To the ANB Arena in Riyadh, Saoudi Arabia we go for this one. It’s UFC fight night and the main even is Adesanya vs Imanov. However, searching through the card of the day, there is a much more interesting fight for the heavyweight division between Jamal Pogues and Hamdy Abdelwahab. It is scheduled to begin at 14:00 GMT on Feb 01. It’s a collision of completely different fighting styles with fighters with different backgrounds.
The adversaries
Jamal «The Stormtrooper» (ring any bells? Anyone?) Pogues is a Californian 29-year-old with a record of 11 wins and 4 losses. «The Hammer» Hamdy Abdelwahab is from Egypt and has transferred to UFC from the Greco-Roman wrestling style at the age of 32. He only has 3 fights under his belt, and has won all three (one with a knockout). The two fighters are comparable in height (1.91 cm vs 1.88 respectively) but there is a significant difference in their reach.
And that is the main reason that the American prefers to fight standing and from a distance. His reach is almost 2 meters (1.96), while the Egyptian’s is 11 cm shorter (1.85). In contrast, Abdelwahab (probably due to his GR days) is quite balanced between standing and fighting on the ground (52.4% and 47.2% respectively).
Pogues has the greater chance
The reason being that he has had fights in 2023 (2) and 2024 (1), while his opponent has not shown in the octagon since 2022. And as the saying goes, there is no substitute for experience. Therefore, we do not agree with the assessment that provides a slight advantage to his opponent with a price of @1.91, in contrast with the offer of @1.95 for Pogues. Not that the specific indication means anything more than a difference of 1% (50.5 vs 49.5).
So, for those that will open a Game2Bet account and choose this fight to place a bet, we suggest the win for Jamal Pogues at @1.95. It will be a close bout which will probably end up with the victor being determined through majority decision.
