Few UFC “what if” stories are bigger than Zabit Magomedsharipov.
For a while, he looked like the next great force in the featherweight division. The skill set was ridiculous, the creativity was unmatched, and at 6-0 inside the UFC, it felt like a title shot was only a matter of time.
Then he just disappeared.
Now, years later, Zabit has finally opened up about why he walked away from MMA, and according to him, frustration with the UFC’s booking process played a massive role.
The 35-year-old is expected to return to competition sometime in 2026 for an ACB JJ grappling event, which would mark his first appearance in any form of competition since beating Calvin Kattar in November 2019.
And based on his explanation, it sounds like the repeated fight cancellations completely drained him.
“There were a lot of reasons [I retired], so many reasons,” Magomedsharipov said. “Just couldn’t make the fight happen. I wanted to fight but [the fights got postponed] like three of 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. And 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?”
Honestly, that kind of grind would break a lot of fighters.
Training camp is brutal enough once. Repeating the full cycle multiple times without ever actually getting paid or stepping into the cage would crush anyone’s motivation.
A lot of that frustration centered around the long-delayed fight with Yair Rodriguez, which kept falling apart.
Zabit says there was even an understanding in place that if Rodriguez pulled out again, he’d be rewarded with a title shot instead.
According to him, that never happened.
“We had some agreements with them: if he pulls out of the fight a third time, they’d automatically give me the title fight,” Magomedsharipov said. “That’s what we’ve talked about. And the third time he found excuses, he came up with a lot of reasons. Then they started offering me someone else. First [Korean] Zombie, then some other guy, but really, at that time, it was me and Rodriguez. The two of us were contenders.”
That’s where things get more controversial.
Zabit believes the UFC simply didn’t want another Russian champion at the time.
With Khabib Nurmagomedov already dominating and Petr Yan rising, he thinks the promotion made a business decision that worked against him.
“And they just didn’t want to make me a champion,” Magomedsharipov said. “I know why, too. Because at that time we already had a lot of champions from Russia. Khabib was the champion then, and Yan. And because of that it wasn’t beneficial for them that a third champion would be from Russia. At first, before they were around, they promoted me really well.”
That’s obviously his perspective, and whether fans buy that theory or not, the bigger takeaway is still the same: one of the most gifted featherweights the UFC has ever had walked away before we got answers.
No title fight.
No final run.
No closure.
Just one of MMA’s biggest unanswered questions.
And if he really does compete again in 2026, even in grappling, a lot of fans are going to be paying attention.
