On October 26, Abu Dhabi will host the UFC 308 tournament. Traditionally, the cards in the UAE try to be filled mainly with fighters from the post-Soviet space, and this one was no exception. UFC 308 already looks very powerful: Ilia Topuria and Max Holloway, Khamzat Chimaev and Robert Whittaker, Alexander Volkov and Cyril Gan, Magomed Ankalaev, Shara Bullet, Rinat Fakhretdinov.
And these are just very well-known people, who are known to most fans from CIS countries. And there are lesser-known Abus Magomedov, Armen Petrosyan, Nursulton Ruziboev and Myktybek Orolbay. And to this whole company was added another native of Russia – Ismail Naurdiev. And this already seems a bit strange.
Ismail Naurdiev
Photo: Jeff Bottari/Getty Images
The promotion has quite a few interesting fighters on its roster who would look much more profitable on the UFC 308 card than Naurdiev. Ismail is a strong fighter, but he has already left the best league in the world once. In 2019-2020, Naurdiev performed in the UFC, even managed to impress everyone with a victory in his debut over Michel Prazeres, but then lost to Chansey Rencountry. As a result, Ismail scored 2-2 in four fights, was not given a new contract, and left.
Since then, Naurdiev, representing Austria, performs in the Brave CF promotion, which is secretly considered a springboard for fighters from Russia. And it cannot be said that after leaving the UFC, Ismail suddenly began to tear everyone apart and declare himself. Under the auspices of Brave, he fought six fights, in which he suffered three defeats, two of them in the first round. These were not top-level fighters, Naurdiev was inferior to Vadim Kucem, who has not fought since then, and Marcin Bandel, who lost his next two fights by knockout. Ismail managed to overcome these defeats, but will this be enough to fight in the UFC again? Rather, Naurdiev goes down in the category of “fallen pilots”, but receives a breakthrough in the form of a fight with Bruno Silva.
This season, Brave CF broadcasts are available on OKKO.
It seems that there is a slight personnel crisis in the world’s top promotion or that the criteria for entering the league have been simplified. If so, then this is a serious blow to the reputation of the UFC. This is the best MMA organization in the world and getting into it becomes a lifelong endeavor for many fighters. For example, undefeated fighter Torres Feeney fought in Dana White’s Challenger Series this year. Last year he already won this tournament, but did not get a contract. This year he was again left without the coveted ticket, as Dana was not satisfied with his performance. And Feeney was still undefeated in the professional category. And against this background, Naurdiev signs with a 1-2 record in his last three fights.
If the UFC needed to fill the card in Abu Dhabi with a Russian-speaking fighter, then this could easily be done at the expense of the guys already on the roster. For example, Aliaskhab Khizriev, Ikram Aliskerov, Tagir Ulanbekov, Muslim Salikhov, Said Nurmagomedov. These are just the ones representing Russia. And there is also Rafael Fiziev, who has recovered from an injury. All of them are now without fights, without injuries, and their participation at UFC 308 would seem much more justified.
The organization has been receiving a lot of questions about new signings lately. Rasul Magomedaliev, coach of Roman Kopylov and Armen Petrosyan, was quite critical of the American fighters: “Basically, more than half of them are trash in terms of sports. I have never seen anyone so weak here in Russia. We know what Russian fighters go through to get into the UFC. In the United States, they sign their own fighters, it is worth winning the state championship.”
Everything you need to know about the UFC roster:
How the UFC roster works. How many fighters are there, who gets hired and why are they fired?
We can agree with this. At most UFC events throughout the year, you regularly see fighters whose performances are certainly not at the level required by the best promotion in the world. Booking mediocre fighters does not do the UFC any favors. With these “stoppers” they save some cards, but in general the presence of such athletes in the organization does not lead to anything good. On the contrary, this is another reason for competitors to salute the UFC roster and say that this promotion has nothing special.
Of course, Dana White and his team know what they are doing, and the UFC will be ahead of the rest for many years to come, but ideally there should be no strange signings. It is clear that the show element plays an important role in modern MMA, but the sport cannot be completely relegated to the tenth plane. Otherwise, sooner or later the personnel crisis will reach the point where the UFC will not have enough truly strong fighters.
