“There is a conspiracy theory that one of my comrades hooked me on,” MMAnews quotes the Nigerian. “I was in Perth and Wolf is a great fighter. There’s a lot of talk about these guys from Dagestan that they’re pretty damn good at wrestling and all that. Islam was also surrounded by this myth, but Alex smashed it.”
“And a friend of mine said to me, ‘Look at the moves from Fight Island, Abu Dhabi, the investment that’s coming into the UFC from there – it’s good for them to have a champion from that part of the world.’ These are not my words – a friend told me this, but I’ll just paraphrase “
On February 11, at UFC 284 in Perth, Islam Makhachev successfully defended his lightweight championship belt, defeating Alexander Volkanovski by unanimous decision in five rounds. After the fight, the Australian team accused the Russian fighter of violating the anti-doping policy of the organization, however, they could not provide evidence that Makhachev used prohibited saline droppers to recover from the weight race.
Islam Makhachev will hold his next title defense on October 21 at UFC 294 in Abu Dhabi, and his opponent will most likely be Charles Oliveira, who dealt with Benil Dariush in a potential challenger fight.