UFC 254: A Contrarian Take - Khabib vs. Gaethje

Happy Friday everyone, and welcome back to a Contrarian Take on MMA. We had a controversial card last Saturday, with Jun Yong Park putting up an absurdly low 73 points on DraftKings in his 3-round decision over John Phillips, with only 10 of his record 258 ground strikes counting as significant strikes.

While I can’t agree with the scoring, I do think it demonstrates the importance of considering price and variance when selecting an MMA lineup. At $8800 on DraftKings, Park was the 5th-highest owned fighter on the slate as a 70% favorite, but the low score wasn’t enough to put him on the winning lineup. I’m glad we hit on Jonathan Martinez and Gillian Robertson in this column last week – that helped me to 2 top-100 scores on the biggest GPPs on both DraftKings and FanDuel, but I ended up just short of the winning lineup on both sites.

About the Author

squirrelpatrol
John Breslin (squirrelpatrol)

John Breslin (aka squirrelpatrol) is a consistent top-ranked Grinder and one of the best tournament players in the entire DFS industry. He is a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and graduated with an MBA from prestigious New York University. John is a Live Final specialist who has won 100+ Live Final seats. He took home 1st place at the 2018 FanDuel World Fantasy Baseball Championship ($300,000 prize), both 1st ($500,000 prize) and 2nd place ($200,000 prize) at the 2021 FanDuel World Fantasy Basketball Championship, 2nd place at the 2022 FanDuel World Fantasy Baseball Championship ($250,000 prize), and 2nd place at the 2023 DraftKings Fantasy Baseball World Championship ($600,000 prize). And most recently, he took down the NFL Milly Maker ($1,000,000 prize) in Week 2 of the 2023 season. John has been playing fantasy sports since 1996 and is still scarred from being on the losing end of James Stewart’s 5-TD performance in 1997. Follow Squirrel on Twitter – @jbresl