UFC Exec Disagrees With Khabib About Promotion Of Russian Fighters
UFC senior vice president of international and content David Shaw responded to lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov’s recent criticism.
In the buildup to UFC St. Petersburg on Saturday, Nurmagomedov claimed the UFC was not promoting its Russian fighters enough.
“The Eagle” notably pointed to the lack of promotion for fighters competing at the UFC Moscow card last year. The hardcore fans were always going to watch Saturday’s event. Yet Khabb said, “most people don’t even know that they are doing UFC in Russia.”
“20 April, Magomed Mustafaev will fight with a new guy (Rafael Fiziev), no one even knows about this fight,” Nurmagomedov said. “Or [Aleksei] Oleinik vs. [Alistair] Overeem. Why not show or promote it?”
Speaking at the post-fight press conference of UFC St. Petersburg though, Shaw “respectfully disagreed” with the 155-pound king.
“I think I would probably respectfully disagree with Khabib on that one,” Shaw said (via MMAJunkie). “If you look at what we’ve done, look back, we opened up the office in Moscow … 10 months ago. And in even 10 months we’ve held an event with 23,000 people at Olimpiysky Stadium in Moscow and now here at Yubileyny (Sports Palace), we’re averaging about 15,000 people.”
Representing The Whole Area
Shaw also added that in addition to promoting Russian fighters, the Las Vegas-based promotion made an effort to showcase fighters from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) — or the former Soviet Republic.
“Throughout those times, we’ve had a considerable amount on the card that has been occupied by Russian and CIS athletes there was tonight at least one fighter in every fight, I think we might have had out of 22, maybe we had 11 fighters, 12 fighters of Russian, CIS descent.
“The amount of marketing and promotion that went in, the thoughtfulness that went into creating the card in that we don’t just want to have Russian fighters. We had Dagestani fighters. We had [Antonina] Shevchenko on the card as well, right. We’re trying to get a good representation of the whole area.”
