Georges St-Pierre isn’t the only UFC fighter taking a leave of absence from MMA. It was confirmed yesterday by his teammate at Red Fury Fight Team, Khabib Nurmagomedov, that Chechen fighter Adlan Amagov has decided to take a leave of absence from mixed martial arts for personal reasons. Additionally, according to Amagov’s brother, Amagov is done with the sport of MMA and wants to find a new job. The quotes were captured by reporter Artem Yalanskiy, who you can find on Twitter @ArtemYalanskiy. As well, MMAFighting.com confirmed with Amagov’s trainer at AMA Fight Club and his co-manager, Mike Constantino, that Amagov has some personal issues going on and that they would reevaluate his future in March. I won’t speculate what Amagov is dealing with, but as a fan of mixed martial arts, this is very disappointing news as I believe Amagov was just reaching his prime and I had high hopes for him moving forward in his UFC career. After an 11-2-1 start to his career, which included seven wins via T/KO, Amagov was signed by the UFC. He decided to drop down to welterweight, and he made his 170lb debut earlier this year at UFC on FUEL TV 9, winning a decision over Chris Spang. He then followed up that win over Spang with a KO win over TJ Waldburger at UFC 166 that really put him on the map as a prospect in the UFC welterweight division. The 27-year-old was booked to fight Jason High at UFC Fight Night 35, but recently pulled out of the fight for undisclosed reasons. Well, obviously we don’t know what those reasons are yet, but we do know now that it wasn’t just some sort of minor injury. As a journalist, I would really like to know what Amagov is dealing with just so I can understand the situation better, but, just like with St-Pierre, I respect Amagov’s privacy and if he doesn’t want to make this information public, then he doesn’t have to. And we shouldn’t press him to tell us what’s going on with him if he doesn’t want to. Hopefully Amagov’s situation changes, and when he reevaluates his future with his team in March, that he changes his mind and comes back even better than ever, but we really don’t know yet the severity of what he’s going on and it’s very possible it’s something that will indeed end his career. In the meantime, though, we can look back to his handiwork (footwork?) and marvel at it. Watch this KO that Amagov produced in the early days of his career and enjoy. Amazing.
