Now that we’re some five-and-a-half years removed from Zabit Magomedsharipov’s last fight, I’m starting to believe he’s serious about not coming back. Dude was 29 years old when he walked away, undefeated in the UFC (6-0), flagged as a future champion. The fact that he was an uprush of a human being at 6-foot-1, 145 pounds — and unusually drawn, a fellow who looked like he’d seen some s*** in Laos back in the day — only added to the mystery that now follows him wherever he goes.
What if?
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What if Zabit had kept fighting? How far could he have gone? Would his gas tank have held up against a ceaseless machine like Alexander Volkanovski? In our world of free-flowing opinions, many believe it was only a matter of time before he would’ve gotten “exposed.” Yet it could also be argued by any pragmatist who has followed the game long enough that it’s just a matter of time for everybody.
The what-if question revs up every now and again, usually when something is happening that we can’t find out the answer to. Right now, that is Jon Jones, who’s been snug as a bug in Thailand whiling away the days while interim champion Tom Aspinall is left hung out to dry. The what-if in this equation has become: What if Jones doesn’t unify that heavyweight title? Certainly, the legacy he is protecting becomes part of his legacy, right? We add another asterisk for risk management (in a different color, to distinguish itself from the other asterisks)?
Or do we forget all about the fights he didn’t want by, say, 2033, when Raul Rosas Jr. is a long-standing UFC champion?
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For that matter, what if Rosas’ chin were two inches longer?
What if Tony Ferguson hadn’t tripped on that television cable that time? Would he have been the rolling ball of barbed wire that would have cut right through Khabib Nurmagomedov? What if they had fought when “El Cucuy” was in his prime? While Ferguson is banished to a DOA league known as the GFL, Khabib is celebrated as a GOAT. That cable is responsible for so much pain, and I’ll bet you anything it’s totally oblivious.
Every sport has a version of this. It’s an endless loop when you think about it. What if Babe Ruth played today? What if Scott Norwood had made that field goal? What if the referees didn’t let Alex Caruso mug the greatest basketball player of all time, Nikola Jokić, every time he posted up near the elbow?
In the fight game, a lot of the what-ifs belong to the fighters we never found out enough about. People like TJ Grant, who knocked out Gray Maynard to punch his ticket to a lightweight title shot only to disappear to Canada to work the potash mines. Concussions cut short his career just as his career got going. TJ will always have a spot in these what-if discussions.
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You could include Conor McGregor in this group, too. Yes, he won titles in two weight classes, beating Jose Aldo and Eddie Alvarez, but what if he never segued to boxing? Never got the silk pajamas? The yacht? Never stepped foot in Ibiza, or assaulted the Miami Heat mascot Burnie? Let’s not go down the path that led to his delusions of becoming Ireland’s president, and stick to the one simple what-if: What if he’d stuck around the UFC rather than cash in against Floyd Mayweather?
The beginning of the end for Conor McGregor. (Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)
(Jeff Bottari via Getty Images)
We’ll never really know.
Nah, it’s a fun game to play while drinking a few Modelos — the old what-if game — because there are a million of them, and so many directions. What if Chael Sonnen had survived the first round against Jon Jones, with that big toe of Jones’ jutting off his foot at a 90-degree angle? What if Jones had fought Francis Ngannou? What if his fight with Dominick Reyes weren’t in Texas, where judging is akin to a roulette spin? What if Georges St-Pierre had fought Anderson Silva when both were at the height of their runs? Or what if Fedor Emelianenko had signed with the UFC during his?
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To this day it’s fun to remember the assorted media asking Dana White about that possibility, followed by the inevitable question about any plans for the UFC to bring a show to AT&T Stadium, where the Dallas Cowboys play. (The answer is never, but we lived comfortably in that what-if for many years before moving on to speculate about Croke Park).
Later this summer, one of the greatest blue-chip prospects in the what-if pantheon, Khamzat Chimaev, is scheduled to fight Dricus du Plessis for the middleweight title. This fight feels somewhat theoretical because: A) the last time Chimaev fought in the U.S., he missed weight so bad Nate Diaz became Kevin Holland; B) the visa issues that follow Chimaev around; and, C) he seems to fall ill quite a bit. There are mysteries to the man that supersede our basic understanding of his potential, cosmological factors, things we simply can’t know. Should the fight go through, we can strike one of the festering what-ifs from the list.
Can you imagine, though, if for any reason, Khamzat doesn’t make it?
Move over Zabit, we’ll have a new champion in the greatest-what-ifs-of-all-time conversation.
