UFC Kansas City features an important welterweight bout at the top of the card. Ian Garry was one fight away from the title in his last bout and is taking on the surging Fighting Nerds prospect Carlos Prates in a fight with title implications.
We have a massive 14-fight card in KC, with the prelims starting and lineups locking at 6:00 p.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
Ian Machado Garry ($8,500) vs. Carlos Prates ($7,700)
The main event in Kansas City came together on somewhat short notice, as Prates was set to face Geoff Neal at UFC 314 before a Neal injury forced a change of plans. That makes it especially impressive that Garry is willing to risk his top-10 ranking against a rising prospect like Prates.
Prates is 4-0 in the UFC with four straight knockouts, plus an additional KO victory on the Contender Series. He’s an elite kickboxer—with “Muay Thai” tattooed across his chest—who mixes in kicks, punches, and knees well. While he’s not especially tall for the division, his 78” reach stands out. He uses it well, controlling the distance and picking his shots at range.
This makes for an interesting dynamic against the 6’3” Garry, who typically has the length edge. Garry also does his best work at distance, with an especially dangerous pull counter from his orthodox stance. However, he’s fought longer fighters before, winning decisions against both Neil Magny and Michael Page, each of whom has a longer reach than Prates.
Garry showed off his underrated grappling in those matchups, taking each down twice in three-round fights. That gives him a clear path to both a win and some upside against Prates, who has yet to be matched with a high-level grappler.
Prates has also yet to see even a third round—much less a fourth or fifth—in the UFC. The longer the fight goes, the more this favors Garry.
Of course, Prates is extremely dangerous early, giving both men solid upside. I’m leaning to the favorite — who is expected to be lower owned — but will have exposure to both in GPPs and likely stack them in cash games.
The Easy Chalk
Zhang Mingyang ($9,600)
The Easy Chalk and Upside Play sections are effectively interchangeable this week, despite coming at opposite ends of the size and style spectrums.
We’ll start with Zhang, who is matched up with Anthony Smith ($6,600) in Smith’s retirement fight. Retiring fighters typically don’t fare well in the UFC, particularly since the sport insists on feeding them to up-and-coming prospects. That’s the case here, with Zhang coming off consecutive first-round victories to start his UFC career.
Smith has looked past his prime for a while, going 1-3 over his last four with two knockout losses. The other loss came to a middleweight who stepped up 20 lbs on short notice.
The combination of Zhang’s power and Smith’s durability issues is a scary one, and “Mountain Tiger” is favored to end this one in the first round. He’s expensive, but it’s rare to see a fighter with a greater than 50% chance for a Round 1 win.
I want him in as many of my lineups as I can afford.
The Upside Play
Jaqueline Amorim ($9,500)
The other rock-solid play at the top of the salary scale is Amorim, a grappler who competes in the UFC’s lightest division. She’s picked up three straight finishes since dropping a decision in her UFC debut, scoring at least 91 points in all three.
She’s the biggest favorite on the slate for her fight against Polyana Viana ($6,700), who has been finished on the ground in each of her two fights since her last win in 2023. Viana’s obvious weakness happens to be Amorim’s biggest strength, making this a tough matchup.
Amorim has seen huge line movement this week and is roughly a -900 favorite throughout the industry. That gives her plenty of safety.
She also trails only Zhang in stoppage odds, and her takedown ability gives her some upside even in an extended fight. With female fighters typically going a bit under-owned, she’s an excellent GPP pivot from Zhang.
Of course, in a perfect world, we’d roster them both, which might just be possible due to some of the cheap options opening up on the slate.
The Value Plays
Gauge Young ($7,100)
Cheap options like Young, who has been bet down to just a +170 underdog after opening on the wrong side of +200, are worth considering. His fight against Evan Elder ($9,100) came together somewhat late, as Elder was a late replacement for a different opponent who then had to withdraw.
With +165 odds to end inside the distance, this fight is also the second likeliest on the card to hit the judges. That gives Young a solid floor, especially considering he comes from a wrestling base. He was thoroughly outgrappled by Quillian Salkilld in a loss on the Contender Series, but that loss has at least aged gracefully, with Salkilld now 1-0 in the UFC.
Elder is 2-2 in the promotion but has been taken down in three of his four fights. His takedown defense stands at just 33% overall, so there’s a fairly obvious path to victory for Young.
Of course, at his salary, a few takedowns in a decision loss also get the job done. That makes him a borderline must in cash games and an interesting GPP salary saver.
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The Contrarian Choice
Andre Muniz ($6,500)
I wrote about Muniz in my Luck Ratings for this card, and he’s since seen the line move heavily in his direction after opening close to +500.
The gist of the discussion is that Muniz has a fairly obvious, if narrow, path to victory against Ikram Aliskerov ($9,700). Muniz is an elite grappler whose only UFC losses have come to fellow high-level submission artists Paul Craig and Brendan Allen.
Outside of those fights, Muniz is 6-0 in the UFC with three submission victories, and he landed 11 takedowns in his decision win last time out. Aliskerov is better known as a striker, and he’s yet to face a takedown attempt in the UFC.
The likeliest outcome is that the Dagestani favorite has the wrestling chops to keep this one standing, but he could be in trouble if Muniz is able to get it to the ground. It’s not the likeliest outcome, but it’s worth some exposure at his $6,500 price tag.
The Swing Fight
Matt Schnell ($9,200) vs. Jimmy Flick ($7,000)
I was tempted to list Flick as my value play this week. He opened at +270 odds but is now just a +150 favorite, making him drastically underpriced for his winning equity. However, with the likelihood that this fight ends inside the distance (-380), it makes more sense as the swing fight.
Plus, it’s a fairly binary matchup. In five UFC fights, Flick has two submission wins and two knockout losses. Schnell has been finished in all seven of his UFC losses, including twice via submission. While Schnell has no knockout victories, he’s pretty easily the better striker here.
Thus, we are likely to see Flick pull off a creative submission or get knocked out trying, creating a wide range of outcomes for both fighters. Flick is the clear value side based on the line movement.
That makes Schnell very interesting for GPPs, though. He’s overpriced based on his odds, which should make him fairly contrarian. However, he’s not overpriced for his ceiling, and he could provide the leverage needed to take down a tournament.
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Pictured: Ian Machado Garry
Photo Credit: Imagn Images
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