UFC 334 DFS Breakdown: Model, Preview, Picks for the Heavyweight Championship, More Saturday Fights

We have one more week of Apex action before the UFC hits the road for a handful of high-profile events starting next week. This time we have an impromptu main event between heavyweights Waldo Cortes Acosta and Johnny Walker.

The 14-card slate locks at the usual 5:00 p.m. ET. Let’s get into the DFS angles.

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 the UFC. You can use our optimizer to build optimal lineups using these projections.

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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 tournaments, for example.

You can check out the projections for every fighter on Saturday’s card in our UFC Models.

Main Event

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Ciryl Gane ($9,000) vs. Josh Hokit ($7,200)

We have a bit of an unlikely “undisputed” heavyweight title fight at MSG after Ciryl Gane was elevated from interim champion due to Tom Aspinall being forced to vacate the belt. Aspinall had to vacate because of injuries he suffered due to an illegal eye poke from Gane. As has been the standard for a while at heavyweight, that means the belt has changed hands yet again without a challenger defeating the previous champion.

The challenger this time is Josh Hokit, who has been with the promotion just over a year after debuting on the Contender Series in 2025. Hokit is 4-0 in the UFC, with wins over former title challengers Curtis Blaydes and Derrick Lewis. The former 49ers fullback and collegiate wrestler is an undersized heavyweight but uses his speed and grappling ability to beat larger opponents, similarly to past heavyweight great Cain Velasquez.

This fight likely comes down to the grappling of Hokit against the striking of Gane, a former kickboxer who converted to MMA. Gane has a seven-inch reach edge and is the much better striker, so the longer this fight stays on the feet, the better it is for him. Gane has struggled to grapple defensively in the past, notably losing his title fight against an injured Francis Ngannou due to Ngannou unexpectedly taking him down four times.

Both fighters are solid for DFS, though, given Hokit’s very solid chin. Gane should score well due to striking volume, while Hokit has takedown upside, so at the very least, the winner should end up in the optimal. I prefer the co-main event as a cash game stack – and try to avoid locking in two losses by stacking multiple five-rounders – so I’ll be using Hokit exclusively in cash and hoping he can extend the fight.

Co-Main Event

Kayla Harrison ($8,800) vs. Amanda Nunes ($7,400)

The co-main event features the long-delayed bantamweight title fight between the greatest female fighter of all time, Amanda Nunes, and Kayla Harrison. There’s a case that Nunes is the all-time GOAT regardless of gender, and she could further that case with a win over Harrison.

Nunes vacated her title more than three years ago, in large part due to a lack of quality opponents at 135 lbs. Shortly after that, PFL star Kayla Harrison made the transition to the UFC, which required her to drop two weight classes in order to make weight in the UFC’s heaviest women’s division.

This fight was originally booked for January, but Harrison was forced to withdraw due to a neck injury that required surgery. That somewhat levels the playing field between her and Nunes in terms of the layoff – it will now be nearly 18 months between Harrison fights. In my eyes, it’s also a big boost to Nunes. Since she was booked for a January date, she’s now been back to training full time for more than a year, which should help with ring rust.

Stylistically, this is something of a striker vs. grappler matchup. Nunes is well-rounded, but Harrison is a two-time gold medalist in judo whose striking is still a weak point. The other edge for the underdog here is that Nunes might be the better grappler once things hit the mat, even if Harrison is the one dictating when the fight goes there.

With salary fairly tight on the slate, I’ll be way overweight on Nunes in tournaments, as I believe she gets it done as an underdog. However, as referenced above, this is my preferred cash game stack, since the odds to go 25 minutes are slightly better than in the heavyweight fight. However, I don’t think either bout is a “must-stack” in cash, so I’m happy to let salary dictate if I play either favorite or not.

The Easy Chalk

Bilal Hasan ($9,800)

Bilal Hasan is quickly becoming a star in the UFC, with each of his first two fights placed on the main card. The “IndoNinja” is obviously promotionally valuable to the UFC, as the first signed fighter representing the world’s fourth-most populous country, Indonesia.

He’s also one of the most gifted prospects in a long time, with otherworldly speed and reflexes that allow him to dance around his opponents at range and punish them with crushing counters when they attempt to crash into the pocket. He’s also a talented grappler who trains under flyweight GOAT Demetrious Johnson. Like Johnson, he mixes in takedowns to keep opponents guessing and has elite takedown defense of his own.

This is a showcase fight for Hasan against Luis Gurule ($6,400), who is 1-4 in the UFC. Hasan is somewhere around a -1000 favorite and even money to win in the first round. I’m slightly worried it extends beyond that due to Gurule’s tendency to be overly cautious against taller fighters and Hasan’s somewhat patient style. However, the worst-case scenario here is still probably a stoppage for Hasan, making him an extremely safe pick with plenty of upside.

I wrote about what makes Hasan so special in my betting preview for this fight at Action Network.

The Upside Plays

Melky Costa ($9,300)

There are a handful of fighters on the slate who likely need a finish to have a chance, as they’re dangerous fighters early who tend to fade later in fights and are taking on more patient opponents. One of those is Costa, who fights Jared Gordon ($6,900) on the UFC 334 prelims.

Costa had his six-fight winning streak snapped in his last bout, a decision loss to Arnold Allen. Prior to that, he had picked up a pair of first-round knockouts. The UFC is giving him a step down in the form of Gordon, a New York native who is 38 years old and has been stopped in consecutive fights.

Costa is the more powerful and dynamic fighter, who could finish this one with strikes or a submission. Gordon has solid cardio, though, and is dangerous if allowed to hang around. Ideally, Costa realizes this and sells out to finish the fan favorite early in the fight.

I generally try to avoid picking fighters based on what they “should” do, as there’s no guarantee they take the optimal path. While that’s the case here in cash games, the upside is enough for Costa that I’m willing to risk it in tournaments, especially with him likely lost in the shuffle from an ownership standpoint at the top of the salary scale.

Terrance McKinney ($8,900)

Terrance “T-Wrecks” McKinney is the definition of an upside play. In 14 UFC fights, he’s seen a second round just twice and has never advanced past the midpoint of Round 2. All eight of his UFC wins have been in the first round, with three of those coming in the first minute.

Unlike Costa, whose game plan is at least somewhat ambiguous, we know what McKinney will do in his fight against Jim Miller ($7,300). McKinney will come out guns blazing, as he always does, and either finish Miller quickly or completely gas out somewhere around the three- or four-minute mark.

His odds of being on the winning side of a fast fight are significantly higher against the 43-year-old Miller than they are in most matchups, though, to Miller’s credit, the last opponent to finish him was Charles Oliveira way back in 2018. While that’s impressive, the durability has to fall off at some point, and McKinney is the most dangerous opponent he’s faced in some time.

With McKinney -160 for a first-round finish, he’s an obvious strong play. He’ll be popular, but it’s hard to find a good reason to fade him this time. McKinney did miss weight by just over four pounds, but the fight seems to be proceeding as scheduled.

The Value Play

Yousri Belgaroui ($7,700)

It’s a tough week for obvious value/floor plays, as the two women’s fights on the card are both heavily favored to end inside the distance, and no bout is shorter than +140 to make it to the judges. One of those two bouts with +140 stoppage odds is the middleweight featured fight between Yousri Belgaroui and Caio Borralho ($8,500).

With the line also moving slightly to Belgaroui throughout the week, this one fits the typical definition of a value play. Borralho has just two stoppages in his eight UFC wins, both coming against lesser opponents, so this is a solid setup for Belgaroui to at least put up a solid score in a loss.

This is another striker vs. grappler matchup by virtue of a well-rounded fighter taking on a specialist opponent. This time, the specialist is Belgaroui, a former kickboxing champion who once defeated Alex Pereira, now his training partner, in kickboxing. Borralho is well-rounded but will almost certainly need to grapple here.

Belgaroui is a high-volume striker who averages over six significant strikes per minute, many of them kicks, and Borralho ate 26 leg kicks in his last matchup against a former kickboxer (Armen Petrosyan) despite more than ten minutes of that fight being spent on the ground. Belgaroui is also fairly strong at scrambling back to his feet, so there should be enough striking exchanges for him to get to a solid floor.

He also has massive power, giving him plenty of price-considered upside if he can get the Brazilian out of this fight.

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The Contrarian Choice

Charles Radtke ($7,900)

It pains me to be in a position to root for Charles Radtke against Stephen Thompson ($8,300), given that by all accounts Thompson is one of the best people in MMA. Unfortunately, “Wonderboy” (Wonderman? Wonderunc?) is 43 years old, has lost five of his last six, and has publicly declared that he’s retiring following this fight.

The karate style employed by Thompson is somewhat dependent on speed and reflexes, with those attributes typically the first to go for older fighters. Thompson’s chin is also beginning to slip. He was stopped just once in his first 19 UFC fights and has been finished twice in his last three.

Radtke is 5-2 in the UFC with three finishes, has solid power, and has picked up seven takedowns in his last two fights. He should be able to out-grapple the older, slower version of Thompson, which gives him a clear path to DFS upside. At worst, Radtke hangs around for 15 minutes and doesn’t totally tank your lineup.

The Swing Fight

Uros Medic ($8,400) vs. Kevin Holland ($7,800)

Given all of the likely stoppages, there are plenty of potential “swing fights” on the card, but a sneaky one might be the welterweight tilt between Uros Medic and Kevin Holland. All eight of Medic’s wins have come via knockout, with six of those in the first round, including a 30-second stoppage this summer at UFC Serbia.

Kevin Holland is more well-rounded, at least in theory, but is often content to chase bonuses rather than wins, with his fight against Stephen Thompson a noted example. Holland and Thompson had a “gentleman’s agreement” not to grapple, and Holland let Thompson back up on multiple occasions after landing takedowns, despite breaking his right hand early in the fight.

I know of no such agreement this time from Holland, who should have a clear grappling edge over “The Doctor.” The variance here lies in whether or not Holland presses that edge or decides to trade blows with the more powerful and durable Medic.

The likeliest outcomes are a Medic knockout or a Holland win via grappling, which would produce a big score even without a finish. Either way, you’ll want the winner of this fight in your tournament lineups, so I plan to include one or the other in the bulk of my entries.

Pictured: Ciryl Gane
Photo Credit: Imagn Images