On the night of June 16 in Las Vegas, the UFC will hold another tournament in the Fight Night series. The main event of the night was to be a fight between Russian Ikram Aliskerov and Brazilian Andre Muniz, a recent inhabitant of the top 15 of the middle division.
The fight was supposed to be a kind of springboard for Aliskerov to get closer to his qualified opponents and in the future constantly receive the best opposition. However, all these plans will have to be postponed. Muñiz suffered a broken toe and apparently also contracted staph, so he withdrew from the fight. Ikram remained on the poster and was assigned a new opponent: Antonio Trocoli.
Aliskerov has good prospects in the UFC:
“Dark horse” from Russia. Aliskerov became a star in Brave and is now destroying the UFC
At one point, the Brazilian tried to enter the UFC, won a fight on Dana White’s Contender Series, but ultimately failed a banned substances test and the result was changed to no contest. Well, Trocoli had his last fight 2.5 years ago in a local Brazilian promotion. And now Antonio has the opportunity to prove himself at the highest level. For Aliskerov, this is, of course, an option so that the downtime does not drag on, since defeating an opponent in a short time brings absolutely nothing to the Russian.
Overall, Ikram is quickly becoming Russia’s unluckiest UFC fighter. Previously, we defaulted to assigning this status to Magomed Ankalaev with his titular misadventures, but Aliskerov decided to compete with his compatriot in this regard. After an impressive debut last year, Ikram received a breakthrough in the form of a fight with Paulo Costa. The Brazilian finally rejected the fight and with this Aliskerov’s chance to jump into the top 5 disappeared.
Ikram Aliskerov
Photo: Chris Unger/Getty Images
Then there was the announced fight with Nassurdin Imavov at UFC 294. The French Dagestani withdrew due to injury a week before the tournament, and Aliskerov was sent to Varley Alves, whom the Russian simply destroyed. It seemed that now it would definitely be possible to confront Ikram with a top-level opponent, and in fact they gave Anthony Hernandez from the bottom of the top 15, but then our fighter could not compete due to a staphylococcal infection. And now another break in battle with a strong opponent. And we do not take into account the fact that, according to him, they also tried to pair Aliskerov with Chris Curtis, but then he was removed from this pairing and sent as a replacement to one of the April tournaments. And Chris, for a second, is also a top 15 wrestler. That is to say, Ikram has already failed in four attempts to appear in the ratings. In just one year in the UFC.
This significantly affects Aliskerov’s prospects and slows down his progress, although the promotion obviously has great faith in the Russian fighter’s potential and is actively trying to include him in the rankings. And there, Ikram is able to quickly reach the only offender in his professional career: Khamzat Chimaev. In 2019, they met at the Brave tournament and Borz knocked out Aliskerov midway through the first round. Even despite the quick victory, Chimaev noted more than once that this was the most difficult fight, since the Khamzat fight did not go well in it. After that, Aliskerov had three more fights in Brave, defeated everyone and left the league.
This season, Brave CF streams are available on OKKO.
Now the Dagestan fighter has a streak of seven victories, six of which are early, and is already confidently knocking on the door of the top 15, but it is not his opponents who stop him, but the circumstances. Ikram said in a recent interview that after the June fight he hopes to compete at UFC 308 in Abu Dhabi, which is scheduled for October.
If external factors do not interfere again, Aliskerov will most likely get a new opportunity with a top-level opponent. And we can only hope that the next attempt is successful.
