Farid Basharat is 29 years old, sits inside the top 10 of the UFC bantamweight rankings, and has never lost a professional fight. Seven times he walked into the Octagon and seven times he had his hand raised. The most recent was three months ago against John Garza on the undercard of Conor McGregor’s return at UFC 329. The UFC weighed all of that and chose not to offer him a new deal. Bloody Elbow confirmed the departure, and the Afghan-born Briton is now looking for somewhere else to fight.
Fans have mostly landed on one explanation: the UFC rewards entertainment over merit, a finish matters more than a win, and anyone who goes the distance is living on borrowed time. I think that’s half right. The half that’s wrong is the half that explains who actually gets cut.
The case against the UFC is strong
The pattern is hard to wave away. In September the promotion let Michael “Venom” Page walk after a 5-1 run in the Octagon, and his last fight was a win in Paris. Daniel Marcos, another bantamweight, was removed from the roster this year with an 18-1 record. Muhammad Mokaev was shown the door in 2024 while ranked in the top five at flyweight. That one still bugs me, because flyweight is the last division that can afford to toss ranked talent. Bloody Elbow described Basharat’s exit as the UFC sticking with its habit of not rewarding winning streaks that lack finishes. One commenter on the site pointed out that six of his seven UFC wins went to decision.
In his first statement since the release, Basharat argued that the UFC isn’t what it once was. He suggested the promotion no longer cares about putting the best fighters in the cage. Jon Anik showed up in the comments to back him, along with a number of fighters. When the voice of the broadcast is publicly in your corner, nobody can say you were cut for being invisible.
The Facebook crowd was blunter. “UFC is not about holding a leg till ya get a decision, that’s for sure,” one wrote. I’ve heard that line aimed at every wrestler who ever won on the cards, and it usually comes from people who couldn’t spot a mat return if you paused the replay for them. Grinding out rounds against ranked opposition is a skill. Calling it boring tells me more about the viewer than the fighter.
Then explain Movsar Evloev
This is where the entertainment theory falls apart. Movsar Evloev is the featherweight title challenger at UFC 333. He gets Alexander Volkanovski. He earned that shot with a 10-fight winning streak and zero finishes inside the promotion. Demetrious Johnson, who spent years being undervalued for winning in ways casual viewers didn’t appreciate, has questioned how Evloev kept his spot at all, given the precedent the UFC keeps setting.
If the UFC really cut everyone who couldn’t finish people, Evloev would have been gone long ago. He’s still here, so the rule must be something else. My read is that the deciding factor is money. The question the UFC asks is what a second contract costs compared with what a replacement costs.
The Contender Series math
Dana White’s Contender Series has fed the roster since 2017. The 10th season matched the record of 46 contracts handed out. Most of those signings come in on entry-level show/win deals in the $10,000 to $12,000 range, and they arrive during a 10-week window every year. As one Bloody Elbow commenter put it: “Signing 4 to 5 fighters a week from the Contender Series someone has to go.”
Roster spots are finite, and a fresh batch of cheap fighters shows up every summer. A ranked, unbeaten bantamweight coming off his first deal costs more than a debutant. Another commenter speculated that a decision winner who wants real money on his second contract gets waved off to PFL without a second thought. That’s a fan’s guess about the negotiation, and nothing in the reporting confirms it. Still, it fits the evidence better than the finishes theory does. Evloev stayed long enough to become a title fight the UFC could sell. Basharat, at 7-0 and somewhere inside the top 10, was apparently still on the side of the ledger where the cheaper option wins.
That’s the criticism I’d actually defend. The UFC treats decision winners as disposable right up until they become impossible to ignore, and it draws that line wherever the payroll tells it to. Fans call that a taste for entertainment. It looks a lot more like a budget, and it costs the sport ranked fighters in divisions that need them.
Basharat is 29, unbeaten, and available. Some promotion is about to land a top-10 bantamweight it didn’t have to build, and the UFC has cleared one more spot for next summer’s Contender Series class.
