Abubakar Vagaev made it back-to-back UFC wins on Saturday with a unanimous decision over Jacob Malkoun on the UFC 333 early prelims at Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi. All three judges scored it 29-28 for Vagaev. MMA Junkie and the UFC’s official news account both posted the result moments after the fight.
Those three identical cards make the fight look tidy. It wasn’t. Aaron Bronsteter scored it live on X and gave Round 1 to Vagaev, calling it super close and writing that the last exchange won him the round. He gave Round 2 to Malkoun, called that one very close as well, and had it 19-19 heading into the final five minutes.
The judges were just as torn. Once the official scorecards came out, Bronsteter pointed out that Round 3 was the only round all three judges agreed on. Two of them gave the opener to Malkoun, and two gave the second to Vagaev. Run the math and every judge had the fight level at 19-19 after 10 minutes, each by a slightly different route. The third round decided all three cards.
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The setup
This was a middleweight bout. Vagaev weighed in at 185.5 pounds and Malkoun at 186 on Friday morning, according to MMA Fighting’s weigh-in results, and neither man had any trouble on the scale. That’s more than you can say for the strawweight fight on the same early card, where Nicolle Caliari came in 4.5 pounds heavy.
Before the walkouts, the UFC posted the matchup on X asking who would extend the win streak. Vagaev answered, and the promotion followed up by celebrating his back-to-back UFC wins. The UFC’s YouTube channel posted a short clip titled “Great performance from Abubakar Vagaev.”
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MMA Fighting picked Vagaev in its UFC 333 predictions, so the result went the way the forecast did. It was just much tighter than a straight pick suggests.
The fight was part of the 10 a.m. ET early prelim block on Paramount+. The night builds toward Alexander Volkanovski defending the featherweight title against the undefeated Movsar Evloev. Petr Yan and Merab Dvalishvili meet for the third time in the co-main event.
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Quick take
I’ll take this kind of 29-28 over a lopsided 30-27 any day, because it means two middleweights spent 10 minutes trading rounds close enough to split three experienced judges. Malkoun has no real robbery case. Every official had it even going into the last round, and Vagaev won that round on all three cards. If the first two rounds were coin flips, Round 3 was the only one where nobody had to guess.
