What surprised the UFC fighter in the USA?

In the footage, Fiziev, with a shocked look, films a young man with a paint­ed face singing a Shaki­ra song. The guy dances top­less in only shorts and radi­ates pos­i­tiv­i­ty, which does not seem to have rubbed off on Rafael.

Fiziev opened his eyes wide in sur­prise, trans­mit­ting the shock to those around him. In the com­ments, Eng­lish-speak­ing users con­sid­ered the fighter’s facial expres­sions.

“He wants to show what’s wrong with Amer­i­ca,” one user wrote. Anoth­er added: “Naked man in under­pants danc­ing in the mid­dle of New York. Every­thing is fine”. Anoth­er com­menter con­clud­ed: “He has nev­er seen this mad­ness in his coun­try before.”

Fiziev is a light­weight star: he is sixth in the divi­sion rank­ings and will next fight on Sep­tem­ber 23 at UFC Fight Night 228 in Las Vegas. Rafael will be opposed by the Pol­ish fight­er Mateusz Gam­rot. This will be a fight between a strik­er and a wrestler — an inter­est­ing sce­nario for the UFC.

Fiziev’s last fight was against Justin Gaeth­je in March at UFC 286. He lost by deci­sion, now his MMA record is 12 wins and two loss­es.

Fiziev has a Russian mother, but he plays for Azerbaijan

Peo­ple in Rus­sia sup­port Fiziev: he speaks Russ­ian and began his pro­fes­sion­al career in the coun­try. Rafael took a long time to decide which coun­try to com­pete for in the UFC. He is a Thai box­er from Kyr­gyzs­tan (born in Kaza­khstan), but refused to com­pete for the coun­try due to a reli­gious con­flict. Fiziev is Shi­ite, and the vast major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion of Kyr­gyzs­tan is Sun­ni.

Fiziev chose the Azer­bai­jani flag: his moth­er is Russ­ian, his father is Azer­bai­jani, and his grand­moth­er is Cos­sack (that’s why Rafael was nick­named Ata­man). The fight­er was born in Kaza­khstan, at the age of 11 he moved to Kyr­gyzs­tan, and as an adult he moved to Thai­land.

Among Fiziev’s team­mates in Thai Tiger Muay Thai there are many Russ­ian fight­ers. One of them is ex-UFC cham­pi­on Petr Yan.

“Petya is the life of the par­ty, he has a good sense of humor. He knows how to laugh and joke well. Petya is such a jok­er! When the cam­era is point­ed at him, he imme­di­ate­ly turns on the Siber­ian.

And if he’s just the way he is, the way he cracks and jokes dur­ing train­ing, I think his media will sky­rock­et even more. He just jokes quite often and wit­ti­ly. I think he will have even more fans,” said Rafael.

Fiziev is pop­u­lar in Rus­sia, but does not con­sid­er him­self Russ­ian. He is prepar­ing to move to Baku and speak Azer­bai­jani once he learns the lan­guage:

“We believe that the nation fol­lows its father. Edu­ca­tion and nation fol­low the father. The father is the head of the fam­i­ly. There­fore, I was raised in Azer­bai­jani tra­di­tions. Whether in reli­gion or tra­di­tion, every­thing comes from our father. And my moth­er is Mus­lim. She con­vert­ed to Islam.”