When Zabit Magomedsharipov won his last UFC fight in 2019, many people could only anticipate additional years of exploits for the Russian. However, he recently opened up on his sudden retirement with stunning claims about the UFC’s tradition. “ZaBeast” registered a unanimous decision triumph over fellow top contender Calvin Kattar, earning him a Top Five listing and a step closer to a title shot. Sadly, the match turned out to be his last in the promotion.
Initially, Yair Rodriguez’s injuries reportedly delayed his return. At some other time, the UFC cut off “Pantera” from the promotion for refusing the matchup. Magomedsharipov himself dealt with some health issues that kept him on the sidelines. By 2021, the promotion had ejected him from his No. 3 spot in the Featherweight rankings over inactivity. Shortly afterward, he announced his retirement. Magomedsharipov has some first-person explanation for the events, and why he never won a UFC title.
UFC’s allegation that possibly cost Zabit Magomedsharipov a UFC title
Following his retirement, the high-flying Featherweight took up a coaching career, and recently returned to the competitive grappling scene. A publication from Magomedsharipov’s new grappling promotion, Absolute Championship of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, shares first-person confessions about what transpired. The Russian featherweight shed light on how Rodriguez repeatedly pulled out of fights and how the UFC breached an agreement that cost him gold.
“They just didn’t want to make me champion. Because at that time there were already a lot of Russian champions. Khabib was champion then, Yan too. They didn’t like the idea of a third champion being from Russia…
There were a lot of reasons [I retired]. It just never worked out. I wanted to fight. The fights got postponed 3-4 times. We just couldn’t come to an agreement somehow. …
We had some kind of agreement with them that if he pulled out a third time, they’d automatically give me the title shot. Those conversations happened. But the third time they found a lot of excuses again. …”
Magomedsharipov never had the title fight, and we all can only imagine the outcome of a fight that never happened. To be fair, Magomedsharipov would have to test his five-round mettle against top featherweight stars like Alexander Volkanovski and Max Holloway. However, there’s no denying that ZaBeast’s combination of fluid and flashy kickboxing has never been matched since his retirement. So, watching him in a title shot would have been intriguing, to say the least.
