Zabit Magomedsharipov has laid out the frustrations that pushed him to retire from MMA in 2022 despite an undefeated UFC run.
Magomedsharipov, 18-1 in MMA and 6-0 in the UFC, last fought in November 2019 when he defeated Calvin Kattar in a Fight of the Night. He said repeated issues around a long-targeted matchup with Yair Rodriguez and his dealings with the UFC led him to walk away while still a top featherweight contender.
"There were a lot of reasons – so many reasons," Magomedsharipov said while describing the collapse of the Rodriguez fight. "(UFC) just couldn't make the (Rodriguez) fight happen. I wanted to fight, but like three or four times, they'd postpone fights and we couldn't make a deal. But all these times, I was making weight, going through camps, flying out to America. And by the time you get there, you've already been through so much – weight cut, training camp and everything. Then you arrive, and two or three weeks before the fight, they tell you, 'That's it, he's injured,' and they postpone again. I'd go back home again, and start getting ready all over again. Imagine that about five times. I got tired of it. Like, how much can you take?"
He added that he believed a title shot was promised if Rodriguez withdrew again. "We had some agreements with them: If he pulls out of the fight a third time, they'd automatically give me the title fight. That's what we talked about. And the third time, he found excuses. He came up with a lot of reasons. Then they started offering me somebody else, first (Chan Sung Jung), then some other guy. But really at that time, it was just me and Rodriguez. The two of us were contenders, and they just didn't want to make me a champion. I know why, too. At that time, we already had a lot of champions from Russia. Khabib (Nurmagomedov) was the champion then and (Petr) Yan, and because of that, it wasn't beneficial for them that a third champion would be from Russia."
Magomedsharipov, often described as one of the biggest what-ifs in MMA, has since signed with Russian grappling league ACBJJ, a spinoff of promotion ACA. His manager Ali Abdelaziz has cited similar reasons for his retirement.
