Farid Basharat isn’t going quietly. The undefeated fighter has pushed back against Dana White over his release from the UFC, according to MMANews, and POST Wrestling carried his explanation for the split in its headline: “They don’t like the way I fight.” That’s a blunt read on a release, and it’s a hard one to argue with when the guy being shown the door has never lost.
The bigger news may be where he lands. Basharat told MiddleEasy he’s weighing a move to Rizin. He also laid out why that option isn’t simple. His brother Javid fights under a PFL contract, and Farid explained how Javid’s PFL career complicates the Rizin path. In the same interview he talked through the conditions he’d want met before ever considering a return to the UFC, which tells you the door isn’t fully welded shut on his end. The sources don’t lay out those terms in detail, so I won’t guess at them here.
Ariel Helwani didn’t hold back. He wrote on X on Monday that the Basharat situation is “just further proof that the UFC is not a sports league. It’s a sports entertainment company.” He went further, arguing the promotion is “no longer in the business of finding out who is the best” and is instead chasing whoever is “the most exciting, who can sell the most tickets and subscriptions.” Helwani said Basharat “has clearly shown he’s UFC caliber” but that “winning isn’t good enough anymore.” He ended on a more practical note, saying Basharat now “has more eyes on him than ever” and that the job is capitalizing on that.
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The timing doesn’t help White’s optics. Over the UFC Edmonton weekend, Joaquin Buckley ignored White’s handshake during the final face-off with Mike Malott, a moment that made the rounds on X. After Buckley lost, White joked to a reporter, “As soon as he lost, I told Hunter to cut him,” before adding, “I’m f*cking joking.” That was a bit about Buckley, with no connection to Basharat in the sources. Still, joking about cutting a fighter after a loss lands differently in the same week an unbeaten fighter is actually out of a job.
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What’s next is free agency, and the Rizin question is the one to watch. A Japanese promotion with a history of building fighters into stars could be a smart fit for someone who just got told his style doesn’t sell. The family math is the wrinkle. Rizin and PFL aren’t the same company, and any deal Farid signs will have to account for what Javid is doing under his own contract.
My take: releasing a fighter who keeps winning is the kind of decision that only makes sense if you’ve stopped scoring fights on who won them. Helwani’s framing is sharper than I’d put it, but he’s not wrong about the incentive. Plenty of the fights I love most never trend because the best work happens in exchanges a casual viewer reads as nothing happening. If the UFC doesn’t want Basharat’s style, somebody else will, and the first promotion to give him a real stage and a real opponent gets an undefeated fighter with a chip on his shoulder and a fresh reason to prove a point.
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