The UFC did a little bit of roster housekeeping over December, letting 10 fighters go since the start of the month. One of those fighters was welterweight Rinat Fakhretdinov, who was 6-0-1 in the UFC.
Fakhretdinov’s last fight was a 54 second knockout of Andreas Gustafsson, but that wasn’t enough to earn him a new contract with the promotion.
That stirred up a lot of emotions amongst the international MMA fanbase, who say stuff like the Arman Tsarukyan title situation and now this Rinat Fakhretdinov release prove the UFC has a bias against Caucasus fighters. Khabib Nurmagomedov has discussed this topic at length and now Islam Makhachev is sharing his opinion — although it’s a lot more understanding towards the UFC.
“Rinat is a good fighter with good skills,” Makhachev told Ushatayka. “But the UFC needs fighters they can sell, who can make money, and Rinat would just go out there and win.”
“I tell guys at the gym now: the UFC doesn’t need fighters who just beat everyone and stay quiet,” he continued. “Learn English, learn how to sell yourself, learn how to be interesting to the public. Because all of America loves wrestling, WWE.”
“We understand what’s going on there and how it’s all organized. They love the show. And because of that, you need to learn how to put on a show.”
The UFC has always leaned towards promoting the flashy, charismatic fighters on its roster over the quiet grinders, and that dynamic was just as prevalent when the promotion had a bunch of ‘boring’ American wrestlers racking up long win streaks without a title fight in sight. Colby Covington nearly got the Rinat treatment until he unleashed his “Chaos” gimmick upon the world. And now you have guys like Magomed Ankalaev letting his manager destroy his reputation on X (formerly Twitter) because it’s better to be hated than for people to be indifferent to you.
As Islam said, those that put on a show get title shots. Those that don’t are liable to get dropped at the first opportunity. What that says about the sport? We leave that up to you to decide.
