Midnight Mania! Abdelaziz Declares War On Helwani, Promises to Block Client Interviews

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Ali Abdelaziz is one of the most successful managers in the sport. His company Dominance MMA has a roster filled with elite talent and champions, athletes like Kamaru Usman, Khabib Nurmagomedov, and Justin Gaethje. However, Abdelaziz is also one of the more controversial figures of the sport, known to hijack his athletes’ twitter accounts to talk smack. He also gotten in several physical altercations with professional fighters and fans alike.

Earlier today, Abdelaziz took to Twitter to direct his ire in the direction of MMA media, namely ESPN. More specifically, Abdelaziz is rumored to have beef with Ariel Helwani. Though he doesn’t mention Helwani by name in any of the Tweets, Helwani did argue for a fight between Leon Edwards and Abdelaziz-represented Gilbert Burns, which Abdelaziz clearly took as an insult.

In retaliation, Abdelaziz promises that ESPN/Helwani will not have any access to Dominance MMA-managed fighters in upcoming interviews. Per Abdelaziz, it’s now “personal.”

To clarify, Abdelaziz explained there he respected many different ESPN reporters, listing out several of their more high-profile MMA reporters … except Helwani.

On a final side note, Canadian sports network TSN was also caught in the rage storm.

The fallout from this bad blood will certainly be interesting. How will UFC feel about Abdelaziz blocking its broadcast partner from a great deal of its roster? Are Abdelaziz’s athletes all on board with giving up media exposure because their manager doesn’t like a reporter? Will MMAmania get blocked for writing this article?

It’s all up in the air, but trust that we’ll provide any updates as they occur.

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Sleep well Maniacs! More martial arts madness is always on the way.