Abdul-Aziz Abdulvakhabov, The Lion King
Check out our divisional round-up for a greater understanding of ACA’s lightweight division.
Inside lightweight, one of the strongest talent pools in MMA, the top-three ACB/A lightweights have created a shark tank of their own; to date and despite some stiff resistance, the three kings at 155 have only lost to each other since 2013. The Russian promotion has talent, that much is unquestionable, but the best have turned back the rest with alarming consistency, and that lack of top-tier-turnover is very rare in a division with the strength of 155.
Among such an ironclad echelon of elites, Abdul-Aziz Abdulvakhabov has made a more-than-defensible case for being the best of them all, having finished Eduard Vartanyan and Ali Bagov three combined times (with only one razor-close decision loss among them, his sole loss in nine years). While the belt became Bagov’s after their trilogy’s third episode in Krasnodar, Abdulvakhabov has put himself back on a winstreak since, and he still holds a 2-1 edge over “Hulk”. With the massive Bagov’s move to welter, Abdulvakhabov’s feat becomes even more impressive, and that move also opens the division back up for him; now slated to fight Hacran Dias for the vacant belt, smart money is on the Chechen to get back to the throne from which he was toppled by the thinnest of margins against a man who wouldn’t look out of place at 185.
The skillset to consistently be such a menace at a division like ACA’s 155 is obviously formidable, but Abdulvakhabov somehow still exceeds expectations; “Lion” has outstruck lightweight’s best striker and outgrappled its best grappler, in ways that shouldn’t be possible to make look so easy. Abdulvakhabov isn’t unbeatable, but he’s also proven nearly impenetrable from a strategic perspective; it’s taken all the skill and trickery of his opponents to outgame him, and he’s destroyed them for even a bit less, as there’s simply no easy way past him.
Investment-Grade
At heart, AAA is a striker, but that’s only a characterization that’s easy to make with a broad view of all his fights; if one were to drill down into any specific fight of the Chechen, he’s as difficult to fit into a stylistic bucket as anyone in the sport. One could venture to say that, along with Eduard Vartanyan, Abdulvakhabov is one of the few fighters at 155 who could truly afford to accept wherever a fight goes; getting to a high-level at a good division generally requires a level of competence in ancillary areas, but it doesn’t necessitate being nearly-bulletproof everywhere, and yet that’s essentially how AAA has developed.
While his higher-profile fights tell a great story independently, it’s also worth looking at how he dealt with his easier opponents; very few in ACA are absolute pushovers, but AAA has made more than a few look that way. A good place to start might be his bout against Imanali Gamzatkhanov, where Abdulvakhabov’s opponent was generally competent but still outskilled and outgunned in every single way.
This fight fell almost immediately into the clinch, a defined area of strength for the Chechen. This was even shown against Bagov, a monstrous athlete and wrestler who most can’t handle at all while in-contact, but for now, here’s AAA commanding the clinch and hammering Gamzatkhanov in transitions (sometimes even grabbing ties off his counters). He’s even counterpunching in-close, as seen at the end of the first sequence; rolling with Gamzatkhanov’s right elbow from the single collar-tie, and breaking the clinch with a right hand.
Abdulvakhabov is generally a counterpuncher, but he’s a good-enough boxer on the lead to where he can’t just be stalled out; this mostly takes the form of his jab, which isn’t as versatile as that of someone like Eduard Vartanyan but serves a few purposes. AAA can pressure behind it, or use it to play with his opponent’s expectations, or pull his opponent into counters (the way he did with the check-hook near the end). He even used the jab to draw Gamzatkhanov’s right, pulled, and caught a collar-tie on the counter to land a free right.
The end-result of a jab like that is a sequence like this, showing Abdulvakhabov’s comfort in exchanges. Abdulvakhabov feints the jab to draw a 1-2 out of Gamzatkhanov, which he’s already prepared to pull; Gamzatkhanov squares up as he throws his rear hand, and is hit clean by AAA’s counter-combination as he pivots back into orthodox. Abdulvakhabov immediately takes advantage of the same liability a second time; AAA slips and counter-jabs Gamzatkhanov’s left-hook, and proactively pulls away from the right behind it. This leaves Gamzatkhanov squared up again, and the stronger-positioned Abdulvakhabov lands a right hand off the pull that wobbles Gamzatkhanov.
Gamzatkhanov, stripped of all initiative by the jab and pushed to the fence, felt the need to shoot on Abdulvakhabov and met a brick wall; Abdulvakhabov’s takedown defense in the open is terrific, aside from against the aforementioned Bagov (whose takedowns are generally irresistible), and Abdulvakhabov finished him from on top moments later.
This wasn’t the first showing of Abdulvakhabov’s jab, either; from his ACB early-career, Abdulvakhabov has been a deceptively (given his penchant for power-punching) deft boxer on the lead. For example, here’s his first ACB finish over Rasul Ediev:
After a round of jabbing, AAA feints an entry; Ediev throws a winging right hand, and AAA pulls it to counter with the 3-2 (beating Ediev’s squared-up left hook). After defending a desperate takedown, Abdulvakhabov paws with his rear hand to draw a reactive shot, and switches into a knee that Alexandr Shabliy would be proud of. The finish comes soon afterwards with a unique RNC.
However, despite the clinch-game to beat up nearly everyone and the top-game to tap a man out with a knee to the belly, and genuinely formidable boxing on the lead, Abdulvakhabov beat his most crafty and skilled opponent with his terrific work on the counter. AAA’s deserved win against Eduard Vartanyan remains the most conclusive way that anyone has ever dismissed him.
Lion vs. Lionheart
On the other hand, despite the series officially being 2-0 in the favor of AAA, no one in ACA has defeated Abdul-Aziz Abdulvakhabov as decisively as Eduard Vartanyan did; in their lightweight-title rematch, Vartanyan seemed to have the solutions he needed to defuse Abdulvakhabov enough to clearly (to all but the judges) take three rounds. It took more than a bit of struggle for Vartanyan to land on that formula, though; in fact, in their first outing, when Vartanyan was still a superlative striker but without a specific read on the Chechen, Abdulvakhabov knocked him out with absurd ease.
What should be taken from the first Vartanyan fight is that Abdulvakhabov is a smart fighter in his own right; despite being a bit of a tank-build, he fights thoughtfully, and he had Vartanyan’s game in his mind from the opening bell. Abdulvakhabov came out with specific answers to Vartanyan’s jab, and he pulled the trigger on them early; whether it was kicking his lead-leg to keep him uncomfortable to step hard on it, or running him onto 3-2s, or even counter-jabbing, Abdulvakhabov worked to keep Vartanyan from probing and building on reads.
Of course, Vartanyan is as smart as they come, and he had an answer; the southpaw switch immediately led to Vartanyan’s best connection of the fight, with the classic open-stance switch-up (between the rear-straight and the rear-kick), as Abdulvakhabov wasn’t given the opportunity to time jabs anymore.
That said, it seemed that Vartanyan wasn’t looking to play the southpaw game for long, but just as something to distract Abdulvakhabov from the obsessive anti-jab game. It didn’t work; as soon as Vartanyan switched back, AAA had his number once again. Of all the jab-counters AAA found in this fight, the cross-counter (slipping inside the jab and crossing it with the right hand) was the most consistent, and the final one allowed AAA to swarm and find the finish.
The rematch, a rightful Vartanyan win, saw Vartanyan make a few key adjustments; his entries from the start were less dramatic, he targeted the jab more liberally to the body and made it harder to counter (with stronger proactive defense and changing the rhythm of the jab more successfully), but most importantly, he played the southpaw game for longer. The brief success he had from lefty in the first fight was turned into a more comprehensive game (rather than playing the part of a shallow distraction), and combined with Vartanyan’s elite defense and footwork, it did a great deal to take away the preferred counters of “Lion” for much of their fight. Abdulvakhabov still came away with the win on the judges’ scorecards, likely a function of starting strong and ending somewhat strong, but Vartanyan undoubtedly did the better work throughout the bulk of the fight.
Those two fights were instructive in two principal ways: one, Vartanyan’s intelligence and versatility (which are so great that they are outside the scope of any article not specifically dedicated to them), and two, the danger AAA presents to even truly great strikers that don’t have tactics specifically meant for him. In fact, Vartanyan 1 might be the best win of AAA; he simply didn’t allow him to look good whatsoever, and so it wasn’t the war that the rematch was but a commanding and swift domination. While it may have been decisive for Vartanyan, even the rematch wasn’t particularly easy; it took all the wiles of “Lionheart” on his second try to get it done.
The other elite ACAer that Abdulvakhabov faced was wildly different; Ali Bagov was not a comfortable striker, but he was an absolute destroyer of a wrestler and one of the most smothering top-players in MMA. Abdulvakhabov knocked him out twice, and the final outing took all that “Hulk” had to survive to the final bell.
The Bagov Trilogy
Abdulvakhabov’s three fights against Bagov followed the same general thread; Bagov would generally start like a house on fire, ragdolling Abdulvakhabov through the first half, and Abdulvakhabov would rally back. On two occasions, this resulted in Abdulvakhabov finding a finish; Bagov was massive for the weight-class and it was so incredibly energy-intensive to wrestle AAA that “Hulk” fell apart down the stretch. In the last (their most recent meeting), AAA still fought his way back, but just slightly too late; Bagov survived the late onslaught, and took the first three rounds. While the flow of the fight was broadly similar throughout all three bouts, the details varied in each.
FIGHT 1: The Foundations
In the striking, Bagov actually didn’t do a terrible job early; he wasn’t comfortable in-close with Abdulvakhabov, but tried to answer the jab with a lead-leg kicking arsenal that landed reasonably consistently. AAA got to solving it immediately, for example jabbing in to draw out the kick and angling away from it as he landed the left hook, but Bagov kept away from exchanges well to a point.
Of course, that couldn’t work forever; Abulvakhabov started playing with the range, feinting out Bagov’s kicks, and using the jab to cover distance into sterner shots that Bagov wasn’t prepared to deal with.
It didn’t help that AAA was both hard to take down and relentless from the bottom in this fight. Bagov tried many times to change levels below Abdulvakhabov’s jab and got nowhere, as Abdulvakhabov’s hips and positioning were too strong to just blow through, and he needed to push AAA to the fence to finish the first takedown (by turning Abdulvakhabov’s clinch-knee into a kneetap). Even when he got a clean takedown, Abdulvakhabov proved impossible to control.
Abdulvakhabov got back to jabbing on the feet, and finished the fight due to it; AAA used the jab to tease out Bagov’s defenses (as he was slipping to the outside each time Abdulvakhabov twitched) and met him with a spinning kick as he did.
FIGHT 2: A Summary
Fight 2 in its entirety, a one-round barnburner that ended with Bagov unable to get off his stool. Bagov’s top-game looks a great deal tighter in this fight than it did in the last, and he almost found the finish; however, AAA was able to dump him off the back, and his own top game forced the “no mas” from the Bagov corner despite spending a fraction of the time there.
FIGHT 3: The Fight Of The Decade
Like Vartanyan’s striking, Bagov’s wrestling/top-game is wholly deserving of an article in itself; suffice it to say, he looked further improved in AAA-3 compared to the previous bouts. He got to the bodylock less than 30 seconds in, his reactive-shot looked brilliant, and the first 3 rounds were largely dominant on his part. Abdulvakhabov focused on defense, but he also didn’t show the urgency he did in the first two fights to get up; it’s reasonably likely he was allowing Bagov to work himself into exhaustion, but it was clearly a risky gambit (he almost got finished in round 2).
That said, as domineering as Bagov was on the ground, Abdulvakhabov matched that on the feet; Abdulvakhabov nearly had Bagov done in round 2 as well. If he was banking on Bagov slowing, the bodywork here was a smart call; AAA got Bagov squared up against the fence and smashed him with the rear-straight to the body. AAA also looked like a legitimately elite combination-puncher here, not only building off the body-straight but lever-punching with the left hand to the body and head. And of course, a few AAA classic cross-counters near the end.
As mentioned earlier, not even Bagov was able to keep AAA from working in the clinch; Abdulvakhabov absolutely butchered him from the single collar tie, mostly to the body. AAA could strike off tying up the wrists too (a staple of elite clinchers like Petr Yan), and beat Bagov up in transitions; for example, breaking with an elbow, deflecting Bagov’s return, and landing the left hook before immediately stepping back in with the head-pin.
As Bagov tired late, from the ridiculous pace of the grappling and the bodywork, AAA took over once again; Bagov from the bottom took some more abuse, but he survived, and took a razorclose decision. Overall, it felt like the pivotpoint was just a bit too late for Grozny’s Lion to come back and win a third time.
The Bagov-AAA series was career-defining for both men, in that it both pushed them to the limit and forced them to improve; it deserves far more praise than it gets as a truly great trilogy. Bagov eventually figured out how to last long enough to win a decision, but Abdulvakhabov never let it come easy. As Bagov moves to 170, any success only builds the legend of the lightweight who gave him the fights of his life.
Concluding Thoughts
While ACA has their own strong LW class, comparisons to the UFC’s are hard to avoid; that said, Abdulvakhabov would likely fare extremely well against the most well-known lightweights in MMA. Abdulvakhabov would have a defined edge in extended exchanges over fighters like Paul Felder and Dan Hooker, for instance, especially considering how consistently Hooker got cross-countered by Edson Barboza. A defined pressurer and body-hitter spells abundantly obvious things against #5 (at the time of writing) Donald Cerrone, and even Tony Ferguson likely finds a great deal of trouble against a massive puncher who starts quick and clubs people consistently when they square up or jab without care. The Bagov fights may impart the wrong lessons, as Abdulvakhabov also looks extremely difficult to purely wrestle; even skilled and physical wrestlers in Kevin Lee and Khabib Nurmagomedov would probably find Abdulvakhabov hard to bowl over in open-space (especially without Bagov’s reactive-shot timing), hard to back up to tie up in chain-wrestling against the fence, hard to beat in the clinch if they get there, and hard to dominate or break on the ground.
The fighters likely to trouble Abdulvakhabov are the stronger boxers at 155, in McGregor and Poirier and Gaethje; the first two would give AAA the trouble Vartanyan did with the southpaw stance, as they might be insulated a bit from the cross-counter and can hang otherwise in the pocket, and Gaethje/AAA could be the most compelling fight possible in MMA (between their respective skills in the clinch and Abdulvakhabov’s bodywork against Gaethje’s vicious kicks). Regardless of who one might favor there, there are no truly-unwinnable fights at 155 for “Lion”, as he’s simply too strong in each phase for there to be a man to “expose” him. The skill level outside the UFC is generally dismal, as seen by promotions such as Bellator, but ACA is a great example of a truly world-class talent pool, and Abdulvakhabov may deserve the distinction of being the best of them all.
(featured image courtesy of ACA)