponent is difficult.
Which means we have some massive question marks around these two when they meet early on the UFC Qatar card. I’m more impressed by Almakhan given his massive power for the division, but that could be moot if Topuria is able to avoid being hit. Given what we’ve seen from both fighters, an Almakhan win probably produces more than a Topuria win, but that’s highly skeptical at this point.
I’ll be much more heavily invested in Almakhan for a different reason, and that is the field’s likely overuse of Topuria thanks to his recognizable last name. That’s already shown up in the betting lines, which have flipped to favor Topuria. That means from a strategy standpoint, Almakhan is the stronger play.
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Pictured: Arman Tsarukyan
Photo Credit: Imagn Images
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