Khabib: 'It's really hard to sign Russian fighters to UFC because they beat EVERYBODY!'

[CorninginChristianburg]

nah ultimately their #1 market is the US. The fanbase, size and expendable income you see in the US (plus the relatively unregulated sales market) is worth more than anywhere else. China could be there soon, assuming they develop enough meaningful talent for it to be worth watching for the population (IE: maybe if Song Yadong takes off), but ultimately the biggest markets are the US and maybe a few others. The not-so-good guys from underrepresented countries are kept around in case they ever get good and can be used to enter a market, but even then it takes more than one or two good guys to ignite nationwide interest in a sport, it's a much slower, more investment heavy approach.

I mean, you can have whatever conspiracies you want, it's fine if you believe something weird, but it's not right. The US is the biggest market but they would have US market access whether they had 80% American fighters, 60% or 40%. Their performance in the American market has never depended on having an American champ. Even the actually american champs they have are never marketed as American (Sterling is marketed as Jamaican, Usman is marketed as Nigerian), etc.

Let's get into some more details. Less than half (about 47%) of UFC fighters are American. IF they wanted to fill the cards with 60%, 80% American fighters, they could, and not only could they, they would save a lot of money doing so. Foreign fighters usually come with larger travel costs, it's more expensive to fly people in from any country except Canada, compared to domestic travel. But more importantly, foreign fighters require sponsorship of the P1 visa. Now the sponsorship itself has some fees but they're usually small amounts. The big cost there is attorney's fees. And fighters get a visa per fight, so they need sponsorship every time they fight. Every time they bring in a foreign fighter who fights on the undercard or a lower level fight, it would have been significantly cheaper just to get a guy from the American regional scene. And despite that, more than half the UFC is not American.

And that trend is only increasing, since out of the last 28 signings over 2 years, 22 of them were foreign fighters and only 6 of them were Americans. And of the announced bouts for this upcoming contender series, 38 of the fighters are foreign, only 8 are American. Remember, even if these foreign fighters lose their contender series fights, they still cost more to bring on the contender series because that is held in the US, in Vegas, so they will still need to be flown in at higher costs and still require visa sponsorship. And this also means that the number of Americans who will be signed this season will likely be a small fraction of the number of international fighters signed.

So the UFC is spending significantly more money to bring in significantly more international fighters to increase the gap between international fighters and domestic fighters, even as international fighters already outnumber domestic fighters. So in short, the theory that the UFC is trying really hard to keep the league American, it's a very bad theory.

 

[asdf122345]

they should go to bellator instead.

 

[CorninginChristianburg]

Also like, language, culture, family. Unless you really think you are going to be a big star and make big money, the incentive to live and train overseas may not be all that great.

I mean, you can have whatever conspiracies you want, it's fine if you believe something weird, but it's not right. The US is the biggest market but they would have US market access whether they had 80% American fighters, 60% or 40%. Their performance in the American market has never depended on having an American champ. Even the actually american champs they have are never marketed as American (Sterling is marketed as Jamaican, Usman is marketed as Nigerian), etc.

Let's get into some more details. Less than half (about 47%) of UFC fighters are American. IF they wanted to fill the cards with 60%, 80% American fighters, they could, and not only could they, they would save a lot of money doing so. Foreign fighters usually come with larger travel costs, it's more expensive to fly people in from any country except Canada, compared to domestic travel. But more importantly, foreign fighters require sponsorship of the P1 visa. Now the sponsorship itself has some fees but they're usually small amounts. The big cost there is attorney's fees. And fighters get a visa per fight, so they need sponsorship every time they fight. Every time they bring in a foreign fighter who fights on the undercard or a lower level fight, it would have been significantly cheaper just to get a guy from the American regional scene. And despite that, more than half the UFC is not American.

And that trend is only increasing, since out of the last 28 signings over 2 years, 22 of them were foreign fighters and only 6 of them were Americans. And of the announced bouts for this upcoming contender series, 38 of the fighters are foreign, only 8 are American. Remember, even if these foreign fighters lose their contender series fights, they still cost more to bring on the contender series because that is held in the US, in Vegas, so they will still need to be flown in at higher costs and still require visa sponsorship. And this also means that the number of Americans who will be signed this season will likely be a small fraction of the number of international fighters signed.

So the UFC is spending significantly more money to bring in significantly more international fighters to increase the gap between international fighters and domestic fighters, even as international fighters already outnumber domestic fighters. So in short, the theory that the UFC is trying really hard to keep the league American, it's a very bad theory.

See above post on UFC's efforts to decrease the number of Americans in the UFC

 

[ChangeIsComing]

Number one bullshit.

Christ, how many highly-touted Russians have come into the UFC only to underwhelm? There's been a ton. These Russians do great in their own events in Russia, then when facing real competition it's not so easy.

How many Russian UFC champs have there been? Khabib, Petr Yan, Oleg Taktarov won the UFC 6 tournament... who else?

Agreed, but Russians are like Americans when it comes to competition...they tell everyone they are the best...even if its not true.

 

[Jorge Luis Borges]

See above post on UFC's efforts to decrease the number of Americans in the UFC

That post is not a good basis for the claim that the UFC has a definite cap on how many fighters from each nationality it hires. It's a good post, and makes a decent argument that the UFC is not trying to keep the UFC roster filled with only Americans. But there's a big leap between that and hard quotas.

Do you have a factual source?

 

[GIBLERTBAPTISTA]

they should go to bellator instead.

Team Fedor basically runs Bellator at the moment, and now you got Khabib's guys coming up in the lower divisions of Bellator. AJ McKee is the only non-Russian I can see holding onto the strap long term in the next few years in Bellator.

 

[CorninginChristianburg]

That post is not a good basis for the claim that the UFC has a definite cap on how many fighters from each nationality it hires. It's a good post, and makes a decent argument that the UFC is not trying to keep the UFC roster filled with only Americans. But there's a big leap between that and hard quotas.

Do you have a factual source?

I don't have a source, I think it simply follows from logic. A cap describes a limitation or an upper bound on growth. The UFC isn't growing the American proportion of fighters, they're actively trying to decrease it. So if they're actively trying to decrease the number, then the cap is just X-1, with X representing the number of fighters in the UFC currently. You might say "is there a lower bound?" Like some number/percentage at which the UFC will stop trying to decrease the proportion, and then X would be the cap, and yeah I don't know what the lower bound X is that they're aiming for. But unquestionably right now they see themselves as over the cap, that's why they're lowering the number.

 

[Hellowhosthat]

That post is not a good basis for the claim that the UFC has a definite cap on how many fighters from each nationality it hires. It's a good post, and makes a decent argument that the UFC is not trying to keep the UFC roster filled with only Americans. But there's a big leap between that and hard quotas.

Do you have a factual source?

There's quotes from the managers of Russian fighters in the link posted upthread.

At an extremely conservative estimate there's at least 50 Russians that are easily UFC quality outside the company

 

[First Day UFC Intern]

Number one bullshit.

Christ, how many highly-touted Russians have come into the UFC only to underwhelm? There's been a ton. These Russians do great in their own events in Russia, then when facing real competition it's not so easy.

How many Russian UFC champs have there been? Khabib, Petr Yan, Oleg Taktarov won the UFC 6 tournament... who else?

If I'm not mistaken there are 14 Dagestanis competing in Tokyo Olympics wrestling - some of them were representing other countries instead of Russia.

There are few Olympic gold medalist in Khabib's village which has the population around 2000 people or so.

There are also other Russian / Ex-Soviet countries promotion at high level - that maybe have fighters those do not wanted to compete in UFC.

You have world class competitors even from Dagestan alone and not Russia in wrestling, sambo, pankration, judo, boxing, wushu sanda who are still maybe will not chose MMA even as their combat sport/wrestling career progressed.

 

[CorninginChristianburg]

There's quotes from the managers of Russian fighters in the link posted upthread.

At an extremely conservative estimate there's at least 50 Russians that are easily UFC quality outside the company

People are overthinking this one. The Russian guy's claim, as much as I disagreed with him on my post about the motivation, isn't that 50 russians would be UFC champs, but that 50 russians could fight in the UFC. That's really not a high bar.

Last weekend, on the Main Card, 17-6 Jared Gooden defeated Niklas Stolze, to send him to 12-5. In Gooden's last fight he lost to a Russian, Abubakar Nurmagomedov. And in Stolze's last fight he lost to another Russian, Ramazan Emeev. So the idea that "UFC quality" is some super high bar. Gooden is a solid regional journeyman. He beat an even less solid German journeyman, on the Main Card again nonetheless. Are there Russians on the regional scene, not in the UFC, that can beat Gooden and Stolze? Of course. That doesn't mean they'd win titles, but they're "UFC quality."

 

[TorontoTO]

Source on national caps for Russian and American fighters, etc? You say it is undeniable, but it doesn't seem undeniable at all.

There is no cap on American fighters, literally more then half the roster is American. Out of 612 fighters in the UFC, 290 are American

 

[The Chosen]

Number one bullshit.

Christ, how many highly-touted Russians have come into the UFC only to underwhelm? There's been a ton. These Russians do great in their own events in Russia, then when facing real competition it's not so easy.

How many Russian UFC champs have there been? Khabib, Petr Yan, Oleg Taktarov won the UFC 6 tournament... who else?

Well much more are soon to come

 

[DoctorsStoppage]

they don't want conor to have to face another russian wrasler in the next couple of years

 

[snugglecakes]

Wanted to like, but jesus dude could you find a bigger image?

I tried others first. That was the first one that wasn’t giving me shit about giving me the actual direct image url.

 

[abject]

Considering its location, history and ethnic makeup Dagestan is arguably not even russian.

 

[CorninginChristianburg]

There is no cap on American fighters, literally more then half the roster is American. Out of 612 fighters in the UFC, 290 are American

Ooh this is awkward...

So half of 612 is 306...

 

[fedorthegoat777]

There has been a small handful of Russian high level fighters in the UFC to begin with. The UFC has an absolutely pitiful quota on Russian talent set at 30 fighters and a good chunk of that quota is wasted on so-so fighters like Volkov. Obviously, the UFC doesn't want to have too many actually talented Russians on the roster, because they cater to the domestic US market first and foremost. If Russians had the same number of fighters in the UFC as Americans do, every division from BW to LHW would be dominated by Russians. Russia only has problems with producing HW MMA talent.

Didn't do bad with Fedor

 

[Feniamin]

Here’s a post from a thread on the subject





SOURCE: https://forums.sherdog.com/threads/ufc-bias-against-signing-russian-fighters.4077719/

In first link one of managers says that he thinks that UFC will stay with current number of Russians (30-something).

Im tickled to hear you say that !

SO:

Ubervolkov: Hovering around the top 5.
Ankalaev: Close to title shot
Zabit: Close to title shot
Islam: Close to title shot
Petr Yan: About to be two time champion
Nemkov: LHW Bellator champion under the cruel but fair tutelage of E-Fedya Da GAWD
Khamzat: UFC cant wait to push him to the moon.
Usman and Umar Nurmagomedov already show great promise.
Guram Kutateladze is also one to watch out for,soon as he can get another fight.

Also Khabib,who has never been defeated.

Guram is not Russian citizen (even if I'am not mistaken it's the country where he spend more years than in Georgia or Sweden).

 

[GORO]

Fedor > Khabib

Fedor was 31-0 HW before he lose to werdum he could hav retired after Rogers fight even his coachb4 fight said he was declining khabib should stfu he’s great but not goat he would never jump cage attack civilians omg

 

[Willie]

Ooh this is awkward...

So half of 612 is 306...

Practically half, you're just knit picking