NEW YORK —
Islam Makhachev and his brother Kurban grew up poor in a remote village in Dagestan, a Russian republic tucked in the mountains between Georgia and the Caspian Sea. Their father farmed and drove a truck. Like many in Dagestan, both boys wanted to become great fighters, maybe someday in the UFC, which they had seen on television. Both had promise and hoped to train with the great Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov, a legendary Dagestani sambo and judo coach who was then training his son Khabib to become one of the UFC’s top champions. There was no way Islam and Kurban could afford to go together to Nurmagomedov.
Kurban was older than Islam. If either of them was going to train to fight, it would be him. Kurban, though, had a feeling about his brother. He saw in Islam a fighter who could grow up to be a champion. And so he put aside his dream and took two jobs to help pay for Islam’s training.
“Of course, I believed in him,” Kurban said over a video call before Islam’s most recent fight, speaking in Russian interpreted by Eldar Eldarov, a childhood friend of Islam. “He showed good results, and everyone said he had great potential.”
The decision to sacrifice his own fighting hopes was hard, Kurban explained, yet it was something he felt he had to do.
“I didn’t want to regret” not giving Islam the chance to train, he added.
His decision proved to be provident. Islam went to work with Nurmagomedov, training alongside Khabib, who is three years older. Khabib became a professional mixed martial arts fighter in 2008, moved to the UFC in 2011 and won the organization’s lightweight championship seven years later. He held the title until 2020, when he retired with a 29-0 record and took over his father’s coaching empire following his death.
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Islam joined the UFC in 2014 and with Khabib, now his close friend and coach, won the same lightweight title in 2022, keeping it until earlier this year when he gave it up to move to welterweight.
This past Saturday at UFC 322 in Madison Square Garden, Islam won a unanimous decision over Jack Della Maddalena to claim the belt.
By winning titles in two UFC weight classes, Islam has done something Khabib never did. Yet Khabib showed no jealousy. Instead he begged UFC CEO Dana White to give him the welterweight belt to wrap around Islam’s waist. Then he picked up Islam, put him on his shoulders and ran a circle around the Octagon as Islam draped his old lightweight and new welterweight belts over his own shoulders.
“We support and help each other,” Islam later said about Khabib and the other fighters in their camp. “[It’s] not just for the money, when someone from our camp goes to fight, I help him.”
As Islam walked victoriously through the Garden alongside Khabib at 2 a.m. Sunday, it was hard to tell who was happier. Both devout in their Muslim faith, they were two of the greatest UFC champions in history, uplifting their shared corner of the world.
Dagestani fighters are different than many of those from other places. Their land is a mix of many cultures and backgrounds and languages yet has been molded by centuries of fighting with neighboring countries. Children grow up wrestling even while playing. Fighting is a part of the culture. So too is fighting for one another.
“No one will ask you, when you have a son, ‘Will he play a sport?’ It’s ‘what sport will he play?’ ” Eldarov said, sitting at a Manhattan coffee shop before the video call with Kurban. “Sambo, wrestling, judo. You need to be strong in the world to defend your family.”
Dagestan athletes dominate not only in MMA but in wrestling as well. During the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, the 97-kg freestyle wrestling champion, Akhmed Tazhudinov of Bahrain was raised in Dagestan as was the bronze medalist, Magomedkhan Magomedov of Azerbaijan. So too was the 86-kg winner Magomed Ramazanov of Bulgaria and Greece’s Dauren Kurugliev who won bronze.
Though none of the four represented Russia, which is currently banned from the Olympics, Dagestan officials flew them all home a few days after the Games, holding an arrival ceremony at the main airport in the capital city of Makhachkala.
“No matter what country they represent, they are from Dagestan,” said Eldarov, who after an MMA career of his own, is now helping Bahrain build its combat sports program.
“Everyone in Dagestan was proud they had shown everyone the Dagestan wrestling program is the best in the world,” he added.
It’s the same kind of bond that led Kurban to put aside his dreams to help Islam reach his, and Khabib to retire early while undefeated so he could coach others, including Islam.
Early Sunday, White sat at a news conference beneath the Garden stands and talked about how many years ago when Khabib first joined the UFC, Khabib’s father told him that Khabib would become a great champion and that Islam would follow him and become a champion himself.
“I’ve been in the fight business since I was 20 years old, and all I ever hear is, ‘This guy is going to be a world champion; this guy is going to do this; this guy is going to do that,’” White said. “Everybody says the same thing, and almost nobody ever does what they said. And s—, it played out exactly the way his father said, which is pretty amazing.”
Then White said Islam, who has tied Anderson Silva’s UFC record of 16 consecutive wins, might be a couple victories from “GOAT territory,” as in Greatest of All Time — a title White has bestowed most often upon Jon Jones, also a champion in two weight classes.
Earlier in the day, on the video call from Eldarov’s phone, Kurban said Islam’s success has come because he “is very strict and disciplined,” traits passed by their father, who demanded they always have tasks at home that involved working with their hands.
“It was on the farm or anything,” Kurban said. “He just wanted us to work. He wanted us to be disciplined.”
“An old-school mentality,” Eldarov said.
When Islam first made it to the UFC, he built his parents a home in Makhachkala, then got one for the brother who gave up his fighting hopes so he could have his. Islam also helped Kurban open a luxury car dealership in Makhachkala. Now the brother who gave up his dreams and took two jobs sells Ferraris and Lamborghinis.
Kurban, through Eldarov’s interpretation, offered to sell a Ferrari to an American journalist who could never afford one and then laughed.
Islam’s fight was still a few hours away, and Kurban was with their parents in their home. He would watch the fight with their father, while their mother would avert her eyes, as always, not wanting to see her son get hurt. Later, after Islam’s victory, they would all have reason to celebrate.
Especially the brother who had made it possible — and perhaps fulfilled his own destiny.
In Arabic, Kurban means “sacrifice.”
The post The brotherly sacrifice that helped make Islam Makhachev a UFC champion appeared first on Washington Post.
