Khamzat Chimaev is on his way to becoming a top star in the UFC martial arts league. Explosive side dish: He does propaganda for a notorious dictator.
He stole the show on this big fight night, fans and experts agree.
Khamzat Chimaev delivered the fight of the night at the Pay Per View UFC 273, eclipsing the actual main fights of the big MMA show.
The Swedish welterweight’s rousing three-round fight against Gilbert Burns ended up thrilling the crowd more than the officially higher-weighted title defences of featherweight and bantamweight champions Alexander Volkanovski and Aljamain Sterling against “Korean Zombie” Chan Sung Jung and Petr Yan.
Chimaev’s points victory over the unexpectedly defensible Burns is the top topic in the US media, earned him several money-saving bonus prizes as “Fight of the Night” – and spurred hopes that he can become a world star and cash cow like Conor McGregor or Khabib Nurmagomedov.
But the steep rise of the undefeated 27-year-old, whose career actually seemed to have ended early, also leaves a queasy feeling. For it also benefits a murky figure to whom the rising star has a privileged connection: Ramzan Kadyrov.
Chimaev promotes dictator Kadyrov
As “proof that Khamzat is the king of the cage”, the Chechen dictator celebrated Khimaev’s fifth consecutive UFC win on his Telegram channel at the weekend.
Kadyrov, who has been in power in the war-ravaged Russian republic since 2007 with Vladimir Putin’s blessing, is not only interested in martial arts for private reasons: Chimaev – although he emigrated to Sweden when he was 18 – is a welcome advertising medium for the ruler.
Chimaev has allowed himself to be taken over and has repeatedly been praised, received and given gifts by Kadyrov – much to the annoyance of human rights activists who point to Kadyrov’s brutal treatment of opposition members and dissidents and his role in the Putin system. Especially now, in the context of the war of aggression against Ukraine.
In recent years, the persecution and sometimes fatal torture of homosexuals and other minorities, which were documented in an OSCE report in 2018, have also caused international horror.
Kadyrov’s regime is ostracised in many countries, the EU and the USA have imposed sanctions against him, in addition to a ban on entry, US citizens and companies are banned from doing business with him. In the course of this, Kadyrov also lost his audience of millions on Facebook and Instagram.
There had already been criticism of Kadyrov’s presence on Facebook and Instagram. The ruler had used the platform several times to make quite explicit threats of violence; a dark outburst against a user who had called him a “Satan” during a livestream caused a major stir. Later, the critic – a 15-year-old boy – was paraded on state television, and he and his father had to publicly apologise for “bad upbringing”.
One of the men standing next to Kadyrov when he discovered the critical post: Khamzat Chimaev.
MMA is massively promoted in Chechnya
The sport of MMA is promoted by Kadyrov with a lot of state money, it fits the ideal of masculinity he propagates – and his successful fighter exports provide him with an international stage.
Kadyrov particularly liked to adorn himself with Khmayev’s recently: he received him in his mansion, took propaganda photos with him, presented him with gifts (including a luxury car – which Khmayev is said to have wrecked in the meantime).
When Chimaev became seriously ill with corona in 2020 and expressed thoughts of resigning, Kadyrov intervened – telling him, according to his own account, “that the WHOLE Chechen people were angry about this news”. Chimaev continued.
Chimaev has repeatedly claimed that all is well in Chechnya, that he sees no human rights violations or other crimes,” criticised dissident Mansur Sadulaev at Bloody Elbow, an MMA portal belonging to the SB Nation sports blog network, in the run-up to the fight.
Investigative journalist Karim Zidan, author of the article detailing the Khimaev-Kadyrov connection, also pointed out that Khimaev had uploaded a photo of a chat with Kadyrov just hours before his fight.
UFC becomes propaganda stepping stone
Chimaev is not the first celebrity to be roped in by Kadyrov: In the past, Kadyrov has also sought and found proximity to stars such as Mo Salah, Mike Tyson, the late Diego Maradona or even Lothar Matthäus. In 2011, the record-breaking German international played alongside Kadyrov at a propaganda match in Grozny, where he wanted to promote his capital, devastated by the two Chechen wars, as a World Cup site for 2018. How sport in general also helped Kadyrov’s patron Putin is an equally familiar problem.
Nevertheless, Khmayev’s growing success in the UFC raises the question of how to deal with Kadyrov using him as a propaganda stepping stone.
That the MMA company around Dana White, which is not known for overly moral scruples, does not put this centre stage is not surprising. But even at the major media partner ESPN, Kadyrov’s name did not come up in a major online portrait of Khimaev shortly before the Pay Per View.
Meanwhile, Chimaev’s sporting stock in the UFC continues to rise thanks to the triumph over Burns: White had recently brought the polarising US star Colby Covington into play as Chimaev’s next opponent, and it would be a potential Pay Per View main event.
In the medium term, Chimaev is being built up for a lucrative fight with champion Kamaru Usman.
