Here’s something you can file under ‘weird MMA story of the day’. UFC lightweight contender Rafael dos Anjos has won five bouts in a row and is coming off a victory over Donald Cerrone. His next bout will be hugely important in terms of where he stands in the title chase, so it’s pretty interesting that he actually thought he was facing a different fighter when he was booked for his UFC 170 bout against Rustam Khabilov.
According to Globo, the blame partially falls on his manager Ed Soares. Apparently Soares misunderstood who the UFC was offering, and just went to RDA and said “they’re giving you the Russian”. Since RDA is highly-ranked (currently the number six contender on the UFC official rankings), they both assumed that “the Russian” was Khabib Nurmagomedov, who is currently ranked at number seven. That would make sense. But it wasn’t who they got.
Instead they got Khabilov (17-1) who is 3-0 in the UFC and coming off a win over Jorge Masvidal. He’s not ranked in the top 10. So you can understand why RDA might be a little miffed, since a bout with Khabilov isn’t going to move him up the rankings very far.
Still though, it’s kind of amusing if you’re not Dos Anjos or Soares.
About the author
