UFC Vegas 118 DFS Breakdown: Model, Preview, Picks for Muhammad vs. Bonfim, More Saturday Fights

We’ve got one more week before the much-anticipated White House event — though whether or not we’ll have DFS contests is unclear — marked by a Fight Night at the Apex. The main event features former champion Belal Muhammad trying to hold his spot in the division against Gabriel Bonfim, who puts his 6-1 UFC record on the line.

The 12-fight card goes down at the usual 5:00 p.m. start time, with the entire event airing on Paramount+.

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

Belal Muhammad ($8,300) vs. Gabriel Bonfim ($7,900)

This will be the first five-round fight for the up-and-coming Gabriel Bonfim, who brings a 6-1 UFC record with him this week. The one loss came via flash knockout in a fight he had previously been dominating, while he’s finished four of his wins and scored at least 76 DraftKings points in each of his two decision wins.

That makes him a potent per-minute scorer, so, in theory, an extra ten minutes only raises his floor and ceiling. Of course, the other view of that is that his cardio could be a major liability. It’s seemingly improved since he allowed Nicolas Dalby to come back and finish him, but pacing himself over five rounds instead of three is still a new challenge.

That’s what I view as the biggest edge for Muhammad, a former champion who has gone 25 minutes in four of his last six fights. Muhammad is also the better wrestler here, but Bonfim’s dangerous submission game raises questions about how willingly Muhammad uses that wrestling.

The other issue is how much the 37-year-old Muhammad has left in the tank. After losing the title, he was thoroughly beaten by Ian Garry, and this represents a further step down in stakes as he moves from headlining numbered events to fighting at the Apex. It would be easy to see how Muhammad’s motivation is lower for this fight.

For all those reasons, I’ll be much heavier on Bonfim in GPPs. However, it’s an excellent cash game stack given the reasonable odds to go the distance, relatively balanced salaries, and both men’s per-minute scoring potential.

The Easy Chalk

Iwo Baraniewski ($9,000)

There are three relatively obvious top options on the slate who have both strong moneyline odds and a great shot at picking up a finish. Baraniewski stands out because he’s at least $500 cheaper than the other two options, while simultaneously carrying the best first-round stoppage odds at +165 or so.

He’s taking on Junior Tafa ($7,200), who comes into the fight on relatively short notice after picking up his first win at light heavyweight last month. Baraniewski has some distinct advantages over Tafa even if he had a full camp, though – mainly that Tafa is one of the UFC’s worst grapplers.

Baraniewski has finished all three of his UFC/DWCS opponents with strikes in less than 90 seconds each. However, he actually comes from a judo background, where he won a national championship, as well as the Polish ADCC (no-gi grappling) championship before transitioning to MMA. He should be able to easily dominate Tafa on the ground should he choose to use his grappling this time.

What makes me extremely comfortable in rostering Baraniewski, though, is the fact that he might also be able to win a striking match with Tafa. While Tafa has plenty of power, Baraniewski is faster, more athletic, and has so far proven durable. While my hope is that he chooses to grapple, we’re likely fine either way.

Baraniewski has moved from -310 to -395 as of Friday, so the market is clearly with me here. He’ll be in nearly 100% of my lineups.

The Upside Plays

Alessandro Costa ($9,800)

Both of the other two top options are also heavy favorites thanks to a last-minute opponent change, though in the case of Costa, he is the replacement opponent. Despite the short notice, Costa gets an excellent opportunity against Matt Schnell ($6,400), who is 1-4 over his last five with every loss coming inside the distance and has publicly declared his retirement on multiple occasions before this fight.

Costa isn’t a top prospect by any stretch with a 3-3 UFC record, but he’s six years younger and has finished each of his wins inside of two rounds. He’s -425 to pick up a finish here and +125 to get it in the first round, giving him some clear upside.

From a strategy standpoint, Costa’s $9,800 salary should make him the least popular of the three top options on the slate. Of course, we can (at best) fit two of them in any given lineup, so rostering him is a bet on him outscoring one of them by a healthy margin. With his lack of takedown upside (less than one per 15 minutes in his UFC career), he likely needs a first-round finish to get there.

Of the three, he will likely be the one I have the least exposure to, but I still want to be higher than the field.

Marcus McGhee ($9,500)

Rounding out the triumvirate of top fighters is Marcus McGhee, who looks to rebound from his first UFC loss, which came to now-champion Petr Yan, against John Yannis ($6,700). McGhee was originally booked against an exciting prospect in Jakub Wiklacz, but Yannis got the call as a replacement when Wiklacz suffered an injury.

Yannis is 1-1 in the UFC, dropping his short-notice debut against Austin Bashi before knocking out Jamie Siraj in April. It’s hard to get a feel for Yannis’ level, as Bashi is one of the best prospects to join the UFC in recent memory, while Siraj only got the call to the UFC because they needed Canadian fighters for an event in Winnipeg. Yannis being somewhere between those two fighters isn’t especially telling, since the bulk of the bantamweight roster probably fits that description.

Still, McGhee is probably a top-ten bantamweight in terms of skill level and has dominated every UFC opponent he’s faced outside of the champion. He should make fairly short work of Yannis here, and he’s -135 to win by finish. The $300 in savings relative to Costa makes him easier to afford – especially in cash games – and he’s my preferred option over Costa when considering price

The Value Play

Santiago Luna ($7,700)

Santiago Luna has impressed in his brief UFC career, as the 21-year-old is already 2-0 in the promotion. A former Mexican national wrestling champion and Pan-Am Games qualifier, he’s shown a wide range of skills. In his debut, he landed two knockdowns en route to knocking out Quang Le, then followed that up with five takedowns in a dominant decision victory in February.

He’s facing a big step up in competition in Bryce Mitchell ($8,500), who is 1-0 since dropping down to bantamweight following some tough losses at 145 lbs. However, Luna’s grappling background gives him a high floor at minimum over Mitchell, a fairly one-dimensional grappler with a questionable (at best) chin.

Luna should be able to keep this one standing – or at least dictate where it’s fought – since he won’t face much of a threat from Mitchell. At worst, if Luna wrestles himself into a grappling match and gets submitted, he’ll have picked up some takedown points along the way.

Given Mitchell’s durability issues and Luna’s obvious power, he also has a solid ceiling. My big concern is that Luna runs out of gas since he’s taking the fight on short notice, but hopefully, he takes that into account and looks for an early finish of his own.

Either way, he’s my favorite salary saver for both cash games and GPPs thanks to the floor/ceiling combination.

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The Contrarian Choice

Tom Nolan ($7,100)

The field isn’t giving Tom Nolan much of a chance against Fares Ziam ($9,100), but I’m not sure why the betting line – and thus salaries – is so wide. I’ve been on Nolan all week for reasons I laid out in my Luck Ratings article.

Essentially, from a resume standpoint, Nolan is effectively a younger version of Ziam. Both are massive for the lightweight division, with Nolan’s 4-1 UFC record exactly half of Ziam’s 8-2 record. The younger Nolan still has more room for growth, whereas the 29-year-old Ziam is arguably already in his physical prime.

Plus, the 6’1″ Ziam typically enjoys a height advantage over his opponents, which he doesn’t have over Nolan. That can be a tough adjustment for fighters who are used to fighting as the taller man and could be a slight edge for Nolan.

Ultimately, while I expect Ziam to win, the potential rewards from Nolan are worth the risk. He opens up enough salary to fit whichever expensive fighters you want and should check in around 10% ownership, so a win would give massive leverage.

The Swing Fights

Brendan Allen ($8,800) vs. Edmen Shahbazyan ($7,400)

This isn’t a great card from a “swing fight” perspective, as the fights likeliest to end inside the distance all have a massive favorite. However, the middleweight clash between Brendan Allen and Edmen Shahbazyan is a somewhat binary striker-vs.-grappler and quick-finisher-vs.-staying-power fight.

Allen represents the grappler with staying power, averaging a bit over 1.5 takedowns per 15 minutes, with his last four wins coming in the third round or later. He’ll almost certainly look to grapple against Shahbazyan, who has first- or second-round knockouts in five of his last six victories.

Allen has been knocked out just twice in his career, but interestingly, both came against Xtreme Couture middleweights Chris Curtis and Sean Strickland. Shahbazyan also trains there, and it’s entirely possible that head coach Eric Nicksick has noticed something in Allen that they’re able to exploit. On the other hand, four of Shahbazyan’s last five losses have been finishes on the ground – and he was taken down three times in his decision loss – so the path to upside for Allen is also clear.

I personally believe Shahbazyan should be the favorite here – an opinion shared by Sean Zerillo that we discussed on our latest UFC betting preview podcast. I’ll have some Allen as a hedge, though, since any win likely comes with a big score.

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Pictured: Iwo Baraniewski
Photo Credit: Imagn