UFC betting in Morocco: bouts, rounds and settlement rules
UFC is short for Ultimate Fighting Championship, the name of a promotion; the sport its athletes compete in is mixed martial arts, MMA for short. The promotion's opening show, known in hindsight as UFC 1, took place on 12 November 1993 in Denver, Colorado: eight fighters entered, and Royce Gracie won the tournament. UFC fights have been held since that first show inside the Octagon, a cage with eight sides.
From the opening bell to the scorecards: how a UFC bout works
UFC fights are governed by the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts, a rulebook the ABC (Association of Boxing Commissions and Combative Sports) publishes and the UFC took on in November 2000. Each professional round runs five minutes, then comes a minute's rest; a fight can never exceed five rounds or 25 minutes in total. The main event is set for five rounds and the other bouts most often for three; UFC.com dates the five-round non-title headliner to 2011, when the promotion introduced it.
Fights end in one of several ways: a submission, when a fighter taps or says so; a technical knockout, with the referee, a doctor or the fighter's own corner halting the action; a knockout, when strikes leave a fighter unable to defend; a disqualification; a no contest; or a decision read from the judges' scorecards after the last round. A decision is unanimous when all three judges pick the same winner, split when two judges go one way and the third the other, and majority when two judges pick a fighter while the third scores a draw. Draws are part of the rulebook: one of Youssef Zalal's UFC bouts, in August 2022, finished as a majority draw.
Weight limits are set by the UFC in pounds; the metric values here are rounded:
strawweight, 115 pounds (roughly 52.2 kg): a women's division, and the lightest the UFC has;
flyweight, 125 pounds (roughly 56.7 kg), and bantamweight, 135 pounds (roughly 61.2 kg): open to men and to women;
featherweight, 145 pounds (roughly 65.8 kg); lightweight, 155 pounds (roughly 70.3 kg); welterweight, 170 pounds (roughly 77.1 kg);
middleweight, 185 pounds (roughly 83.9 kg); light heavyweight, 205 pounds (roughly 93.0 kg); heavyweight, 265 pounds (roughly 120.2 kg).
What the betting rules say about UFC bouts (section 10.9)
In the site's betting rules the UFC has a section to itself, numbered 10.9, while boxing and other martial arts fall under 10.8. The two part ways on the round total: under 10.8 a round has to be completed to count, under 10.9 it is in the count once the fight has gone past the halfway point of that round. The table sets out the main points of section 10.9.
Market or situation | How it is settled |
|---|---|
Start and stoppage of the bout | The bell for round one starts the bout. If the fight is ruled a no contest or stopped before anyone has won, every bet is void; a result that has already been determined is paid as declared. |
Change in the number of rounds | Bets on who wins stand; bets on how many rounds are settled at odds of 1. |
Total rounds (Total 2.5 O / U) | A five-minute round reaches its halfway point at 2:30, so 2.5 rounds means two complete rounds and 2:30 of round three. Over pays if the fight goes past that mark, Under if it ends before; a stoppage on the 2:30 mark itself returns both at odds of 1.00. The line sets the total most often at 2.5 or 4.5. |
1X2 (W1 / X / W2) | "1" and "2" include a win by knockout or technical knockout, on points, by technical decision, and by disqualification or refusal. "X" stands for the draw, declared if the judges have the fighters level after the last round, and it is an outcome of its own. |
Win (2Way) (W1 / W2) | Two outcomes only. Should the bout be a draw, W1 and W2 are both settled at odds of 1 and the stake is returned. |
Double Chance (1X / 12 / 2X) | 1X and 2X pair one fighter with the draw; 12 covers a win by either fighter, with no draw. |
Points Victory and Win Inside The Distance | The first means the winner is chosen by the judges once the last round is over. The second covers every early finish: KO, TKO, a submission by painful lock or chokehold, the opponent's disqualification or his withdrawal mid-fight. |
These are the points specific to the UFC; the general rules of the site, common to all sports, apply on top of them.
Numbered cards, Fight Nights and the shape of the line
UFC events come in two kinds: numbered cards, UFC 333 or UFC 335 for instance, and UFC Fight Night cards. A media rights deal the UFC made public fixes the yearly programme from 2026 at 13 numbered cards plus 30 Fight Nights.
The UFC section of the 1xBet line is built the same way, event by event rather than season by season. Every numbered card and every Fight Night gets a group of its own, opened once the bookmaker prices the card and taken down once it has been fought, with each bout of the card listed separately. A single group stays put through all of this: UFC bouts expected but not yet scheduled, including pairings that are still hypothetical.
Morocco in the UFC: Rabat, Casablanca and a national federation
When Marwan Rahiki signed in October 2025, the Moroccan press counted four fighters born in Morocco who had competed in the UFC. The Azaitar brothers from Rabat came first: Abu Azaitar, a middleweight, debuted in July 2018, Ottman Azaitar, a lightweight, in September 2019 at UFC 242. Youssef Zalal, a Casablanca native nicknamed "The Moroccan Devil", made his UFC debut at UFC 247 in February 2020, returned to the promotion in 2024 and now fights at featherweight; on 25 April 2026, at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, he headlined a UFC card for the first time. Marwan Rahiki, also from Rabat, became the fourth Moroccan to join the promotion in October 2025 and had his first UFC bout, at featherweight, in March 2026.
Morocco also has a national MMA body, the Fédération Royale Marocaine du Sport de Combat Libre et Mixte, founded in September 2018 and a member since June 2019 of IMMAF, the International Mixed Martial Arts Federation; it oversees more than 70 registered associations in seven regional leagues of the amateur game.
Line, Live and an account in dirhams
Everything above is priced before the card, in the line, where the UFC section is listed alongside the pre-match catalogue of every sport. In-play betting on a bout is handled by UFC in the Live section. Players in Morocco hold their account in Moroccan dirhams (MAD), and the first step before any bet is to create a player account.