ALF League announced on Sunday that Khamzat Chimaev and Jorge Masvidal will headline its first card, ALF League 1, at The Agenda in Dubai on Dec. 4. There are no gloves involved. It’s a submission-only grappling match, MMA Fighting and Bloody Elbow both reported, and Red Corner MMA posted on social media that more “household names” are expected to fill out the lineup.
This grudge has been simmering since both men were welterweights, and the UFC never booked it. Masvidal hasn’t competed since he lost a boxing decision to Nate Diaz in July 2024. He retired from MMA after Gilbert Burns beat him at UFC 287 in 2023, and a planned submission match against Shara Magomedov at a Hype FC event in March 2026 fell through for reasons nobody disclosed. Chimaev, meanwhile, has been on a tear outside the cage since Sean Strickland took his middleweight belt at UFC 328 in May.
The rules decide this fight
ALF hasn’t released the format yet. Essentially Sports floated the possibility that ALF borrows the Hype FC model, and if it does, the whole matchup changes shape. Under Hype FC rules there are no points and no judges. A takedown earns nothing. Passing to mount earns nothing. You tap the other guy inside the time limit or it’s a draw, which is exactly how Arman Tsarukyan and Magomedov ended after six minutes on the mat.
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My read is that this single detail matters more than anything else in the fight. Chimaev’s competitive identity is wrestling. He won Swedish freestyle titles in 2016, 2017 and 2018, went 12-0 across those tournaments and outscored opponents 105-2. In Real American Freestyle he’s 4-0: he pinned Dillon Danis in 44 seconds (the fastest pin in RAF history), pinned Tyron Woodley in the first round at RAF Moscow, beat Burns by technical fall at RAF 13 and also beat Robbie Lawler. Under submission-only rules, a pin is just a nice place to start working. Shoulders on the mat don’t end anything.
That said, Chimaev does finish people. He choked out Ole Magnor with a rear-naked choke late in the first round in 2018, submitted Mzwandile Hlongwa in Round 2 at Brave CF 27 and tapped John Phillips in Round 2 of his UFC debut. The submissions grow out of the wrestling. He gets you down, flattens you out, and the neck shows up eventually.
Masvidal’s real win condition
Bloody Elbow noted that Masvidal has two submission wins in 52 pro MMA fights. One was a rear-naked choke on Eric Reynolds at Bellator 12, the other came against Michael Chiesa at UFC on Fox 8 after Chiesa dropped him in the first round. On the other side of the ledger, Toby Imada caught him in an inverted triangle in Round 3 at Bellator 5 in 2009. His only previous submission-only match, against Anthony Pettis under the Dean Toole Promotions banner in 2019, ended in a draw.
The Burns fight is the most useful tape here, and it cuts both ways. Burns took Masvidal down four times and controlled him for nearly six minutes on the way to a clear decision. That’s a bad grappling performance by MMA standards. But Burns never finished him, and Burns is someone Chimaev just teched on the wrestling mat in September. Masvidal knows how to be on bottom and stay alive.
Here’s the technical problem, as I see it. Masvidal’s defensive habits were built for MMA, where a fighter on bottom wants to turn, build a base and stand up. Against a chain wrestler like Chimaev, that turn hands over the back. In a cage fight, giving up the back for a second while scrambling to your feet is a calculated risk with a referee who might stand things up. In a submission-only match it’s the exact position Chimaev has finished people from his whole career. If Masvidal wants a draw, and my read is that a draw is the honest goal regardless of the headline about handing Chimaev his first submission loss, he has to stay square, keep his elbows tight and accept being flattened out rather than scrambling.
There’s also the cardio question. Michael Bisping, talking about Islam Makhachev possibly moving to middleweight, said on his YouTube channel that “Islam wouldn’t get tired at 185, because that’s what Khamzat did.” Fatigue was the knock on Chimaev against Strickland. A short clock like the six minutes Tsarukyan and Magomedov got would erase that concern almost completely. A long one gives Masvidal a sliver of hope in the back half.
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Scheduling adds one wrinkle. Chimaev is booked against Colby Covington in the main event of RAF Abu Dhabi on Nov. 14, and Dubai on Dec. 4 is 20 days later. That makes this his sixth non-MMA outing since May. He’s clearly enjoying the work, but a tweaked rib against Covington would change the math quickly.
The grudge, and what it means at 185
Masvidal has earned some of the heat. Ahead of UFC 279 he criticized Chimaev’s performance against Burns and said Diaz would beat him, then went after Chimaev for missing the welterweight limit by more than seven pounds. Chimaev answered that he had considered Masvidal a cool guy, and he talked about smashing him. Before UFC 328, Masvidal hurled a crude insult at Chimaev while picking apart his wrestling and picked Strickland to win, which is what happened in New Jersey.
For the middleweight division, none of this moves the title picture directly. Strickland still holds the belt, Chimaev is still chasing a rematch, and Bisping is already pitching Makhachev as a challenger at 185. What these matches do is keep Chimaev active and visible while that picture sorts itself out. Masvidal has the bigger upside. Essentially Sports reported he’s had positive talks with the UFC and mentioned Zuffa Boxing and even Power Slap as possibilities, and he keeps calling out Leon Edwards. Surviving the clock would make that pitch sound a lot more credible.
My pick is Chimaev by submission, most likely from the back after Masvidal tries to build up and stand. If the rules turn out to have no points and a short clock, I’ll give Masvidal a real shot at the draw and nothing more. First, Chimaev has to get through Covington on Nov. 14.
