Vicente Luque OVER 76.5 Fantasy Score
This upcoming bout features two exciting fighters in Vicente Luque and Joaquin Buckley. Buckley is a fighter with explosive bursts which contrasts Luque’s more technical skills with relentless pressure. That being said, both fighters show defensive vulnerabilities that each one is able to exploit. On one hand, Luque struggles against southpaw strikers and wrestlers while Buckley has shown a susceptible chin with 4 KO/TKO losses on his record.
The preferred PrizePicks play is Vicente Luque OVER 76.5 Fantasy Points. From the Buckley side, I’m not concerned about his southpaw stance and wrestling. Luque has lost to 4 southpaws (Wonderboy, Neal, Muhammad, and Edwards). Buckley is not the same caliber as the 4 fighters I mentioned. Also, Luque has been training against Sean Brady. I have to imagine that Luque’s previous training camp was focused on defending TDs.
On the other hand, Luque has all of the tools to top this fantasy score. He is a high-output striker with KO power and solid BJJ if he needs to grapple. Paired with Buckley’s susceptible chin, I can easily see Luque finding the finish. If he doesn’t, I believe that he has trained his TDD enough to defend or keep the fight on the feet where he can land enough output to secure 76.5+ Fantasy Points.
Julio Arce OVER 37.5 Significant Strikes
This fight is a classic Striker vs. Grappler matchup with Julio Arce taking on Herbert Burns. It is no secret that the Burns brothers are BJJ aces, with Gilbert admitting that Herbert is the much better BJJ fighter between the two. On the other side, you have Julio Arce, who has good MMA boxing and will clearly want to keep the fight on the feet.
Defensively, Burns doesn’t have the best striking defense. He has been hit several times in past UFC fights, and he is clearly willing to eat shots to get close and land takedowns. With Julio Arce, he has an impressive 95% takedown defense (TDD) but has been untested against high-level grapplers and submission specialists.
For this fight, I really like Julio Arce to land OVER 37.5 Significant Strikes in this matchup. I alluded to it earlier, but Arce has a 95% TDD across 10 UFC fights (20/21 takedowns defended). This is against proven wrestlers and grapplers such as Montel Jackson and Dan Ige. Herbert Burns also doesn’t have the best offensive wrestling. He simply charges forward and shoots double legs that Arce has proven to defend well against.
Arce rarely wrestles, and I don’t expect him to wrestle in this matchup. It is always a possibility that he gets submitted against Herbert Burns; however, at 37.5, that is such a low number considering his previous output. If he keeps the fight on the feet, I expect Arce to surpass 37.5 significant strikes in under 2 rounds, making this one of my favorite props of the night.
