Add Shara ‘Bullet’ to the growing list of opponents Nickal believes he’d destroy if only the UFC would stop protecting them from him.
Like everyone else, Bo Nickal was impressed by Shara “Bullet” Magomedov’s wild spinning double backfist knockout win at UFC 308. But don’t get it twisted: that doesn’t mean Bo believes Shara is legit competition.
Nickal is set to return to action for the second time this year against Paul Craig at UFC 309. Oddsmakers have him a wild -1000 favorite to beat “The Bearjew,” which is down a whole lot from the -3800 he was in his last fight against Cody Brundage. We’d argue that odds like that prove Nickal enjoys some of that sweet Dana White privilege, even though the big boss denies it.
According to Nickal, it’s actually Shara “Bullet” who’s being protected.
“The Russian Pirate? Crazy, bro,” he said in a new video on his YouTube channel. “Yeah, that was insane. Who does double spinning backfists? And you know what was crazy? He was hitting it on the pads before the fight. There’s clips of him hitting it.”
“It’s like, I would like to fight him but it’s not a tough fight,” Nickal added. “And I’d have to go to Abu Dhabi. Or I’d have to go to Saudi [Arabia]. Which I would do but … not a tough fight, so the UFC probably doesn’t want that right now. I dunno, maybe they would. Maybe they don’t give a crap. Go over to Saudi, make a quick check. 90 seconds, call it a day, fly back.”
“I just think they’re going to keep putting him against strikers, but we’ll see.”
It’s true that the UFC hasn’t put “Bullet” against a Caucausus or U.S. State wrestling champ, but then again he’s fought four times since arriving in the UFC last October. Nickal has fought once in that time, and for all his talk of showing other fighters wassup, he hasn’t actually followed through on any of his callouts.
In less bombastic moments he’s admitted he’s perfectly happy letting the UFC carefully usher his career forward, which thus far has meant two squash matches a year against outmatched competition. At some point the training wheels will come off and they’ll actually test him properly … but it’s not happening this year.