UFC 251 Fight Island Prelims Betting Preview

While the main card of UFC 251 is getting all of the hype it deserves with three championship fights and the late addition of Jorge Masvidal, the preliminary card looks to have the potential to be highly entertaining a well. Here’s a look at the four fights that will lead into the main card this Saturday night in Abu Dhabi at Fight Island.

Volkan Oezdemir (17-4-0) has earned 12 of his 17 career wins by way of knockout and Jiri Prochazka (26-3-1) has won all but three of his professional bouts with knockout. It’s tough to predict how Prochazka will perform in his UFC debut against a tough opponent in Oezdemir, but he certainly looked the part of a legitimate light heavyweight contender in his recent championship run with Rizin FF. In what should be a fast and furious fight that could easily go either way, we’ll take the underdog odds on Prochazka.

Muslim Salikhov (16-2-0) has bounced back nicely from a loss to Alex Garcia in his UFC debut to earn three straight wins, two of them by way of brutal knockouts over Ricky Rainey and Nordine Taleb. Elizeu Zaleski dos Santos (22-6-0) is 8-1 over his last nine fights with the one loss coming to Li Jinglang last August in China by knockout. Salikhov’s knack for knockouts over the course of his combat sports career makes him the pick here, but he’ll want to keep this fight standing if he hopes to convert as a small favorite.

Makwan Amirkhani (15-4-0) and Danny Henry (12-3-0) should both be hungry for redemption in this bout as both of them are coming into it off of a loss in their last fight. Henry has struggled with early aggression in recent fights and Amirkhani struggled with endurance in his loss to Shane Burgos, so the first round is going to be extremely key to the outcome of this fight. We’ll go with Amirkhani’s excellent wrestling ability leading to a first-round win, but the longer this fight goes on, the less appealing this pick will be.

Leonardo Santos (17-3-1) is undefeated with a 6-0-1 record in a UFC career that has spanned out over seven years. Santos will be fighting for just the second time since 2016 when he faces Roman Bogatov (10-0-0), who is making his UFC debut. At 40 years old, it’s tough to know how much Santos has left in the tank at this point in his career. This will be an interesting test for the undefeated Bogatov, but one that we eventually see him failing as it will be tough for him to out-wrestle the veteran jiu-jitsu specialist.