Muhammad Mokaev is back in Manel Kape’s mentions, and he didn’t bother being polite about it.
The flyweight fired off a two-line response on X on Oct. 30 after Kape called him a fake guy in a full interview with Weighing In, as MMA Sucka reported. Mokaev quote-posted a clip of the interview shared by @THEREALPUNK.
His first line: “My b*tch for the rest of the life.”
View post on X
Then he added: “Beat his ass not even in my prime that’s why he still crying 😭🤣”
That’s a lot of crying-laughing emoji for a guy who says he isn’t bothered.
This feud has been running hot for a while. The two flyweights brawled outside the fighter hotel during UFC 304 fight week, and neither one has let it go since. Kape kept poking at it in the Weighing In sit-down, and Mokaev clearly watched.
Kape’s Got Bigger Business in January
The timing is the interesting part. Kape is about to headline a pay-per-view. He meets flyweight champion Joshua Van in the UFC 336 main event on Jan. 30, 2027, in Toronto, and the card will air live on TNT Sports in the UK. Kape earned the shot with a four-fight win streak, according to Bloody Elbow.
Van isn’t exactly sitting around waiting for him. The 25-year-old from Myanmar beat Alexandre Pantoja in their UFC 331 rematch in September. That was his second title defense, and it closed out a rivalry that started with an injury stoppage in their first meeting. Kape will be his third defense, and Van is already thinking past him. He told Outta Pocket with RG3 that a fight with bantamweight champion Petr Yan for a second belt would be ideal. Yan just defended his title against Merab Dvalishvili in the UFC 333 main event in Abu Dhabi.
The flyweight title fight also landed in the main event slot by way of a scramble. Islam Makhachev was expected to defend his welterweight title against Carlos Prates on that card, but he isn’t competing at UFC 336. The UFC announced during the UFC 333 broadcast that Prates and Michael Morales will fight for the interim welterweight title as the co-main event instead. Good fight. Bad belt.
That leaves Kape with the biggest night of his career a little under three months out, and the guy he’s still talking about isn’t the guy he’s fighting.
Quick Take
Mokaev’s post plays well on X, and it’ll get him the attention he’s clearly after. But Kape is the one holding a main event slot and a title shot against the most active champion in the UFC. If Kape walks out of Toronto with the 125-pound belt, his fake guy jab turns into a lot more than a podcast clip, and Mokaev will have a much harder time laughing it off with emoji.
