This article is part of our UFC Picks series.
The unfortunate trend of main event shakeups in 2016 continued with UFC 206, as a Light Heavyweight Championship bout between Daniel Cormier and Anthony Johnson had to be removed from the card after Cormier suffered a groin injury in training. In its place, a featherweight showdown between Anthony Pettis and Max Holloway will cap off the evening, with the winner getting the Interim Featherweight Champion title, as well as the next shot at Jose Aldo. The rest of the card picks up the pieces from UFC 205 -- Donald Cerrone will get a new opponent in Matt Brown after Kelvin Gastelum missed weight at the New York event, and Gastelum will jump up a weight class to face Tim Kennedy, who also missed out on the action at Madison Square Garden. It may not be the card UFC fans in Toronto were expecting, but you have to hand it to the new UFC brass, who put together some quality bouts in a tough situation. Below are the RotoWire MMA Staff's picks for Saturday's pay-per-view card.If you're looking for a fantasy-specific breakdown of these fights on DraftKings, click here for Jon Litterine's UFC 206 preview.
MATCHUP | WEIGHT CLASS | JON | EVAN | JAKE | RICHARD |
Anthony Pettis (+165) vs. Max Holloway (-195) | Featherweight | Holloway | Holloway | ||
Donald Cerrone (-275) vs. Matt Brown (+230) | Welterweight | Cerrone | Cerrone | Cerrone | Cerrone |
Cub Swanson (+180) vs. Dooho Choi (-220) | Featherweight | Swanson | Swanson | ||
Tim Kennedy (-155) vs. Kelvin Gastelum (+130) | Middleweight | Gastelum | Gastelum | ||
Jordan Mein (-160) vs. Emil Meek (+140) | Welterweight | ||||
RECORD | 4-1 | 1-4 | 3-2 | 2-3 | |
OVERALL (since UFC 200) | 28-18 | 21-25 | 28-18 | 10-7 |
THE PLAYERS
Jon Litterine: RotoWire lead MMA beat writer and scribe for our weekly DrafKings preview. Lead analyst on the RotoWire MMA Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @JonLitterine.
Evan Dahl: Pens our bi-weekly MMA Barometer column. Follow him on Twitter at @RealEvanDahl.
Jake Letarski: MMA and NCAA Hoops Senior Editor. Sirius XM contributor. Host of the RotoWire MMA Podcast, RotoWire Fantasy Football Podcast and RotoWire DFS Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @JakeSki52.
Richard Mann: New to the RotoWire MMA staff, Richard is a stats-based analyst that has appeared on ESPN MMA via Fightmetric. He handles event recaps in our Fight Stat Wrap column, and maintains his own, data-driven MMA blog at StrikescoreMMA.com. Follow him on Twitter at @RichardAMann.
Strongly disagree with any of our picks? Let us know in the comments!