UFC Vegas 120 DFS Breakdown: Model, Preview, Picks for Gamrot vs. Salkilld, More Saturday Fights

The UFC is taking a quick trip back to the Apex before UFC 321 next week, with a lackluster card that’s bailed out by an excellent main event. Perennial top-ten contender Mateusz Gamrot takes on the surging Quillan Salkilld in an important lightweight bout.

The 12-fight card is back to the standard 5:00 p.m. ET start time.

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.

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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

Quillan Salkilld ($8,300) vs. Mateusz Gamrot ($7,900)

Sometimes the way to get what you want is to ask for it, as Quillan Salkilld found when calling out Mateusz Gamrot following Salkilld’s last win. Salkilld is 5-0 in the UFC with four first-round knockout victories, and he’s recently cracked the rankings, earning his first real test against a bonafide contender in the veteran Gamrot.

Mateusz Gamrot is probably skilled enough to be a champion in any division other than lightweight. At 155 pounds, he’s been somewhat consistently ranked between 5 and 10, with a few losses to the division’s elite holding him back from title contention. Now at 35, he seems relegated to gatekeeper status, holding down the important but undignified role of helping the promotion determine which up-and-comers have a shot at future greatness.

Oddsmakers have this one as pretty close, with Salkilld going off as a very slight favorite most of the week. It seems to be a somewhat binary fight: Salkilld is the more powerful and talented striker, while Gamrot is among the best grapplers in the sport. Neither fighter is a slouch in the other department, but where this fight takes place likely determines the winner.

The good news for DFS is that either scenario likely produces a big score. A Salkilld knockout obviously scores well, and most winning scenarios for Gamrot include plenty of takedowns and control time. The great news is they aren’t mutually exclusive, either – Gamrot could control some early rounds before Salkilld finds a big shot, giving both fighters very solid scores.

For that reason – and the close salaries – this is a clear cash game stack. I’ll also be at or near 100% exposure in tournaments, with a lean toward the underdog Gamrot. I’d make him a slight favorite here, but he’s likely to come in with lower ownership, and the $400 in salary savings is impactful on this slate.

The Easy Chalk

Yadier del Valle ($9,600)

It’s been somewhat difficult to get a read on the true level of Yadier Del Valle in the UFC. He exceeded expectations as an underdog on the Contender Series before picking up a first-round win in his UFC debut. He then faced Issac Dulgarian in a fight that perhaps wasn’t on the level, picking up another quick finish. That’s not Del Valle’s fault, of course, but when he followed that up with a lackluster loss to Jordan Leavitt, it became fair to question his actual ability.

Fortunately for Del Valle – and DFS players – he’s now matched up with Darren Elkins ($6,600), a 42-year-old fighter who has announced his retirement following this fight. Elkins’ nickname, “The Damage,” comes from his propensity to take damage, not give it, and he’s been inactive for 16 months following a first-round knockout loss in his last fight.

Elkins’ recent success has all been due to his grappling, as he lacks the power, durability, and speed needed to strike with UFC featherweights. That’s not likely to be an option against Del Valle, a national-level judo competitor in his youth who also holds a UFC black belt.

Del Valle is now -850 on the moneyline and -250 to win by finish, making him an extremely safe pick at the top. I believe there are higher-upside options with slightly lower price tags, so Del Valle is more of a cash-game option for me, but he’s not a bad tournament play by any stretch, since he’s extremely likely to score in the mid-80s at a minimum.

The Upside Plays

Ty Miller ($9,200)

One of those higher-upside pieces is Ty “Drago” Miller, a massive welterweight fighting out of the famed Jackson-Wink MMA team in New Mexico. Miller is the archetypal fighter from that team, sharing many physical and stylistic similarities with former welterweight champion Carlos Condit.

Miller comes from a boxing background but has extremely solid defensive wrestling, a combination he uses to land a massive volume of strikes. He’s not really looking to land huge shots so much as drown opponents with volume, relying on his natural size and strength to hurt opponents without loading up on his strikes.

His opponent, Billy Ray Goff ($7,000), is somewhat hittable, absorbing more than five significant strikes per minute in the UFC. Goff should probably look to take this to the ground against the more talented and physically gifted striker, but I’m not sure he’ll have the ability to.

If this one stays standing, we could see Miller push for triple-digit significant strikes and/or come away with a knockout. Miller landed 59 significant strikes in a single round in his UFC debut, finishing his opponent at the 4:59 mark of Round 1. The nice thing for DFS is that he can put up a huge score with or without a knockout, since his volume-over-power strategy adds up to more points than a one-shot knockout fighter’s.

He’s my preferred high-end option over Del Valle, since Miller has a higher total ceiling while coming in cheaper and with less ownership.

The Value Play

Gigi Canuto ($6,900)

On a slate where not a single underdog has had the line move their way, and only one fight is favored to go to a decision, finding “safe” value is nigh-impossible. Instead, I’m looking for a cheap option whose upside far exceeds their salary, even if their floor doesn’t.

That would be Canuto, who is making her official UFC debut after getting stopped in the second round of her semifinal matchup on The Ultimate Fighter season 34, with that episode airing this week. The second-round loss wasn’t ideal, but Canuto is a five-time IBJJF world champion who earned her black belt at 18, and she flashed that elite grappling in the first round of her loss. She picked up three or four takedowns (depending on the scorekeeper’s interpretation) and nearly finished her opponent with a pair of armbars but gassed out in the second frame.

BJJ transplants often struggle with cardio – the pace of an MMA fight is entirely different, and most grappling matches are one round – but one could make a case that the short-notice nature of TUF fights and weigh-ins contributed to her gassing out. Even if she only has one good round in her, that one good round could be enough at her salary to at least help in cash games.

She’s looking at a very binary fight against Brazilian striker Carol Foro ($9,300), who outstruck fellow Muay Thai specialist Shanelle Dyer on the Contender Series to the tune of 100+ significant strikes and three knockdowns. Foro could certainly pick up a quick finish here, which also makes this a solid “swing fight” option, but I was impressed enough by Canuto’s takedown ability that I suspect we’ll see some wrestling early.

Canuto isn’t the safest value option, but we don’t really have any better choices, so I’ll be rolling the dice in cash games and hoping she at least finds success early.

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The Contrarian Choice

Richie Miranda ($7,100)

Richie Miranda seems to be a bit of a public underdog in the betting market, but he doesn’t seem to be catching the same level of interest in DFS for his fight against Manoel Sousa ($9,100). This should be a fairly binary fight, with Miranda a former JUCO All-American wrestler and Sousa a talented striker with a pair of knockout wins in the UFC and Contender Series.

What’s notable is that both of those knockouts for Sousa came in the third round, and he was taken down a total of four times across those fights. Neither of his past UFC opponents is anywhere near the level of grappler that Miranda is, so that could be a serious problem for the Brazilian favorite here. Sousa’s lone loss also came via a grappling-based opponent, Archie Colgan, who controlled him on the ground in a Bellator fight.

Fighters with plenty of takedown ability obviously have tremendous DFS upside, but Miranda also provides a solid floor, assuming he doesn’t get finished early. The fight is -170 to at least start Round 3, by which point Miranda has likely at least covered his meager salary.

If he’s able to get the win, he’ll almost certainly make it to the optimal lineup. We need the savings provided by Miranda to afford the slate’s top fighters, and his likely low ownership makes him even more valuable.

The Swing Fight

Diego Ferreira ($8,700) vs. Billy Quarantillo ($7,500)

As I pointed out in my betting preview for this fight, the UFC Vegas 120 co-main event isn’t placed where it is on the card because the fight is especially important. Instead, it’s there because it should be a good time, featuring two aggressive pressure fighters known more for their ability to stack performance-of-the-night bonuses than for winning fights.

Both Diego Ferreira and “Billy Q” are coming off fairly ugly knockout losses in their last fight. It was more than a year ago for Ferreira, who is now 42 years old and well past his prime, while we haven’t seen the 37-year-old Quarantillo in more than two years. Quarantillo is also moving up to lightweight after mostly competing at 145 pounds.

There are pros and cons to that move. For an aging fighter, not having to cut as much weight likely helps both durability and cardio. However, he’s now fighting harder hitters and won’t be able to enjoy the reach advantage he so often used to his benefit when fighting at 145 pounds.

We have a situation where one fighter, Quarantillo, is the better wrestler, but his opponent is a dangerous submission artist, which means this fight likely takes place mostly on the feet. Both men could pile up significant strikes, and one of them is likely to end up unconscious in fairly short order, so I’m predicting at least one big score to emerge from this one.

The weight-class shift for Quarantillo adds a ton of variance to the equation, which is why I’m not especially confident in either man, but I want plenty of exposure to both sides of it.

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Pictured: Mateusz Gamrot
Photo Credit: Imagn Images