UFC Fight Night 250 Adesanya vs. Imavov Preview and Odds

The fans of mixed martial arts and the Ultimate Fighting Championship have a big reason to celebrate once again as the newest iteration of Fight Night is upon us. Next Saturday, February 1, 2025, the event’s latest edition will take place. There is a lot of excitement because of the fighters taking place. The main event, whose name the whole night will carry, is the middleweight clash between Israel Adesanya and Nassourdine Imavov. Apart from them, 22 other fighters will take the octagon as there are 11 more fights. 

Join us as we take a deep dive into this upcoming combat sports spectacle, which is also a great opportunity for the fans of online sports betting. Naturally, we will also make our predictions and UFC Fight Night 250 picks for the Adesanya vs. Imavov so that your bets are more accurate and with a higher chance for success. Between the total of 12 fights, there is ample opportunity for anyone to find what they like most and combine some parlay options across multiple bouts. 

Main Details

The event is of course produced by the leading entity in the sport of MMA, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and its president and CEO Dana White. It is scheduled for *February 1 and will take place at the famous anb Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The country of Saudi Arabia has been investing in major sporting events over the last decade or so and is currently one of the top destinations for all kinds of sports. 

MMA and UFC have a particularly strong bond with the region and have held fights there before. This event marks the promotion’s second visit to the city of Riyadh, the first being in June of 2024 with the UFC on ABC: Whittaker vs. Aliskerov. In the future, we can expect many more events of this magnitude, and bigger, to take place in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), as it is officially known. 

Rumored and Cancelled Fights

As is usually the case, these 12 scheduled fights were not all the first options. Some were canceled in the lead-up to the event, and some rumored fights were thought to have been planned for February 1. Firstly, there was a middleweight bout between Ikram Aliskerov and Andre Muniz expected to take place. The two previously scheduled a fight for UFC on ESPN: Perez vs. Taira in June of last year, but Muniz had to cancel due to a foot fracture. Their fight was canceled once more due to visa issues for Muniz and his team, and should definitely take place at a future event. It is one of those bouts that both the experts and the fans want to see, so Dana White is bound to give it to us at some point.

There was also a lightweight fight planned for Riyadh this time around between Jordan Leavitt and Abdul-Kareem Al-Selwady. Sadly, Leavitt withdrew from it but did not say why. Officially, he withdrew due to unknown reasons and was replaced by Bolaji Oki, meaning Al-Selwady will still get to participate in the event.

Another fight that was supposedly linked to this Fight Night spectacle was a rematch between former KSW lightweight and featherweight champion Mateusz Gamrot and Rafael Fiziev. The pair previously headlined an event, back in September 2023 at the UFC Fight Night: Fiziev vs. Gamrot. Gamrot won by TKO due to Fiziev’s knee injury. Now they both get a chance for redemption and a complete fight at full strength. 

Preliminary Card Fights and Odds

There will be 7 fights in the preliminary card, 2 heavyweight, 3 lightweight, 1 women’s flyweight, and 1 featherweight. First on the schedule is the Abdul-Kareem Al-Selwady versus Bolaji Oki lightweight fight. Here, the odds are in the Belgian’s favor as Oki gets 1.59 odds to USA’s Al-Selwady’s 2.33. Al-Selwady has a record of 15-4-0 so far while Oki is at 9-2-0. 

The second fight on the schedule is a very balanced one according to the odds. The heavyweight bout will see Hamdy Abdelwahab at 1.91 facing Jamal Pogues at 1.87, and it does not get much more uncertain than this. This also means that it should be a good fight to watch, apart from betting on it. Abdelwahab from Egypt has a record of 5-0-0 so far, while the American Pogues is at 11-4-0. 

Next up, Bogdan Grad and Alexander Lucas are facing off in a featherweight duel between two experienced fighters. Grad has a better career record of 14-2-0 and he is the favorite in this fight with 1.80 odds. The Austrian is the favorite but not by a large margin since his Brazilian opponent has 1.98 odds. Alexander has an 8-4-0 record and is the underdog, which does not always mean a lot in UFC and MMA. This will be another tough matchup worth betting on and watching. 

The fourth scheduled fight is a not very balanced or uncertain one when the sportsbook predictions are concerned. This is the lone women’s bout, a flyweight matchup in which the Canadian 12th-ranked Jasmine Jasudavicius takes on the Brazillian Mayra Bueno Silva. Jasudavicius has a record of 12-3-0 and her odds for this fight are set at 1.43. On the other side, Bueno Silva has a 10-4-1 record and her odds are 2.75. The bookies are not favoring the Brazillian, which could be a slight advantage overall.

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After the only ladies’ fight of the night, Fares Ziam and Mie Davis enter the octagon for a lightweight bout. Ziam from France has partaken in more fights so far and has a 16-4-0 record, while Davis from the USA has an 11-2-0 record. However, it is Davis who is the favorite with 1.61 odds to Ziam’s 2.27. While it may seem it is anyone’s fight to take, it seems that the Frenchman will have his hands full against the American. 

How about some truly one-sided fights? According to the bookies, there will be three of them back to back to back. Starting with Terrance McKinney and Damir Hadzovic, the American has a big advantage over the Bosnian. Their records are quite similar, as McKinney has a 15-7-0 record while Hadzovic’s is 14-7-0. However, the USA lightweight fighter has 1.27 odds to the Bosnian’s 3.70. It will be hard for Hadzovic to make their records the same, but he will give it his all as he always does.

The second fight is slightly more one-sided as Shamil Gaziev got 1.26 odds over Thomas Petersen and his 3.75. The Belarusian has a superb 13-1-0 record and is ranked 14th, while the American is at 9-2-0 so far. The heavyweight fight is sure to be interesting, as they always are, but the fighter out of Belarus is the clear favorite as the more experienced fighter in a better form. 

The third one-sided duel according to the odds is a featherweight bout where two fighters with similar records will meet in the octagon. Muhammad Naimov is the favorite with 1.38 over Kaan Ofli with 2.95. The Tajikistan fighter’s record is currently 11-3-0 while the Australian has 12-3-1. They are evenly matched, but the Tajik is in better form and with more recent fights under his belt. That is why he gets the bookies’ advantage in this duel. 

If the previous three fights were one-sided when it comes to sportsbooks and their odds, this one is a sure thing. According to the odds, this is the most one-sided and unbalanced bout of the whole Fight Night event. Ikram Aliskerov is the absolute favorite in his middleweight fight against Andre Muniz. While Muniz is more experienced and with a record of 24-6-0, the Brazillian fighter only gets 5.40 odds for this highly-anticipated fight. On the other side, the Russian fighter has a 15-2-0 record and his odds are a staggering 1.15. That is how certain the sportsbooks including stake.com are in his victory. 

Said Nurmagomedov out of Russia is fighting Vinicius de Oliveira out of Brazil in a bantamweight duel as well. The Russian is a favorite of the bookies with 1.52 odds to the Brazillian’s 2.50 odds. Nurmagomedov has an 18-3-0 record while Oliveira has a 21-3-0 record, meaning he is more experienced and successful, but Nurmagomedov has a very impressive recent record that makes him the favorite in this bout. 

After this match, the next duel on the schedule will see Sergey Pavlovich, the rank 4 fighter out of Russia, take on the Surinam fighter, the rank 9 Jairzinho Rozenstruik. The heavyweight fight will see two colossal fighters with great track records take on each other as Pavlovich has 1.32 odds to Rozenstruik’s 3.30. The Russian has a record of 18-3-0, while the Surinamese is at 15-5-0.

In the final game before the headliner, it is another Russian, Sharaputdin Magomedov with 1.51 odds taking on Michael Page from Great Britain with 2.50 odds. The Russian fighter is ranked 14th, hence the advantage by the sportsbooks. His record is an amazing 15-0-0 as he is yet to lose. Could this be it when he meets the British fighter with a 22-3-0 record in the octagon? The odds say no, but Page probably has other plans. This middleweight bout should be the ultimate preview of what is to come in the headliner that succeeds it. 

Finally, there is the main event of the night and the chief reason why the Riyadh event was scheduled in the first place. In the headline bout, the two-time UFC middleweight champion Israel Adesanya is the favorite against Nassourdine Imavov. While the New Zealand fighter is the clear favorite, he does not get odds that are too surprising. The rank 2 fighter with a 24-4-0 record has 1.56 while his French opponent with a 15-4-0 record is sitting comfortably at 2.39. It will be a duel worthy of a headline event and a must-bet opportunity for the fans of the sport. 

Best Types of Bets to Make on UFC

Now that you are more familiar with what fights will take place next weekend and who the favorites are, it is time to talk about the types of bets that are typically made in UFC and MMA in general. While you can pick and choose whatever you want, certain bets should at least be given a thought with big events like this.

First and foremost, there is the moneyline bet, i.e. picking the winner. This is the basic wager in any sport where the bettor predicts which team, or in this case which individual athlete, will win the match. The odds are always given for this type of bet first, hence all the odds we talked about in the previous sections. Considering there are a dozen fights to evaluate, picking several moneyline bets and combining them in a single parlay bet is the ultimate way to do it for a Fight Night event like this. 

A parlay, for those who do not know, is a bet where you wager on multiple scenarios, all of which need to happen for you to win. So in this case, you would bet on more fights and the combined odds will equal a considerable payout should all of them happen for you. Of course, there are other bet types to evaluate and pick, some of the most popular being the over/under bet on the number of rounds. The limit is usually set at 2.5 rounds, and you bet either over or under, depending on the event and the fighters. For headline events, it could even be set at 3.5. 

Another big bet type is the method of winning where the bettors can opt for a knockout (KO), technical knockout (TKO), submission, or decision. It is a very exciting bet to make and it implies you know the history of the fighters, their current form, and whether or not they can knock out their opponent or force a submission. While reserved for a bit more experienced bettors, it could be the type of bet to choose for several fights scheduled for February 1 in Riyadh.