Zabit Magomedsharipov hasn’t stepped into a cage since 2019, and on Saturday at Etihad Arena he gave everyone one more reason to mourn that. Wrestling Giga Chikadze in a welterweight crossover match at RAF Abu Dhabi, the 35-year-old took the Georgian striker apart and finished him in the second period, Bloody Elbow reported. It’s his second win of 2026 and his first on the RAF mats.
The opening period was a slog. Both men stood chest to chest in Greco-style ties and gave the referee almost nothing, until he warned them to start wrestling. That warning seemed to flip a switch in Magomedsharipov. He hit a single leg, rolled Chikadze and kept stacking points until he’d banked nine. Bloody Elbow’s recap credits him with a pin to cap the performance, though the same report also describes the ending as a tech fall in the second period, so the exact method depends on which line of the writeup you trust. Either way, Chikadze never found a foothold once the action started.
A rough day for the family
The win came a few hours after a painful one for the Magomedsharipov household. Zabit’s younger brother Khasan, 26, walked into PFL Dubai at 11-0 and walked out with his first loss. He looked sharp early against Adam Borics, appearing to briefly drop the Hungarian with a left hook just past the one-minute mark. Then Khasan scored a takedown, Borics created space, threatened an armbar and switched to a triangle choke, adjusting it until the finish came with just over 40 seconds left in Round 1. Zabit wasn’t in his corner, since he had his own match to prepare for.
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Borics is a 25-fight veteran who has shared a cage with AJ McKee, Jesus Pinedo and Patricio Pitbull, and he has a habit of puncturing prospects. He knocked out Aaron Pico in Pico’s seventh pro fight. Ali Abdelaziz has previously said Khasan could go to the UFC and be a top five fighter. That projection now carries a dent.
Where Zabit goes from here
Zabit’s match sat on a stacked card headlined by Khamzat Chimaev against Chris Weidman for the inaugural RAF light heavyweight crossover title, with Arman Tsarukyan facing Neiman Gracie in the co-main. Elsewhere, Merab Dvalishvili pinned Marlon Moraes at 1:30, days after being attacked in a hotel lobby, and 21-year-old Saba Lazishvili upset Urijah Faber 12-7 in his pro wrestling debut.
Bloody Elbow expects Magomedsharipov to stay with RAF and keep drawing current and former UFC names, and it sees no sign of an MMA return despite the calls that will keep coming. His two matches this year are his only competitive outings since his last UFC fight in 2019.
My take: beating a kickboxer on a wrestling mat is roughly what everyone expected the moment the referee forced the pace, and nobody should mistake it for proof he’s ready to fight again. What it did prove is that the timing and the scrambling instincts that made him so strange and so dangerous at 145 pounds are still there. If RAF wants this to mean something, the next name across from him should be a UFC fighter who actually grapples for a living, and Tsarukyan was standing on the same card.
