For all the chaos UFC 294 has produced, none of the reshuffled fights called for an Octagon newcomer, leaving only the two scheduled to join the show from the start. On this edition of “New Blood” — the series that surprisingly doesn’t feature a Contender Series veteran for once — we check out a UAE Warriors champ and one of the best strikers to enter the eight-walled cage in recent memory.
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Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Mohammad Yahya
Weight Class: Lightweight
Age: 29
Record: 12-3 (7 KO, 2 SUB)
Notable Victories: Yazid Chouchane
After a brief stint in Bellator, Yahya found a home in UAE Warriors, racking up a 7-1 record in the promotion. His current five-fight win streak saw him knockout Yazid Chouchane for the Lightweight title in 2021, then defend it against Mohamed El Jaghdal and Souhil Tahiri.
Stylistically, Yahya reminds me a lot of Fares Ziam. Though not a tall Lightweight, he does possess an impressive four-inch ape index, which he uses to keep opponents at bay with jabs, crosses, and teeps as he circles along the fence. He’s got some solid left-leg kicks, which he’ll use to smoothly switch from southpaw to orthodox before firing the one-two combination, as well as the occasional intercepting knee.
It is, to be frank, not the most enthralling style. He’s content to push only as hard a pace as is needed to keep his distance and control things from the outside. He does possess some real power in that right hand, though, as seen in both the Chouchane finish and his near-knockout of Tahiri in the opening round.
His lack of dynamism and tendency to linger near the side of the cage do come back to bite him. El Jaghdal had some early success exploiting Yahya’s flat-footedness and bullying him against the fence, while Tahiri capitalized on Yahya’s extremely upright stance to floor him with an overhand right to the temple and land heaps of low kicks down the stretch. He’s a not-that-tall guy with Tall Guy Problems, which isn’t a great recipe for success in the ultra-stacked UFC Lightweight division.
Yahya does, however, have a Plan B in the form of decent wrestling. In addition to your standard double-leg, he’s adept at locking his hands in the clinch and dragging opponents to the mat, where he’ll chip away from half guard for as long as he’s able. That said, Tahiri found some wrestling success of his own; while Yahya quickly got to his feet more than once, Tahiri did manage to rack up some time in back mount.
Perhaps most worrying in that Tahiri fight was Yahya’s gas tank. He went five rounds with Jaghdal in cruise control, but was spent after two high-energy rounds with Tahiri. Luckily for him, Tahiri was gassed as well, and Yahya found enough of a second wind to secure the victory. If his usual slow pace is more necessity than preference, that’s something he needs to fix immediately.
For the champion of a solid organization, Yahya’s fairly underwhelming. Decent skills, a well-rounded game, but nothing that jumps off the screen. I don’t see him going super far in UFC without some dramatic improvements. As for his debut, he fights all-action slugger Trevor Peek, who’s completely out-classed in terms of technique, but could pull the upset through sheer aggression if Yahya’s gas tank is as questionable as it looked against Tahiri.
His recent UAE Warriors bouts are on Fight Pass.
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Photo by Mike Roach/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images
Sharabutdin “Bullet” Magomedov
Weight Class: Middleweight
Age: 29
Record: 11-0 (10 KO)
Notable Victories: Mikhail Ragozin, Sergei Martinov, Mikhail Allakhverdian
After starting his career in China — where he racked up four MMA wins and a kickboxing victory over future UFC Welterweight, Blood Diamond — Magomedov returned to Russia to tear through the local circuit. A four-fight 2022 campaign produced three knockouts in four victories, including an eight-day stretch that saw him beat Mikhail Ragozin on the cards and subsequently flatten Kushal Vyas eight seconds into the first round.
Magomedov is one of the strongest examples yet of the “high-flying Dagestani” archetype repped by the likes of Said Nurmagomedov and Zabit Magomedsharipov. He punishes opponents with a relentless barrage of fast, powerful kicks from either stance, but what makes him stand out among his peers (besides atypical agility for his size) is his fluidity, namely the way everything he throws sets up and flows into what comes next.
There’s standard-issue misdirection like getting opponents used to body kicks and then throwing a Brazilian kick, sure, but Magomedov’s bag of tricks is far deeper than that. A great example of this came in 2021, where he showed Joel dos Santos his omnipresent lead-leg side kick before immediately going upstairs with a hook kick for the KO. More understatedly, he’ll dip to his right to jab the head and body for a bit, only to suddenly throw a left hook with the same initial motion to catch opponents right on the chin. Or he’ll do that same dipping motion and instead wrap up the clinch, where he boasts some of the nastiest knees I’ve seen in a while.
And that’s all while constantly racking up damaging low kicks and the southpaw body kick he’s able to land in seemingly any situation. Unlike Magomedsharipov, he’s got the cardio to push a ridiculous pace for 15 minutes without ever giving opponents time to think.
Best as I can tell, he’s genuinely special on the feet in every respect except boxing. He just doesn’t have much of a punch arsenal outside of dipping jabs and left hooks; his right hand is a non-factor outside of being a feint to set up the clinch. While he’s elusive enough that opponents rarely get into punching range, at least not without running into a lights-out elbow or getting wrapped up in Magomedov’s clinch, Luke Rockhold is a shining example of what happens when a great kicker doesn’t develop his hands.
He also seems a bit vulnerable to low kicks later in fights once he starts being more economic with his movement. Low hands can leave his chin open in those scenarios, too.
Even with those caveats, he’s immediately one of the best strikers in UFC’s Middleweight division. His takedown defense looks stout, too; he’s got a very fast sprawl and immediately popped back to his feet with a whizzer the one time he did hit the deck. At one point, he defended a shot well enough to land on top in half guard, where he hammered home some hard punches and elbows before waving his man back to the feet.
Definitely a blue-chip prospect here, albeit one with some major baggage. Magomedov made headlines when he attacked, sucker-punched and stomped on a man for the high crime of kissing his own (the victim’s) girlfriend in public. Later, after joining his first Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament, he threw a tantrum on tape when his opponent landed a leglock. He clearly has some serious issues to work out, and we’ll see how they affect his UFC tenure.
Saturday’s debut pits him against the always dangerous Bruno Silva, himself a terror of the Russian scene at one point. Magomedov out-classes Silva on the feet in every area besides one-punch power and has the defensive grappling to shut down “Blindado’s” poor wrestling, but he’ll have to be sharp for all three rounds against a notorious comeback artist.
Remember that MMAmania.com will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC 294 fight card right here, starting with the early ESPN+ “Prelims” matches online, which are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. ET, before the pay-per-view (PPV) main card start time at 10 p.m. ET (also on ESPN+).
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