Fast facts
- Division: Middleweight
- Record: 30-7-1
- Nationality: Germany (born in Argun, Soviet Union, now Russia)
- Team/gym: UFD Gym
- Notable wins: Dustin Stoltzfus, Michel Pereira, Brunno Ferreira, Warlley Alves, Michał Oleksiejczuk, Cameron Rowston, Cezary Kęsik
The clip moved fast on October 24. Abus Magomedov caught Cam Rowston’s neck in the first round at UFC 333 in Abu Dhabi, and within a minute of the finish the timelines had already done their work. Spinnin Backfist posted his name with a two-word expletive underneath it. Championship Rounds went all caps. MMA Junkie compared the first-round choke of Rowston to something out of the Nate Diaz playbook, and the UFC’s own account, never one to pass on a reference, ran a winking all-caps caption in the same spirit before confirming he’d sunk in the guillotine for a Round 1 win.
It was his second straight first-round guillotine, following the one he used on Michał Oleksiejczuk at UFC Fight Night 280 in June. At 36, with a record of 30-7-1, Magomedov has quietly become one of the more interesting finishers in the middle of the 185-pound pack. The way he got here is the better story, though.
View post on X
A move nobody wanted
Magomedov was born on September 2, 1990, in Argun, then part of the Soviet Union, into a Kumyk family. He wrestled from childhood, pulled toward the sport by the martial arts tradition of Dagestan and by something more personal, a plain affinity for it that kids either have or don’t.
Then, at 15, his family moved to Germany. According to his Wikipedia biography, it was a move made out of necessity rather than ambition. His mother was ill, and the illness couldn’t be properly treated back home. She recovered. The family stayed.
I keep coming back to that detail, because it reframes everything that followed. Magomedov didn’t arrive in Germany chasing a fight career. He arrived as a teenager whose family had rearranged its whole life around his mother’s health, and he built a career out of whatever gyms were in reach. In his new country he added kickboxing and other disciplines to the wrestling base he’d brought with him. He made his pro MMA debut at 20.
Seven years on the German circuit
From 2010 through 2017, Magomedov fought on the regional German scene, sharing cages along the way with future UFC names Jessin Ayari and Andreas Stahl. He collected belts on the way through: the Superior FC welterweight and middleweight titles, plus the German MMA Championship welterweight strap. Holding titles at two weight classes in the same promotion tells you something about a guy who fought wherever the matchups were.
By the time the Professional Fighters League came calling, he was 19-3.
The PFL run and the night it ended
The 2018 PFL season was Magomedov’s first real stage outside Germany, and he tore through the opening stretch. He stopped Danillo Villefort by first-round TKO at PFL 3 in July, then knocked out Anderson Gonçalves in the first round at PFL 6 in August.
PFL 10 in October was a strange, grinding night. His quarterfinal against Gasan Umalatov ended in a majority draw, and Magomedov advanced only through the tournament’s first-round tiebreaker. Hours later, on the same card, he beat Sadibou Sy by unanimous decision to reach the final.
View post on X
On December 31, 2018, at PFL 11, Louis Taylor knocked him out in the first round. A season’s worth of work, gone on New Year’s Eve.
Detours
He bounced back in May 2019 with a first-round kimura of Slaviša Simeunović at Elite MMA Championship 3, then signed with KSW that July. And then he waited. Health problems and the COVID-19 pandemic pushed his debut back more than a year. When he finally got in there, at KSW 57 on December 19, 2020, he choked the undefeated Cezary Kęsik unconscious with a guillotine in Round 2. Remember that choke. It’s been with him a long time.
By July 2021 he announced on social media that he was off the KSW roster. The UFC signed him on August 6.
The UFC, eventually
Signing was the easy part. Magomedov’s first year in the UFC was a run of fights that never happened. A December 2021 bout with Gerald Meerschaert fell apart over visa issues. A March 2022 matchup with Aliaskhab Khizriev disappeared when he pulled out. A June 2022 fight with Joaquin Buckley was cancelled for reasons that were never made public.
His debut, when it came at UFC Fight Night 209 in September 2022, came against a replacement. Makhmud Muradov withdrew injured, Dustin Stoltzfus stepped in, and Magomedov stopped him in 19 seconds. Performance of the Night.
Then the cancellations started again. The rebooked Meerschaert fight in February 2023 got scrapped over another visa problem. A rebooked Muradov fight in March 2023 collapsed when Muradov withdrew a second time.
What he got instead was a main event. Sean Strickland, at UFC on ESPN 48 in July 2023. Strickland stopped him by TKO in Round 2. Four months later Magomedov took a short-notice fight with Caio Borralho, replacing Nursulton Ruziboev, and lost a unanimous decision.
View post on X
Two straight losses after one UFC fight is the kind of stretch that ends contracts. He answered with the best run of his UFC tenure: a decision over Warlley Alves in May 2024, an arm-triangle choke of Brunno Ferreira in Round 3 at UFC 308, and a decision over Michel Pereira in April 2025. Beating Pereira, a fighter who makes most people look slow and confused, on the scorecards over three rounds was the most complete performance of his UFC career.
Joe Pyfer ended that streak at UFC 320 in October 2025 with a face crank in the second round.
The style now
Anyone who saw the Stoltzfus finish might have filed Magomedov as a power striker, and the early PFL knockouts would back that up. But the arc of his career points the other way. Of his last four UFC wins, three came by choke, and the two most recent were guillotines in the first round. The wrestling he started as a kid in Argun never left. It just took a while for the finishing grappling to become the headline.
The Oleksiejczuk fight in June had its own small indignity. It was first reported as the main event of UFC Fight Night 280 before being moved for undisclosed reasons. Magomedov finished it in Round 1 anyway.
Where he stands
The rankings don’t agree on him. Wikipedia lists him at No. 9 in the Meta UFC middleweight rankings as of October 24. Knockout Daily’s own Cagefile data has him at No. 18. That gap is about where a 6-3 UFC run with three losses to strong opponents tends to land, depending on how much weight you give the recent finishes.
My read is that he’s earned a ranked name next, someone in the range of the Borralho and Pyfer fights, to settle which list is right. He has spent most of his career waiting on visas, on pandemics, on opponents who kept pulling out. Now 36, he has two first-round guillotines in a row and a UFC record of 6-3, and he has left very little reason to make him wait again.
