On Sun­day night, Usman Nur­magome­dov defend­ed the Bel­la­tor cham­pi­onship title for the sec­ond time. He defeat­ed Amer­i­can vet­er­an Brent Primus to reach the Mil­lion Dol­lar Grand Prix final.

How are Khabib’s brothers conquering the MMA world?

27 year old Umar goes with a record of 16–0: he won four times in the UFC and took 11th place in the rank­ings of the ban­tamweight divi­sion, where Petr Yan was the cham­pi­on. Nur­magome­dov is striv­ing for the title, but is still recov­er­ing from an injury.

Khabib’s 25-year-old cousin Usman chose the eas­i­er path: he moved to Bel­la­tor, a weak­er league than the UFC, but quick­ly became a cham­pi­on. At the same time, Usman fights in the light­weight divi­sion, like Khabib. It is curi­ous that in the UFC, this weight is also dom­i­nat­ed by a mem­ber of Khabib’s team — a close friend of Islam Makhachev.

Light weight becomes the “prop­er­ty” of the Nur­magome­dov clan: stu­dents of the leg­endary Abdul­manap, Khabib’s late father, are tak­ing more and more new belts in the USA. So far, the oppo­nents have not fig­ured out how to cope with their good wrestling, strength and endurance — the three main fea­tures of the Nur­magome­dov team.

Makhachev is a UFC cham­pi­on, the strongest light­weight in the world and one of the best fight­ers regard­less of weight. Usman is still open­ing up (he is only 25 years old), but he is already being called the most promis­ing young fight­er in MMA.

How­ev­er, the Dages­tan cham­pi­on should not be over­es­ti­mat­ed yet: his oppo­nents in title fights are vet­er­ans who are 35+ years old. And the UFC light­weight divi­sion is many times stronger than it is now in Bel­la­tor. In terms of skills, Usman is a true uni­ver­sal sol­dier, with almost no weak­ness­es.

Usman Wins Bellator, Goes to Million Dollars

Usman has become a dom­i­nant Bel­la­tor cham­pi­on, going 18–0 and giv­ing his oppo­nents no chance (7–0 in the league). He took the belt from Brazil­ian Patrick Freire last year, choked out for­mer UFC cham­pi­on Ben­son Hen­der­son in his first round defense, and now defeat­ed vet­er­an Brent Primus on points.

The Amer­i­can became the Bel­la­tor cham­pi­on, defeat­ing Michael Chan­dler, the cur­rent UFC star, in 2017 with a leg injury. But he lost in the rematch and nev­er regained the belt, although he remained at the top of the rank­ings. Against Usman, 38-year-old Primus came out as a huge under­dog and con­firmed the pre­dic­tions: he gave up all the rounds and showed noth­ing, los­ing by unan­i­mous deci­sion.

“This fight went the way I imag­ined it. I liked every­thing. I did a good job. It was my night,” Nur­magome­dov said after the vic­to­ry.

Usman is not like Khabib: he is good in the stand, kicks a lot, but is also strong on the ground. The cham­pi­on showed all this against Primus, who was unable to oppose any­thing — the dif­fer­ence in class was too great.

For Usman, the fight with Primus was not only a title defense, but also a mil­lion-dol­lar Grand Prix semi-final. In the final he will meet the win­ner of the pair Patricky Freire and Alexan­dre Chablius. The Russ­ian is con­sid­ered the favorite and it is very like­ly that Usman will fight for a mil­lion dol­lars with his com­pa­tri­ot.