Israel Adesanya has his next fight, and it comes with a headliner slot. Ariel Helwani reported that the former UFC middleweight champion will face Sharabutdin Magomedov, the striker everyone calls Shara Bullet, in the main event of UFC Saudi Arabia on December 5. The Championship Rounds account (@ChampRDS) passed the report along on X Thursday, crediting Helwani. As of this writing, the UFC hasn’t confirmed the bout, and the reporting doesn’t say what weight it will be contested at.
Adesanya enters at No. 9 in the middleweight UFC Meta Rankings, which were updated after UFC Vegas 122 last weekend. Shara Bullet doesn’t appear anywhere in the division’s top 15 on that list. The Magomedov you’ll find at No. 13 is Abus, a different fighter, so check before you start bragging in the group chat.
That gap is the story inside the story. The middleweight picture is crowded right now. Sean Strickland holds the belt, with Khamzat Chimaev, Dricus Du Plessis and Nassourdine Imavov sitting first through third. Brendan Allen just moved up to fourth after a late submission over Christian Leroy Duncan in the Vegas 122 main event. Joe Pyfer slid to fifth and has Bo Nickal in December. That leaves Adesanya, a former champ, in a spot where a win over an unranked opponent doesn’t buy much ladder movement. A loss would hurt him a lot more.
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Adesanya’s résumé needs no introduction. His history with Alex Pereira alone, dating back to their GLORY days, got Pereira a UFC title shot in November 2022. Pereira took the belt from Adesanya that night, and Adesanya won it back in the rematch six months later. These days Adesanya also co-hosts the Precision podcast with Demetrious Johnson, where the pair recently laughed off the UFC 332 headliner between Natalia Silva and Wang Cong. Adesanya said he didn’t realize that card was being promoted as a major attraction and noted that neither woman had a storyline to sell. Kayla Harrison went after Johnson for that bit on Helwani’s show. Her argument was that you build stars by putting them in main events. Adesanya headlining against a fighter outside the rankings is about as clean a test of that theory as you’ll get.
The sources don’t include either man’s current record or a betting line, and I haven’t seen a number posted yet. So the odds talk will have to wait.
Quick take: This is a striker’s fight booked for highlights, and Saudi Arabia main events tend to get the fights the promotion wants to sell. For Adesanya, the math is lopsided. He’s the name, he’s ranked, and he’s the one with something to lose. Ranked veterans laying a price against hungry unranked strikers have cost me more money than I care to admit. When the line drops, I want to see how short Adesanya opens. If books hang him as a heavy favorite on reputation alone, that’s the kind of number I like fading. We’ll know more once the UFC makes December 5 official.
