Kountermove is a fantasy sports game that’s easy and fun to play, not to mention a great way to win some cash by utilizing your MMA knowledge. Simply pick a team of five fighters and fit them into the salary cap of $25,000 and hope that your squad comes through for you on fight night. Kountermove has already determined the values of each combatant, so now it’s up to you to find a way to fit your team of five fighters into the salary cap. How the game works: Fighter score points for your team by accumulating significant strikes, takedowns/reversals, submission attempts, dominant positions, knockdowns, and rounds won on the judges’ scorecard*. Perhaps most importantly, there are bonus points given out for fighters who earn a finish in the fight with 100 points for a first round finish, 75 for second round and 50 for third or later. At the end of the night, the team with the five highest-scoring fighters collectively wins first place, the team with the second-highest points total gets second place, and so on. Each game has a different payout structure, but in general the more points your team scores, the more money you win. *Fighter statistics come from the official UFC stats provider, FightMetric.com. Kountermove offers games for every single UFC card, as well as for Bellator and World Series of Fighting, so there will be be no shortage of fantasy MMA this year to keep you occupied. If you are a fan of the sport and think you are good at predicting fights, then this is the right game for you. If you haven’t played before, what’s stopping you? Simply head over to Kountermove.com, read the rules of the game, and try to win some money. Trust me, it’s a lot of fun. And for those who have played before, keep reading on as I give out my choices for Star Pick, Value Pick and Fighter To Avoid for this weekend’s UFC 182 card below: Star Pick: Kyoji Horiguchi ($5400) My Star Pick for your UFC 182 Kountermove team is top flyweight contender Kyogi Horiguchi ($5400), who fights Louis Gaudinot on the pay-per-view portion of the card. Horiguchi, who is only 24 years old, is 3-0 so far in the UFC two two stoppage victories over Jon de los Reyes and Dustin Pague and one unanimous decision win over Darrell Montague. He is only 125lbs, but in his career he actually has 10 stoppages among his 14 wins, which is an extremely-high finishing rate for a flyweight fighter. As well, he’s only lost once in his MMA career, so we know this guy is a proven winner. What I like the most about Horiguchi in this fight against Gaudinot, and why he’s my Star Pick for this card, is the high likelihood of him getting a stoppage in this fight. Horiguchi has incredibly deadly striking and while Gaudinot has been a fairly-durable fighter so far in his UFC career, he has taken a lot of damage and Horiguchi absolutely has enough stopping power to find a finish in this fight. I could see Horiguchi stopping Gaudinot with a kick to the body or with strikes to the head, but either way I think he gets the job done here. Horiguchi is priced at $5400 so you may have to manoeuvre around the salary cap to include him on your team, but with the possibility of him getting 100 points for a first-round finish, Horiguchi is well worth putting on your UFC 182 Kountermove team. Value Pick: Cody Garbrandt ($4700) My Value Pick for UFC 182 is top bantamweight prospect Cody Garbrandt ($4700), who takes on Marcus Brimage in one of the televised preliminary fights. This is Garbrandt’s first fight in the UFC and he is taking on a very solid opponent in Brimage, but I really think Garbrandt has a good shot to not only win this fight, but to do so by knockout. From the tape I’ve seen, the Team Alpha Male product is exceptionally dangerous with his hands and we have seen Brimage go down to strikes before, albeit at featherweight against Conor McGregor. Still, we have seen that Brimage is capable of being knocked out, and Garbrandt absolutely has the stopping power to do just that. In his five professional MMA fights on the regional circuit, Garbrandt is undefeated at 5-0 with all five of those wins coming by way of first-round knockout. The level of competition he has been fighting on the regional level is obviously lower than a guy like Brimage, but still, Garbrandt is only 23 years old and is constantly improving his game by training with the likes of UFC bantamweight champion TJ Dillashaw, Urijah Faber and Chad Mendes at Team Alpha Male. With the possibility of Garbrandt scoring 100 points with a first-round stoppage to go along with an underdog price tag of only $4700, he’s my top Value Pick for your UFC 182 Kountermove team. Fighter to Avoid: Marion Reneau ($4500) My Fighter to Avoid for your UFC 182 Kountermove team is Marion Reneau ($4500), who kicks off the Fight Pass portion of the card against Alexis Dufresne in a women’s bantamweight bout. This is Reneau’s first fight in the UFC and she’s taking the bout on relatively short notice as she only had four weeks to prepare for it. After watching her footage, she looks like she has a solid top game, but against a strong grappler like Dufresne that likely won’t come into play as I expect her to spend the majority of this fight on her back, which is a tough place to score points from. Beyond watching the tape available on Reneau, looking through her record closely it’s pretty clear her level of opposition has been incredibly poor up to this point, which is a big red flag whenever someone is making their UFC debut. Then you factor in the part about her being a 37-year-old physical education teacher and it’s even more obvious Reneau is one to stay away from this weekend. I don’t think Dufresne is great, but I think she will find a way to defeat Reneau and I doubt Reneau scores many Kountermove points for your team this weekend. She’s the underdog and some may feel compelled to put her on their squads in order to meet the salary cap requirements, but I say stay away from Reneau and look for other fighters to put on your team instead.
