The UFC heads to Abu Dhabi this weekend for a massive fight card featuring two title fights, including the first official heavyweight defense of Tom Aspinall’s reign as champion.
We’ve got a special 10:00 a.m. ET lock time for the 13-fight card, so be sure to have your lineups ready to go on Friday night.
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
Tom Aspinall ($9,400) vs. Ciryl Gane ($6,800)
With the “retirement” (temporary though it may be) of Jon Jones this summer, Tom Aspinall was finally promoted from interim heavyweight champion to undisputed and makes his first title defense against Ciryl Gane.
There’s not much doubt that Aspinall is the world’s best heavyweight MMA fighter. He’s 8-1 in the UFC, with his only loss coming via a freak knee injury, and he has seen the second round just once in those nine fights, finishing that one about a minute into the second frame.
It’s hard to be much more dominant than that, with a well-rounded mix of striking and grappling. The latter should be his biggest edge against Gane, who was repeatedly taken down by a hobbled Francis Ngannou in his first title challenge, then quickly submitted by Jones in his second.
The likeliest outcome here is a quick Aspinall finish, as he’s around a -400 favorite and -275 to finish the fight. IF the fight does extend, it’s probably via Aspinall takedowns, so it’s hard to see him failing in this spot. It’s also hard to see much of a floor for Gane, so I won’t be stacking this one, especially on a slate with two five-round fights.
Co-main Event
Mackenzie Dern ($8,600) vs. Virna Jandiroba ($7,600)
The women’s strawweight championship bout is a much better stacking option. It features two grappling-heavy Brazilians in Virna Jandiroba and Mackenzie Dern, in a rematch of a fight that Dern won by a narrow decision back in 2019.
Since then, Jandiroba has gone 6-1 and is riding a five-fight winning streak, while Dern has gone just 5-4. However, she’s five years younger than the 37-year-old Jandiroba, who is likely on the downside of her athletic prime. That’s especially critical in the sport’s lightest division, where speed and reflexes are important.
At it’s core, this fight pits the wrestling of Jandiroba against the submission game of Dern. Jandiroba landed her only takedown attempt in the first meeting, while Dern went 0 for 5, so it’s also possible that the grappling cancels out (in the style of Bo Nickal vs. Paul Craig) and turns this into a relatively tepid striking match.
If that happens, we’ll almost certainly see 25 minutes of action, since neither woman has a knockout win in the UFC. That gives them both extremely solid floors, which is why they’re an excellent cash game stack.
I don’t consider either a must-play for GPPs, with Dern having more finishing upside but Jandiroba being more likely to land takedowns. Considering their price tags, that makes the slight underdog a better play, but I’m not going out of my way to force either into my lineups.
The Easy Chalk
Umar Nurmagomedov ($9,600)
Umar Nurmagomedov was widely regarded as an uncrowned champion heading into his fight with UFC bantamweight champ Merab Dvalishvili, but the Georgian’s hectic grappling pace proved to be too much for him. However, he fought the champ as closely as anyone and still seems like the strongest threat to his crown.
Now he’s taking on the streaking Mario Bautista ($6,600) in a fight that could probably determine the next title challenger. Bautista has won eight in a row but not in especially impressive fashion, including a controversial split decision win over Jose Aldo.
More importantly, he’s been taken down repeatedly against fighters like Da’Mon Blackshear and Ricky Simon and now has to face a Nurmagomedov. Umar averages more than three takedowns per 15 minutes and even picked up two against Dvalishvili.
That grappling ability is not only ideal for his chances of winning the fight but is also a massive boost for DFS. He’s a -650 favorite who has scored at least 100 DraftKings points in all of his wins, making him a rock-solid play for UFC 321 if you can afford his salary.
The Upside Play
Jailton Almeida ($8,800)
On the topic of grappling upside, perhaps nobody on the card brings more than “Malhadinho.” Jailton Almeida made his UFC debut at light heavyweight, took a short-notice fight at heavyweight, then quickly — and correctly — realized that the lack of grappling ability at heavyweight made for an easier path, and he’s stuck around in the division of no weight cuts ever since.
He’s now 8-1 in the UFC, with the lone blip being a second-round TKO against Curtis Blaydes after a dominant first round from Almeida. That the Brazilian was able to so effortlessly ground the bigger American wrestler was a good sign for his chances moving forward, and on paper he’ll have an easier time against Alexander Volkov ($7,400).
Volkov probably deserved the win over Ciryl Gane in his last fight — but also was taken down twice by Gane. He was taken down a whopping 14 times by Blaydes when they fought in 2020, which bodes especially well for Almeida considering his own grappling success against Blaydes.
Volkov’s grappling improvements might put us in the sweet spot where he’s capable of getting back to his feet but not defending takedowns. That provides repeated scoring opportunities for Almeida, who averages over 6.5 takedowns per 15 minutes and a UFC-record 84.2% control time percentage.
While Volkov is live to end Almeida’s night with a big shot for as long as this remains standing, Almeida has all of the tools to pick up a dominant victory, which would almost certainly come with a huge DFS score.
Updated on 11/15/25
The Value Play
Mitch Raposo ($7,000)
In what could be a good sign for the entertainment value of the event, UFC 321 features just three fights favored to see the judges’ scorecards (plus the co-main event, which is effectively a pick ’em). That makes it hard to find a clear floor play for cash games, with the best possible option perhaps being Raposo.
He’s taking on Azat Maksum ($9,200) in a flyweight battle of fighters on two-fight losing streaks. The good news for Raposo is that both of his losses were split decisions. The bad news is they probably both should’ve been unanimous against him, so it’s hard to make too much of a bad luck case for him, especially considering he was finished on the Contender Series.
Still, he’s picked up nine total takedowns in his three UFC-affiliated fights, so he scores well on a per-minute basis. Plus, Maksum’s only UFC win was a split decision over a nearly 40-year-old Tyson Nam, and he was taken down twice by Charles Johnson, who is primarily a striker.
That gives Raposo one of the strongest floors on the slate relative to his salary, and if nothing else he frees up the salary to afford more expensive fighters on lineups that include him.
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The Contrarian Choice
Louie Sutherland ($7,000)
I’ve been pretty surprised at the line movement against Sutherland for his heavyweight fight against Valter Walker ($9,200) on the 321 prelims. This is another fight that came together late, though both fighters were originally preparing for different opponents at different events, so they should be in fight shape.
Walker has shown little ability to do anything but win by heel hook, with three straight first-round finishes with the technique. That accounts for half of the six heel hook victories by heavyweights in the 32-year history of the UFC, with Ciryl Gane responsible for a fourth. There’s a reason we don’t see many of them, and it’s because it’s a relatively low-percentage technique — especially if you’re expecting them.
Which Sutherland has to be given Walker’s track record. The Bellator and PFL vet seems to have solid grappling skills of his own that should at least help him avoid going to the ground with Walker and is the much better striker, both in terms of technique and physical attributes.
He also has 20+ pounds in size on Walker, which raises the difficulty level for the favorite to get a takedown. Despite that, he’s one of the cheapest fighters on the slate and projecting for the lowest ownership, making him an elite GPP play.
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The Swing Fight
Nasrat Haqparast ($8,100) vs. Quillan Salkilld ($8,100)
With an abundance of closely lined fights at UFC 321, we have the rare fight where both participants have identical salaries, making it a natural choice for the swing fight section.
Quillan Salkilld and Nasrat Haqparast were booked on short notice to fill out the UFC 321 card, which also ups the probability of one man tiring and a finish happening. Neither fighter was booked (at least not officially) for another matchup, so it’s hard to say what kind of conditioning either one will bring, which keeps the variance fairly high.
With that said, from a DFS standpoint I strongly prefer Salkilld. In three fights between the UFC and Contender Series, he’s either won inside of the first minute or landed at least eight takedowns. Haqparast has finished just one of the fights on his current five-fight winning streak and has landed only three takedowns across those bouts.
While Haqparast may be nearly equally likely to win the fight, his win could easily fall short of the score required to end up in the optimal lineup. That’s far less likely for Salkilld, which makes him the better DFS play — and a better value, with the line shifting his way slightly throughout the week.
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Pictured: Tom Aspinall
Photo Credit: Imagn Images
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