While not intentionally, I've mentioned Zabit Magomedsharipov's name a couple of times since the start of the new year. We really haven't heard much about him in awhile despite him being somewhat active on social media. A few days ago, MMA Junkie ran a story about him and how his manager, Ali Abdelaziz, believes that Zabit is ready for a potential return to competition. This would be huge for the featherweight division as it feels like a contender really hasn't emerged behind veteran, known commodities like Max Holloway and The Korean Zombie. Of course, if Zabit is ready to go, then that is great news for him as well. The article mentioned that he was suffering from some health issues, which he is seemingly on the other side of now. Zabit is back to training, which we've seen intermittently on his social media, but there was a really important note that some may have glossed over. That is that Zabit is in the USADA testing pool and that means that he's at least taking this come back seriously. It is unclear whether Zabit has reentered the pool or if he has stayed in it this whole time. If he never left, then he will be free to fight whenever he can get a fight booked. If he left and is coming back, then there is a 6 month waiting period until he can return to competition. We don't know when he would have gotten back in, but even if it was February 1st, that gives him an August return date. I know it's kind of what I do here and probably what I'm best at right now, so let's talk about what we can expect from him and what makes sense for him.
As for the timeline, it's hard to say. Of course, the USADA pool waiting period will put a hard date on when he can return if he exited and is reentering the pool. With that said, if Zabit was dealing with potential injuries or illness, then he hasn't been able to hit the gym as hard as he normally would have. He hasn't appeared in the octagon since November of 2019, so I wouldn't start rushing things now. Zabit will have to take the time to just get back to the level that he was at when we last saw him, which in terms of skills, was really good. The biggest weakness in Zabit's game was his ability to maintain his cardio over the entire fight. In theory, cardio would have been the easiest thing for Zabit to work on in this time off since he doesn't necessarily have to be training MMA to improve that, but if he's been injured, there was at least some period when he wasn't working out at all. He doesn't have any shirtless pictures on his instagram, so it's hard to speak on his exact level of fitness, but his body still looks to be in shape. He's definitely not bulky or overweight or anything of the sort. Regardless of his situation with the USADA testing, I think it's likely that if he does want to return, that would happen before the end of the year.
The interesting part of this is who he gets matched up against. Zabit was ranked 3rd in the featherweight division at the time he was removed from the rankings due to inactivity. It seems likely that Zabit finds himself in there with a top 5 opponent if he does comeback and I think that's what he would want. We have the recent situation with Yair Rodriguez to draw from on how the UFC will deal with this. Yair was out for about 2 years and he came back and drew Max Holloway in his return, so it doesn't seem likely that Zabit will get a tune up fight. He's already fought Calvin Kattar in what was his last appearance, so I don't think that fight is really on the table, but other than that, his options are wide open. Given his layoff, I think it is possible that he gets someone coming off a loss in order to level the playing field to some degree. That gives us 2 clear options, which are Yair Rodriguez and Brian Ortega. There is also the potential matchup against Giga Chikadze that would be really interesting, but I'm not sure how likely it is. Yair Rodriguez is coming off a loss after his own long layoff, so he has a lot of things in common with Zabit. That fight was on the schedule or at least the rumored schedule and I think coming back to that would make a lot of sense for both men. For someone who has been off for so long, I think this is as even a playing field as Zabit could find while still finding an opponent on his level. This fight would be great for the fans as well as the striking battle between those two would be absolutely incredible.
As for the Ortega matchup, this would also give Zabit as close to a level playing field as possible while still being a big fight. Ortega is coming off a title fight loss to Alexander Volkanovski and he took a ton of damage in that fight. He hasn't been horribly active ever since the his first title shot against Max Holloway where he also took an incredible amount of damage and then suffered a number of injuries. We would also get to see Zabit's grappling game and how far he's come in that area. Giga would represent a step down the rankings for Zabit, but he offers a lot of the same things as Rodriguez, just without the higher level wins. Giga hasn't gotten as far in his career yet, but in terms of style, he offers the same striking heavy approach as Yair. Of course there's multiple ways to be striking heavy and Yair is a lot more creative and unique than Giga, but having a striking battle for Zabit's return would probably appeal to him a lot.
If it was up to me, I think I would go for the Yair Rodriguez matchup. I think that's a fun fight and even if Zabit were to lose, he wouldn't really hurt his stock. We had this fight rumored to be taking place and I think that missing out on it would be unfortunate. Honestly, I would just be happy to see Zabit return against anyone. If he's healthy enough and is in a place to want to come back, I think everyone would love to see him and would welcome him back with open arms. The division can really use him and he would inject a fresh face and matchup for a vast majority of the top of the featherweight division.
What do you guys think? Do you think Zabit is actually making a comeback? When should he return? Who should he fight first if he does decide to fight again? Leave any and all thoughts in the comments. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
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