Tyler Durden 
The Abu Dhabi hotel brawl set off by Usman Nurmagomedov’s attack on Merab Dvalishvili made major headlines this week, but will it affect anyone’s future employment prospects?
Plus, now that TKO employees are speaking out about the ongoing events in Saudi Arabia, what (if anything) will change about the company’s plans in the region? All that and more in this week’s mailbag. To ask a question of your own, hit up @BenFowlkesMMA on X or @Ben_Fowlkes on Threads.
@jr499027: What are the chances the UFC will still sign Usman after this debacle, given how popular he still is, and his obvious lineage?
Want to know the truth? I think in a way this only increases the UFC’s desire to sign him. Usman Nurmagomedov is officially a known man now, and for more than just his last name and his record in another organization that fans may or may not know. Just about every MMA fan will end up seeing that video and forming an opinion about Usman as a result. You can’t buy that kind of publicity.
Does it matter that he achieved that notoriety in a fashion that, depending on your perspective, ranges somewhere between dishonorable and straight-up criminal? I’d like to tell you that it does, but this sport has made clear that it doesn’t. Remember when Conor McGregor threw a hand truck through a bus window and the UFC took no real action against him but did use the footage to promote his next fight?
The UFC has hired known domestic abusers. You think it would draw the line at someone who attacked another professional fighter outside the cage? I doubt it.
@BrianHines: Is it time to just create a policy that if you slap another fighter or assault another fighter outside of the octagon you get kicked out of the UFC? This is so embarrassing.
Embarrassing is exactly the right word for it. I’ve been a fan of this sport long enough that I remember when the big obstacle was convincing the outside world this wasn’t just a disgusting bloodsport for thugs and criminals. We used to get on messageboards and argue about what was or wasn’t “good for the sport.” We were concerned about the image we were projecting to the mainstream sports world.
But now I’ve seen more videos than I can recall of MMA fighters squabbling with each other in hotel lobbies. I’m surprised there are still hotels willing to let these guys in, honestly. A lot of them just don’t know how to act. Some people will tell you that it’s a natural and unavoidable consequence of their profession, but we wouldn’t expect everyone to just shut up and be cool about it if rival NFL players were tackling each other into hotel breakfast buffets in their off hours.
As for whether the UFC or any other MMA promotion will adopt a policy on it, I highly doubt it. The UFC in particular has tried to avoid any blanket policies that would tie its hands when it comes to disciplinary stuff. It wants the freedom to fire some people for the same things that other, more lucrative fighters can get away with over and over again. As always, the money comes first.
But the fact that all these guys got arrested in Abu Dhabi is a good reminder that consequences can differ across borders. Eventually someone is going to take it too far in a place that doesn’t play around when it comes to violent public altercations.
@JedKMeshew: How many of my friends would it take for me to successfully jump you and Chad?
If Co-Main Event Podcast co-host Chad Dundas shows up for me the way Merab Dvalishvili’s friend showed up for him — and if your friends are no more physically imposing than you, Jed — then brother, you’d better bring everybody you know.
@LCombatsports: Do you believe TKO employees speaking out will make some type of impact on the company?
At the very least I think my story might help some of those employees see that they’re not alone. There are other people within the company who don’t like the idea of being sent to work in an active military conflict zone that’s subject to ongoing missile and drone attacks.
And why would they? These are sports and entertainment events. They are not essential services by any reasonable definition. No one who signs up to work in this field thinks they’re putting their life on the line, yet that is pretty much what TKO is asking them to do here.
It’s difficult to imagine how company executives can expect employees to believe that they care about worker safety when they are inarguably sending them into these unsafe places at incredibly volatile times.
@Jietzsche: Why are Australians with Paramount Plus still paying for PPV’s and do the main event fighters receive any PPV $ associated with those bought internationally?
I’ve wondered this same thing in regards to commercial pay-per-view sales. Residential pay-per-view was always the bigger slice of the pie, and that’s gone away in the U.S. with the Paramount deal, but many sports bars here still pay a premium to show UFC events to their patrons. That money is going somewhere.
It’s very possible that these commercial and international pay-per-view sales don’t combine to meet the threshold for fighters getting a cut. (Back when we got a look at Eddie Alvarez’s UFC offer, he only started making money off pay-per-views when they cracked 200,000 buys.) But if I were a UFC champion, it’s the kind of thing I’d want my manager looking into just in case.
@AverageGrappler: Are we entering the next golden era of combat sports? UFC, PFL, KSW, ONE, RWS this weekend, plus the Lethwei World Championship is being launched very soon. If people can manage to take a peek outside the ZUFFA bubble, there is a lot of goodness happening.
Just in terms of the range of options, I think we’ve been in that golden age for a while. The streaming landscape may have fractured audiences, but it also opened up so many different ways for people to get their events seen. As anyone who follows @Grabaka_Hitman on X already knows, there is seemingly always some form of fight sports happening somewhere on the planet — and there’s video of all of it.
@omsdeadandalive: why is the apex cage still smaller than the arena cage?
Short answer: Because it’s a smaller space. It’s been standard UFC practice for many, many years to use the smaller version of its Octagon in smaller arena setups.
I wrote about this years ago and for me the wildest part is that, according to many fighters, the UFC wouldn’t necessarily tell them in advance whether their fights would be in the big cage or the little one.
It’s a significant difference, too. Back then, there was a 30-foot cage and a 25-foot cage. (I’m not sure if it’s exactly the same now, but I’d say it’s likely.) That might not sound like a huge discrepancy, but when you do the math it’s actually a 44 percent difference in total area. That’s pretty consequential, especially if your gameplan is to strike from range and maintain distance (or close it and grapple against the fence).
If the Apex always means a small cage, at least now fighters know what they’re signing up for.
