Fiziev Vs. Torres MMA DFS Picks: UFC Fight Night

UFC Fight Night caps off with a five-round main event between Rafael Fiziev and Manuel Torres, the kind of ceiling spot that wins MMA DFS tournaments. For these MMA DFS picks, I ran the full card through the Stokastic MMA Sims, and the board sorts into three clean buckets: a couple of premium finishers worth building around, the main-event pair that holds the slate's best leverage, and a chalk tier the field is over-rostering. New to the format? Start with the DFS 101 beginner guide. Otherwise, here is how the numbers shake out for your DraftKings lineups.

In Summary

• Card: UFC Fight Night, headlined by Rafael Fiziev vs. Manuel Torres (lightweight, five rounds). DraftKings MMA DFS classic: six fighters, $50,000 cap.
• Top Value: Abdul Rakhman Yakhyaev ($9,500) leads the slate at 9.52 points per $1K with an 83% win projection and a 70% finish rate. The cleanest build-around favorite on the board.
• Best Leverage: Rafael Fiziev ($8,200), a near pick-'em in the betting market at roughly -105, carries the slate's highest leverage (+4.5) and one of its highest ceilings in a five-round fight.
• Chalk To Get Off In GPPs: Asu Almabayev ($8,900) and Jean Matsumoto ($8,400) are the most over-owned plays relative to how often the Sims actually use them.
• How It's Built: every projection, ownership read, and leverage number below comes straight from the Stokastic MMA Sims, which simulate the whole card and grade win equity, finish rate, and ceiling.

How This Slate Scores: Finishes Decide It

MMA DFS rewards one thing above all else: finishing the fight. A fighter who wins a decision banks solid points, but a first-round knockout or submission stacks a finish bonus on top of the strikes and takedowns already logged, and it does it on the clock. That is why the Sims track each fighter's win-inside-the-distance (finish) rate and his chance to clear 100 fantasy points separately from his straight win probability. A heavy favorite who only grinds out decisions has a lower ceiling than a slightly shorter favorite who ends fights, so we are really hunting winners who finish, not just winners.

This card splits cleanly along that line. The premium tier is full of finishers, the main event offers the rare five-round ceiling, and a chunk of the popular chalk wins more than it finishes, which caps the upside the field is paying up for. Below, the plays are grouped by the role they fill in a build.

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The Anchors: Premium Finishers To Build Around

Two top-salary favorites grade out as the best straight plays on the board, and these are the two I keep coming back to because both win by finish far more often than they go to the cards.

Abdul Rakhman Yakhyaev · $9,500 · vs. Julius Walker

The single best value on the slate, and the rare case where the most expensive fighter is also the top points-per-$1K value.

The case:

• 90.4 Projected Points at 9.52 per $1K, the top value mark on the card.
• 83% Win Projection against Julius Walker ($6,700), one of the largest gaps on the slate.
• 70.2% Finish Rate and a 52.4% chance to clear 100 points, both elite for a build-around favorite.
• The rare slate where the most expensive fighter is also the top points-per-$1K value, so he holds down cash and tournament builds alike without forcing a salary squeeze elsewhere.

Daniil Donchenko · $9,400 · vs. Theodor Berggren

One of the chalkier premium favorites, and the projection backs it up.

The case:

• 88.75 Projected Points, 9.44 per $1K, third-best value on the slate behind Yakhyaev and Torres.
• 80.6% Win Projection over Theodor Berggren ($6,800) with a 63.4% finish rate.
• One of the chalkier favorites on the board, which makes him a core cash play and a known quantity in tournaments — he is where you build, not where you differentiate.

Shara Magomedov · $9,200 · vs. Michel Pereira

Leans on decisions more than the two above do, so read the ceiling differently here.

The case:

• 81.7 Projected Points at 8.88 per $1K with a 76.4% win projection over Michel Pereira ($7,000).
• Lower 39.4% finish rate than the two above, so his ceiling leans a bit less on an early finish and a bit more on simply banking the win.
• A reasonable way to get a top-tier favorite into a build without piling onto the very most popular names at the top of the board.

The Main Event: Where The Leverage Lives

A five-round fight is the ceiling play of any MMA slate, because the extra ten minutes mean more strikes, more takedown chances, and more time to land a finish. Worth grounding this in the actual betting market: the books have the main event close to a coin flip, with Fiziev sitting around -105, so neither fighter is a true underdog despite the lopsided DFS ownership. Both main-event fighters carry the two widest projected ranges on the card (the highest standard deviations), and the gap between a near-even fight and a field that has piled onto one side is what makes Fiziev the best leverage play on the board.

Rafael Fiziev · $8,200 · vs. Manuel Torres

The slate's premier tournament dart: the highest leverage on the card paired with one of its highest ceilings.

The case:

• +4.5 Leverage, the highest on the slate. The Sims put him in an optimal lineup far more often than the ~32% of the field projected to roster him, and that gap is the widest on the card. He is not a low-owned sleeper, but he is meaningfully underowned for how often the model wants him.
• One of the highest ceilings on the board, with two extra rounds in a five-round fight to reach it. This is a GPP play on outcome variance, not a cash-game core piece.
• The widest projected range on the card, which is the math version of "a near coin-flip fighter who can win the whole slate." That volatility is exactly what you want in a large-field tournament.

Manuel Torres · $8,000 · vs. Rafael Fiziev

The model's narrow main-event favorite, and the most-rostered fighter on the entire slate.

The case:

• 39.1% Projected Ownership, the highest on the card — the field has clearly landed on the favorite side of the main event.
• Even at that price of admission, he still grades out with modestly positive leverage (+2.0) because the Sims love the five-round ceiling at his salary, so unlike most heavy chalk you are not paying an ownership tax to roster him.
• The model reads the fight itself as a near coin-flip, so if you want the main event for its ceiling, Torres is the lower-variance way to get it and Fiziev is the higher-leverage one.

A note on construction: Torres and Fiziev are opponents, so rostering both means one of your six fighters takes a loss. The cleaner play is to pick your side of the main event rather than pay up for both seats.

The Mid-Tier: Value Finishers To Fill Out A Build

This is where the salary stretches. With only two fighters priced under $7,000, most six-fighter builds lean on the $7,900 to $8,800 range, and several of these favorites finish enough to matter.

Fighter	Salary	Proj	Value	Win %	Finish %
Javier Reyes	$8,500	75.7	8.91	66.3%	42.9%
Nursulton Ruziboev	$8,800	72.0	8.18	66.3%	41.5%
Nazim Sadykhov	$9,000	71.9	7.99	64.0%	39.6%
Farman Hasanov	$8,600	71.1	8.27	60.6%	39.9%
Michal Oleksiejczuk	$7,900	64.8	8.20	51.7%	35.7%
Jefferson Nascimento	$7,900	63.8	8.08	52.5%	19.2%

A few reads from that group: Nazim Sadykhov ($9,000) is the priciest of the mid-tier favorites and projects 71.9 points, a sturdy 64% favorite who finishes often enough to carry real ceiling. Michal Oleksiejczuk ($7,900) and Jefferson Nascimento ($7,900) are the salary-relief plays that let you afford two premium finishers up top, both near coin-flips at the same price, with Oleksiejczuk carrying the better finish rate (35.7% vs. 19.2%) and Nascimento the slightly higher win projection (52.5% vs. 51.7%). The one I'd be careful with is Javier Reyes ($8,500): a 66% favorite over Kaan Ofli ($7,700), but he is one the field has clearly already found, so he is a cash play more than a tournament edge.

The Chalk To Get Off In Tournaments

Ownership only matters relative to how good a play actually is. These three are rostered more than the Sims justify, which makes each a spot where I want to be underweight in GPPs.

• Asu Almabayev ($8,900) is the most over-owned fighter on the slate at -4.5 leverage, with 28.8% of the field on him. The Sims have him winning far more by decision than by finish, so most of his outcomes cap his ceiling — exactly the profile you do not want to pay an ownership premium for in a tournament.
• Jean Matsumoto ($8,400) sits at -3.6 leverage: a favorite the field is treating like a staple at 28.4% ownership, more than the model's usage justifies.
• Ikram Aliskerov ($9,100) is the second-most-owned fighter on the board at 33.1%, behind only main-eventer Manuel Torres. He is a genuinely strong fighter, so don't bench him outright. This is a light underweight rather than a full fade: you are paying a premium price for negative leverage (-1.6), so trim his exposure instead of zeroing him out.

None of these are bad fighters. In a tournament, where your goal is to look different from the field, you want to be underweight the names everyone is overpaying for and reinvest that ownership into Fiziev and the value finishers.

A Sample GPP Build: A Worked Example

Here is one tournament-leaning six-fighter DraftKings lineup that hits the slate's structure: two premium finishers for floor, the main-event leverage dart, and value finishers to pay for it all, landing right on the $50,000 cap.

Fighter	Salary	Role
Abdul Rakhman Yakhyaev	$9,500	Core finisher (83% win)
Daniil Donchenko	$9,400	Core finisher (80.6% win)
Rafael Fiziev	$8,200	Leverage + five-round ceiling
Michal Oleksiejczuk	$7,900	Value finisher
Jefferson Nascimento	$7,900	Salary-relief value
Brunno Ferreira	$7,100	Underdog ceiling dart
Total	$50,000

My two build-around finishers give the lineup a floor, Fiziev is the leverage and the five-round upside, and Ferreira ($7,100) is the honest tournament dart: the Sims give him just a 27% win shot, a genuine betting underdog, against the heavily-owned Aliskerov, so this is a fight-side bet on the upset to break from the Aliskerov crowd, and the kind of swing that wins a tournament when it hits. For cash games, throw this shape out and build the opposite way: lean on two or three of the highest win-rate favorites (Yakhyaev, Donchenko, Magomedov, Aliskerov) for floor — you can't fit all four under the $50,000 cap — and ignore leverage entirely, because in a 50/50 you only need to beat half the field, not differentiate from it. Running this exact lineup in both contest types is one of the most common DFS mistakes, and the Sims build both shapes for you with exposure controls so you are not assembling either by hand.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is the best MMA DFS value for Fiziev vs. Torres? Abdul Rakhman Yakhyaev ($9,500) grades out as the top value on the slate at 9.52 projected points per $1,000, with an 83% win projection and a 70% finish rate against Julius Walker.

Who is the best leverage play on the card? Rafael Fiziev ($8,200) carries the slate's highest leverage at +4.5, meaning the Sims put him in optimal lineups far more often than the field is projected to roster him, and he owns one of the highest ceilings on the board in a five-round main event.

Should I roster both Manuel Torres and Rafael Fiziev? Generally no. They fight each other, so rostering both means one of your six fighters takes a loss. Pick your side of the main event instead, then use the salary you save on a value finisher.

How many fighters are in a DraftKings MMA DFS lineup? DraftKings MMA classic contests roster six fighters under a $50,000 salary cap. With only two fighters priced under $7,000 on this card, most builds lean on the $7,900 to $8,800 mid-tier.

What makes a fighter a good MMA DFS play? Finish equity. A fighter who wins inside the distance stacks a finish bonus on top of his striking and grappling points, so the Sims weigh win-inside-the-distance rate and ceiling, not just raw win probability, when grading a play.

Run The Slate Yourself

New to Stokastic? The MMA Sims simulate the entire UFC card, project ownership and leverage, and build your six-fighter DraftKings lineups with exposure controls, so you are leveraging finish rates and ceilings instead of guessing. Get started, and code MMADFS10 takes 10% off your first Stokastic+ payment if you subscribe: Start with the Stokastic MMA Sims.