Khamzat Chimaev and Chris Weidman headline RAF Abu Dhabi on Saturday afternoon at the Etihad Arena in Abu Dhabi, UAE. The two meet in a light heavyweight crossover championship match that was supposed to be something else. Chimaev was booked to wrestle RAF champion Colby Covington for the title, but Covington dropped out, according to MMA Fighting, and Weidman stepped in. MMA Fighting is running live blogs of the top two matches. Results below will be filled in as they come.
RAF Abu Dhabi Results
- Khamzat Chimaev vs. Chris Weidman (light heavyweight crossover title): pending
- Arman Tsarukyan vs. Neiman Gracie: pending
- Merab Dvalishvili vs. Marlon Moraes: pending
- Saba Lazishvili vs. Urijah Faber: pending
- Abdulrashid Sadulaev vs. Dauren Kurugliev: pending
How This Card Got Here
The main event almost feels like the quiet part of this week. On Wednesday, Usman Nurmagomedov and a group of associates jumped Dvalishvili in the Yas Hotel lobby while the former UFC bantamweight champ was doing an interview. MMA Fighting reported the brawl led to 10 arrests, Dvalishvili and his friend Lazishvili included. Usman and the five other attackers were sentenced to six months in prison, fined Dh300,000 each and ordered deported once they serve their time. The two men who filmed it got the same six months and the same fine. Dvalishvili and Lazishvili walked out Friday with a Dh50,000 ($14,000) fine.
Dvalishvili, bloodied and held for around 48 hours, still chose to face Moraes. And here’s a detail I love: the guy he explained himself to was Weidman, his main event teammate on the card. “We don’t want to press charges, nothing, bro,” Dvalishvili told Weidman, adding that they’d try their best to get the attackers released.
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Lazishvili, the 21-year-old who dropped several of Nurmagomedov’s guys while badly outnumbered, earned himself a booking out of it. He replaces Umar Nurmagomedov against Faber in what will be his professional wrestling debut. He’s a lifelong wrestler, so Faber isn’t getting a hotel lobby tourist.
Dana White, speaking to EuroSport ahead of UFC 334 in New York, didn’t spare the promotion. “And, the RAF, there’s literally a fist fight at every one of these things,” White said. He has a point. Chimaev and Dillon Danis set off a brawl after their June match at RAF 10, Tsarukyan has had run-ins with Georgio Poullas and Danis this year, and Belal Muhammad attacked Covington at the RAF 11 press conference in July.
As for Weidman, he’s the Long Island guy who got a day named after him for dethroning Anderson Silva. He’s walking into a wrestling match with Khamzat on the same Saturday his home-state UFC runs Madison Square Garden. Brave scheduling, Chris.
Quick Take
I wanted Covington. A title match where Chimaev drags the champion through the mat is a story. Chimaev vs. a former middleweight king with the belt sitting in a room the champ isn’t in is a nice consolation prize, and I’ll watch every second of it. But the most must-see match on this card belongs to a 21-year-old who was sitting in a jail cell on Thursday and gets Urijah Faber on Saturday.
