Fast facts
- Division: Middleweight (UFC)
- Record: 17-1 MMA (6-1 in the UFC); 18-2 in Muay Thai
- Nationality: Russian (ethnic Avar, born in Dagestan)
- Team/gym: Not listed in the available sources
- Notable wins: Armen Petrosyan (KO, UFC 308), Michel Pereira (UD), Marc-André Barriault (UD), Michał Oleksiejczuk (UD), Antonio Trócoli (TKO), Bruno Silva (UD)
The first team that ever had Sharabutdin Magomedov didn’t keep him. He was a kid in Dagestan playing football, the first sport he ever tried, and after an argument he was kicked off the squad. That small, unglamorous exit is where his fighting life starts, and it’s hard not to read something into it. He has spent the 30-odd years since in sports where nobody can bench you for losing your temper, as long as you lose it on the right person at the right time.
He was born on May 16, 1994, an Avar from Dagestan, which on paper sounds like the opening of a wrestling story. His isn’t one. Magomedov started with boxing and did well enough at it that it counts as real success, then moved to Moscow and switched to Muay Thai. There he became a Russian champion and built an 18-2 record. If you want to understand why he fights the way he does in the octagon, standing in the pocket and throwing things most middleweights wouldn’t attempt in sparring, the answer is in those two decades of rounds on his feet.
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The eye, and the money
Early in that Muay Thai career he suffered a serious eye injury while training in Thailand. He had several surgeries. The damage got worse anyway, and he eventually lost sight in that eye. He has talked openly about what that cost him and about leaning on the example of Michael Bisping, who won the UFC middleweight title despite his own eye injury. A Dagestani striker drawing courage from a man from Manchester is my favorite kind of fight-world detail, the sort of lineage that never shows up on a tale of the tape.
The other problem was simpler and crueler. Muay Thai didn’t pay him much. Debts piled up, and it got hard for him to even find places to train. MMA was the way out.
Before he got there, he took five sanctioned Lethwei bouts under traditional rules, finished every opponent and won the Eurasia Lethwei title. He described the Burmese art as “bare-knuckle where you can also headbutt your opponent,” and ranked it above his old sport. “Muay Thai is one of the toughest sport, but I believe Lethwei is the toughest one,” he said. When a man with 20 Muay Thai fights tells you something else is harder, I tend to believe him.
Building a record in China
His MMA apprenticeship happened far from the usual pipelines, in Chinese promotions Chin Woo Men and The King Fighting Championship, plus an Arena Global light heavyweight title along the way. He went 11-0 before the UFC called.
There is a harder chapter from that period that belongs in any honest profile. On March 15, 2022, at a shopping center in Dagestan, Magomedov objected to a man and woman kissing in front of him on an escalator and confronted the man. Bystanders separated them and he walked out. Camera footage then showed him waiting at the exit, where he sucker-punched the man and stomped on his head. According to his Wikipedia entry, the criminal charges were still before the courts, and the incident delayed his UFC contract. People who love his fights should know about it.
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The UFC run
He debuted at UFC 294 on Oct. 21, 2023, and beat Bruno Silva by unanimous decision. His second booking turned into a small farce. Ihor Potieria was pulled to face Michel Pereira, replacement Joilton Lutterbach tested positive for a banned substance, and Antonio Trócoli ended up across the cage at UFC on ABC 6 on June 22, 2024. Magomedov stopped him in Round 3 and took Performance of the Night.
Six weeks later, on Aug. 3, 2024, he went the distance with Michał Oleksiejczuk at UFC on ABC 7 and won a decision that earned Fight of the Night. Then came the night that made people learn his name. At UFC 308 on Oct. 26, 2024, he knocked out Armen Petrosyan at the end of Round 2 with a double spinning backfist, a strike that sounds like a video game input until you watch it land. It got him another Performance of the Night, a Fan’s Choice Knockout of the Year nomination, the No. 7 spot on UFC.com’s knockout list for 2024 and a place on MMA Fighting’s second-team All-Stars.
The hype got loud, and then Michael Page stopped it. At UFC Fight Night 250 on Feb. 1, 2025, Page beat him by unanimous decision, a result MMA Fighting called lopsided. It’s still the only loss of his MMA career, and it came in Saudi Arabia, which makes his return there in December feel like unfinished business.
He answered on July 26, 2025, outpointing Marc-André Barriault at UFC on ABC 9 for his second Fight of the Night. A November 2025 date with Paulo Costa fell through when Magomedov withdrew for nose surgery. In the gap he wandered into other rule sets with the curiosity of someone who just likes competing: a submission grappling draw with Arman Tsarukyan for an under-84-kilogram title at Hype Fighting: Armenia on Dec. 30, 2025, another grappling draw with late replacement Edson Barboza in March 2026 after Jorge Masvidal fell out two days before the event, and an 11-3 freestyle wrestling win over Neiman Gracie at Real American Freestyle in Moscow on Sept. 5, 2026.
In between those, on June 27, 2026, he beat Michel Pereira by unanimous decision at UFC Fight Night 280. That made it 6-1 in the octagon and two wins in a row.
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Adesanya in Riyadh
The UFC announced during the UFC Vegas 124 broadcast that Magomedov will headline UFC Saudi Arabia against Israel Adesanya on Dec. 5 at the ANB Arena in Riyadh, scheduled for five rounds. Nolan King confirmed it on X, and UFC Europe’s post put a little pirate flag emoji next to Magomedov’s name.
Adesanya, now 24-6, is a former two-time middleweight champion who hasn’t won since losing the belt to Sean Strickland at UFC 293 in September 2023. Since then Dricus du Plessis, Nassourdine Imavov and Joe Pyfer have all stopped him, the Pyfer loss coming in Seattle in March. That’s four straight defeats, three without the judges.
Here’s my read. This is the right fight at the right moment for Magomedov, and a dangerous one for Adesanya, whose recent losses have all ended early against men willing to stay in front of him. Magomedov has never needed a reason to stay in front of anybody. But he has also never gone five rounds in the UFC, and the one man who beat him did it by staying on the right side of the scorecards for the full distance. A main event in the same country where Page outclassed him is a fair test of how much he’s learned since.
He goes in at 17-1. The boy who got cut from a football team will walk out for the last fight of the night in Riyadh on Dec. 5.
