RADIO
Folks at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, NV, are going to be busy for a while. After holding the past two weeks' events with the promo coming back home from the UAE for the first time 2021 back on Feb. 6 and Feb. 13, we're at it once more with a heavyweight-headlined event in the performance complex opened by the UFC not even two years ago. And we'll stay in Las Vegas for the time being with as many as five more events already confirmed to take place in town on the schedule, all the way up to Mar. 27. Not bad for a plan.
Getting back to this weekend's event, both Curtis Blaydes and Derrick Lewis will be called into the octagon last to close what should be a great one come Saturday. After Usman retained his belt last weekend, there will be no gold on the line this time but Blaydes and Lewis better get that W if they want to get a shot at the HW title, which Lewis already got in late 2018. High stakes on the main fight, with a bunch of other high-profile fighters and vets, spread all around the main card. Let's get to it.
In this article, I will be providing you with my daily fantasy MMA, UFC lineup picks for DraftKings for UFC Vegas 19: Blaydes vs. Lewis on 02/20/21. You can check out our FanDuel MMA DFS picks as well. These DFS lineup picks can vary from higher-priced players and elite options to lower-priced fighters and value picks on DraftKings. Give me a follow on Twitter @chapulana. Good luck!
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DraftKings MMA Heavyweight - UFC DFS Lineup Picks
Curtis Blaydes, $9400 - vs. Derrick Lewis
If there is a blemish in Curtis Blaydes' resume, it truly has a name: Francis Ngannou. That's the only man that has separated Blaydes from a shot at the HW belt, as he's the only one to beat Blaydes (two times) in his 12-fight UFC career, the last one coming back in Nov. 2018. Since then, Blaydes is on a four-fight winning streak and he ranks as the no. 2 HW... only behind the very own Ngannou and champ Stipe Miocic.
Derrick Lewis battled Daniel Cormier in 2018 but lost to the legend and is now the no. 4 HW contender behind the two above and Jairzinho Rozenstruik. Lewis has been building toward a second shot at it with three wins in a row since November 2019, but he only has one KO victory in his last fight bouts, and it came against a washed Aleksei Oleinik. I'm not sure he can hold his stuff against the mighty Blaydes.
Blaydes is on a clear ascending path. Sure thing, he hit Ngannou's wall a few years ago, but he's been great since then and has two decisions and two KO wins to his name in the last two years. This isn't a surprising pick at all, but is really obvious. Blaydes has the higher winning probability of the weekend (79%), so you know how this will end before we even get to Friday, let alone Saturday night.
DraftKings MMA Women's Bantamweight - UFC DFS Lineup Picks
Ketlen Vieira, $9300 - vs. Yana Kunitskaya
It doesn't get much more hyped than Yana Kunitskaya's debut for the UFC promo, does it? Yana started his tenure under the UFC banner fighting reigning FW champ Cris Cyborg... and lasted 3:25 minutes before getting KO'd to the mat. Flashy debut on paper, not so good in flesh and bone. But for a first-time UFC fight, it is not that we can kill Kunitskaya for that loss. She's a career 3-1 fighter since then, all of her bouts taking place in the last three years.
Vieira, although debuting two years prior to Kunitskaya, only has one more fight than the latter in the UFC. Ketlen's record sits at 5-1 and her lone loss came on Dec. 2019 against Irene Aldana via KO. Both fighters' losses all came via KO, which is interesting and not much more as none of them have won via KO themselves--Yana, in fact, has gone to decision in all of her victories.
While both women have rounded games and can play both standing and on the ground, Vieira has a slight edge in both striking volume and takedown prowess. This projects as a much closer fight to me than for most folks, I think, but I have to go Vieira here if only by a bit. They are 6th and 7th in the division ranks so they both will be looking for a bump up the ranks with a W here.
DraftKings MMA Featherweight - UFC DFS Lineup Picks
Charles Rosa, $8800 - vs. Darrick Minner
Quite a distance in experience between Rosa and Minner, am I right? Let's start with the virtual newbie, Darrick Minner, who only has two fights in the UFC and has yet to make it to the halfway mark of a second round, let alone the third round entirely. That's correct. In Feb. and Sep. of 2019, Minner ate two losses via submission inside the first 6:38 and 0:52 minutes of fighting time respectively. Ugh.
Rosa, on the other hand, has been around since 2014. Does that mean he has been any better than Minner? Not so much, sadly. Rosa is 4-4 and judging by his fight log he is bound to lose this weekend. I say that because he's alternated Ws and Ls in all of his fights, with the latest one ending in W against Kevin Aguilar in June 2020.
Neither of these two looks like a knockout-threat (I mean, we're talking featherweights at the end of the day), and Rosa has been mighty on the mat in his 2014-17 span. The problem is he hasn't landed a TD in his last three fights and four-plus years of UFC events. Minner needs this win like I need water to live, but I'm not sure he can get it.
DraftKings MMA Heavyweight - UFC DFS Lineup Picks
Chris Daukaus, $8600 - vs. Aleksei Oleinik
If you read the breakdown of the fight above, well, this one poses exactly the opposite situation with the only similarity being the fighters' difference in terms of experience. Daukaus has fought just twice in the UFC, and they did so in the span of just two months last August and October. And judging by his results, we can confirm this man is a sure problem for the opposition: two fights, two KOs, none of them even reaching the second round. Yikes.
Oleinik is already on the last days of his career. He is 43 years old already, has fought 13 times in the UFC, and although he's 2-3 in the past five fights since 2019 he's just squeezing his last drops of talent. Oleinik couldn't do anything against Derrick Lewis this past August as he was KO'd for the third time in his three last losses. The chin seems to have given up for Aleksei, whose wins came via decision and submission in January and May of 2020.
This might be a trap, sure, but looking at Daukaus two-fight run late last year there is nothing telling me he can put Oleinik to rest this weekend for a third consecutive W, most probably via KO once more. You can do much worse than taking a flyer on Oleinik upsetting the younger Daukaus, but I'm not buying a surprise here.
DraftKings MMA Heavyweight - UFC DFS Lineup Picks
Tom Aspinall, $9200 - vs. Andrei Arlovski
I was trying to print Andrei Arlovski's fight log to analyze this bout a bit, and I just ran out of real estate. That's a joke. What is not a joke is this man's career, which spans from Nov. 2000 (!!!) to Nov. 2020 in the UFC and has 33 (!!!) entries to it. Crazy. Arlovski just doesn't know how to call it a day and go home, and it's a shame he has never had a chance at the gold through his more than 30 fights--he won the interim HW belt and was later promoted to true-champ levels, even defending the belt once, but he never really defeated a reigning champion himself.
Tom Aspinall would sign on the dot this very moment to put together such a long and productive career as Arlovski's had, that's for sure. Aspinall will be stepping into the octagon for just the third time in his career this next Saturday, but judging by what he's shown in the promo (two KOs in under two minutes each) he couldn't have looked better so far.
The youth is coming strong, folks, and although Arlovski is on a two-fight winning streak himself, he got mollywhopped by Jarizinho Rozenstruik a little over a year ago via KO and that's precisely what I'm envisioning happening here against a much fresher Aspinall.
