I still can't figure out where the "Islam is avoiding challenges" comes from

joy2day said:
Yeah, I'm not on board with that excuse though; I think it is a stretch to call that a "bad situation." Illia is not a FW anymore; he has officially moved up and I don't see that it would be a bad situation if Islam could beat him. I think he is more worried about the "bad situation" of losing. We will see though. If Islam doesn't move up, and Illia beats a top LW, Islam will have no choice but to fight him, and it will surely be ducking if he refuses.
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You don’t have to be “on board” with their line of thinking to acknowledge that it’s a reasonable concern. It doesn’t matter whether ilia technically moved up, he doesn’t have a single credible win at LW and many folks will view him as a FW until he proves himself at LW. If islam mops the floor with him there will be an army of fans saying “ilia was too small”. Not everyone will agree on this, but given the context of why they don’t want to fight ilia it’s idiotic to call it a duck. It’s actually laughable considering that one of the main criticisms against Islam is “he only fights FWs”. We’re now in an absurd territory where a LW champ refusing to fight a smaller guy is considered a duck lmao. It’s absurd.
 
Agreed with two caveats

If he ends up avoiding 170 because of Belal, thatd be a shame. For his sake too

2 His toughest fight was against a featherweight so I guess he might he Ilia as high risk low reward? Different fighter then Volk but low center of gravity/quick/hard to take down?

Oh and 3 If he is moving up to 170, I could see him wanting a bigger opponent to prepare for the transition
 
MrBlackheart said:
Just mindless hate. Look at how people look at the Volk wins as “he beat a FW”. But when Ilia beat Volk, it’s one of the best wins in ufc history.


Correct if I’m wrong but if you weight in at 155, you’re a LW. And Fighters move around weight class all the time…Khamzat, Pereira, Whitaker. But when Volk does it vs Islam, it doesn’t count.
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Add to the fact that it was billed as a "fight for #1 p4p", you literally cannot act like Volkanovski was a slouch.
 
moosaev said:
You don’t have to be “on board” with their line of thinking to acknowledge that it’s a reasonable concern. It doesn’t matter whether ilia technically moved up, he doesn’t have a single credible win at LW and many folks will view him as a FW until he proves himself at LW. If islam mops the floor with him there will be an army of fans saying “ilia was too small”. Not everyone will agree on this, but given the context of why they don’t want to fight ilia it’s idiotic to call it a duck. It’s actually laughable considering that one of the main criticisms against Islam is “he only fights FWs”. We’re now in an absurd territory where a LW champ refusing to fight a smaller guy is considered a duck lmao. It’s absurd.
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Yes, I think places like Sherdog would have a lot of people criticizing him, but that's normal, lol. I just don't think it's all that big of a deal. It's a chance for a marquee matchup. It may be all for nothing anyway because he may be moving up.
 
I’m trying to figure out how/why Islam would fight Shavkat. But wouldn’t fight Belal?

Because we know that all three of them are Muslims.

Make it make sense.
 
TempleoftheDog said:
I’m trying to figure out how/why Islam would fight Shavkat. But wouldn’t fight Belal?

Because we know that all three of them are Muslims.

Make it make sense.
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Well, Shavkat and Islam have never been training mates. That's all, I guess.
 
MrBlackheart said:
Just mindless hate. Look at how people look at the Volk wins as “he beat a FW”. But when Ilia beat Volk, it’s one of the best wins in ufc history.
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Yep, the double standards are ridiculous.

The same people accusing Islam of ducking Ilia will be the first ones to discredit him for only beating manlets and blown up FWs if Ilia loses.

Personally, I think Ilia is acting a little entitled demanding a title shot after a single title defense. He's not Conor. At least Islam broke the record for LW title defenses before moving up.
 
TempleoftheDog said:
I’m trying to figure out how/why Islam would fight Shavkat. But wouldn’t fight Belal?

Because we know that all three of them are Muslims.

Make it make sense.
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What is there to figure out?

Islam and Belal have trained together and are friends. Belal is very tight with the whole Khabib crew.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I neither heard Islam or Belal ever say "I will not fight another Muslim". Islam is tight with Belal, not as tight with Shavkat. So he'll fight the latter but not the former.

Belal is willing to fight both Khamzat at 185 and Shavkat at 170. All three are Muslims. They're not friends/traning-partners though so none see an issue in fighting each other. Same thing with Islam moving up.

Had this very conversation yesterday in a different thread. This isn't some inner-Muslim religious thing people try to make it seem.

Its simply friends and training-partners not wanting to fight eachother. Happens all the time in MMA. Any infusion of Religion is almost always some fans vivid imagination.
 
Before the Olivera fight, I remember there was a loud crowd here that was accusing Islam of cherry picking opponents and ducking the harder ones. It was really bizarre. I wasn't an Islam fan until I noticed how many didn't watch any of his fights and basically dismissed his entire resume. Then they'd post the Martins KO gif non stop like it was so easy to do. Just seems like mental gymnastics to avoid giving fighters they hate credit where credit's due. I got in so many arguments how LW was ducking Islam, not the other way around, then they cited all the covid drop out issues. Whatever in time, the truth always comes out.
 
I can't understand how someone can hate Mak besides religion/culture.
And, hey, he was born and raised that way. I do believe their culture is sexist, retrograde, restricts freedom and violates fundamental rights.
But he didn't wake up some day and said "know what, I think orthodox islamism makes total sense".
It's all he knows. He has been taught that this is the correct path.
Hell, we (I'm Spaniard) were pretty much alike not so long ago.

Religion aside, how could you dislike Islam? He's respectful, hilarious and pure class.

He is like Jokic doing MMA: a regular dude being a total troll, and that's comedy gold.
 
TempleoftheDog said:
I’m trying to figure out how/why Islam would fight Shavkat. But wouldn’t fight Belal?

Because we know that all three of them are Muslims.

Make it make sense.
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The majority of the Dagestani crews early mma and sambo careers consisted of them fighting (almost exclusively) against other Muslims from the Caucus region. So clearly there is no rule for them that says they can’t fight other Muslims, but Belal and them have a very close relationship. Close enough that Khabib has cornered Belal. I think Shavkat trained with them casually over a decade ago, but their relationship with Belal is apparently very tight. This isn’t unique to them, plenty of other camps make these type of calculations. DC decided to fight most of his career at an unnatural weight class because he didn’t want to fight Cain.
 
burningspear said:
The fact he was billed as the guy who never says no, makes him look a fool.
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Not really. He was pretty clear that he won’t say no to the most credible contenders within his division, his beef with ilia is that a win over him will always be questioned due to the size. He has to have a say in who he fights as long as he fights a credible opponent, otherwise this sport is literally no better than human cock fighting.
 
Portland8242 said:
Yup! Now Justin Gaethje - that's a deserving contender right there!
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If he ends up fighting Gaethje instead of Arman, the only person to blame is Dana. Islam has proven that he’s willing to fight Arman. If Dana weren’t so petty he’d rebook that fight, which is what should happen. I don’t know why fans are letting Dana off the hook here.
 
If he fights soon, i ain't got nothing bad to say. Don't really care who he fights. as long as he fights someone.
 
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