Khabib Nurmagomedov has picked his side for Saturday’s UFC 333 main event in Abu Dhabi, and he’s backing Movsar Evloev, the challenger.
The retired lightweight king posted a message to Evloev on his Instagram Stories with only hours left before his countryman’s first UFC title shot, a featherweight championship fight against Alexander Volkanovski at Etihad Arena on October 24.
“I really hope that this person will be happy tomorrow. Keep your head cool and only go forward, brother 👊,” Nurmagomedov wrote.
That’s about as loud as Khabib gets in a story post. He’s also the obvious guy to send it. Nurmagomedov went undefeated on his way to the UFC lightweight title, defended it three times and walked away in 2020 without a loss on his Octagon ledger. Evloev is trying to win a UFC belt with his own zero still intact, which is the exact path Khabib took.
The champ in the way
He picked a tough man to do it against. Volkanovski is making the second defense of his second run as the 145-pound champion, and he’s coming in off back-to-back wins over Diego Lopes. Only one man has beaten him at featherweight inside the Octagon, and that was Ilia Topuria, who knocked him out in February 2024. Plenty of people wrote Volkanovski off after that one, pointing at the knockout and his age. He won the title back anyway and has kept it.
Plenty of people also expect him to keep it Saturday. Bloody Elbow, which first reported Khabib’s post, noted that many are favoring the Australian to extend his reign at Evloev’s expense.
Evloev has earned his seat across the cage the slow way. The undefeated Russian needed 10 straight wins before the UFC finally put him in with the featherweight champ, and he’s been tipped for a long time as the biggest threat to Volkanovski’s crown. The knock on him has always been finishing. He’s struggled to stop opponents inside the distance, which is part of why the title shot took so long to arrive. Nobody in his camp will care about that if the belt goes home with him from Etihad Arena.
The main event caps a UFC 333 card that also has Merab Dvalishvili and Petr Yan on it, with a Bloody Elbow poll tipping Yan to hand Dvalishvili his first losing skid in eight years.
Quick take
“Only go forward” is good advice for Evloev in particular. A guy who wins on volume and pressure can’t spend 25 minutes trying to out-think Volkanovski, who has spent most of a decade making smart, patient fighters look a step slow. If Evloev keeps marching and drags the champ into the grind, the zero survives. If he gets careful, Volkanovski will pick him apart on the scorecards. And credit to Khabib for putting actual words in front of the fist emoji. More fight-week posts should come with a sentence attached. We’ll know Saturday night whether Evloev is the one who ends up happy.
