Zabit Magomedsharipov is coming back, though the venue is a wrestling mat instead of a cage. Promotional officials confirmed to MMA Fighting that the former UFC featherweight contender will face fellow UFC featherweight veteran Giga Chikadze at RAF Abu Dhabi on Nov. 14 at Etihad Arena. The event is headlined by a cruiserweight crossover championship match between Khamzat Chimaev and Colby Covington.
The signing surfaced first. Mike Bohn reported, citing Magomedsharipov’s management, that Zabit had signed a multi-match deal with RAF and would compete on the Nov. 14 card, with no opponent attached at the time. Nolan King’s reaction on X was four words: “RAF has regained the plot.” A day later the Chikadze matchup was set, and Bloody Elbow also reported the booking.
Where Zabit left off
Magomedsharipov’s last fight was nearly seven years ago, in November 2019, when he beat Calvin Kattar in the main event of UFC Moscow. He walked away from the UFC at 6-0, with a win over Jeremy Stephens and three stoppages along the way. He’s 35 now, which matters less on a mat than it would in a five-round fight, but nobody shakes off that much competitive rust in one camp.
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The Kattar connection makes this pairing more interesting than it looks on paper. Chikadze opened his UFC run with seven straight wins, then ran into Kattar in his first promotional main event at UFC Vegas 46 in January 2022 and lost a lopsided unanimous decision. “Ninja” bounced back with a win over Alex Caceres, but he has dropped his last four octagon appearances. So you have one man who solved Kattar and one man who got run over by him, meeting under a ruleset neither built his reputation in. Chikadze has 13 UFC fights on his résumé; Zabit has the unbeaten record and the long layoff.
The rest of the card
The headliner carries its own subplot. Chimaev is coming off the first loss of his career, a split decision to Sean Strickland at UFC 328 in May that cost him the middleweight title. With Nassourdine Imavov looking like Strickland’s next challenger (nothing is official), Chimaev has been agitating for a rematch anyway, posting on X on Oct. 5 that he’d pay Strickland one “lemon,” slang for $1 million, to fight him inside or outside the cage. Instead he gets Covington on a mat.
Jordan Burroughs is also booked, rematching Azamat Nurykau from their 2019 world championships match, which Burroughs won in dramatic fashion.
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My take: Zabit is the pick. Seven years off is a real problem, and I’d want to see how his gas tank holds up after a cut, but Chikadze arrives on a four-fight skid with his most recent wins well behind him. The more useful question is what this does for RAF, which just bought itself a featherweight who never lost in the UFC and a Kattar storyline it didn’t have to invent. If Zabit looks sharp on Nov. 14, that multi-match deal starts looking like the smartest signing the promotion has made.
