With Ali Bagautinov, Jackson-Winkeljohn camp embracing Dagestani surge into UFC

(This story appears in today’s edition of USA TODAY.)

When 29-year-old Ali Bagautinov steps into the cage to fight UFC flyweight titleholder Demetrious Johnson at UFC 174 on Saturday, it’ll be the second week in a row that a UFC main event features a fighter from Dagestan, a small Russian republic that’s quickly become known to fight fans as a treasure trove of talented fighters.

The little republic in the North Caucasus region might only have about 3 million people scattered across roughly 20,000 square miles, but it seems to produce an inordinate number of top mixed martial arts fighters, many of whom end up in Albuquerque, N.M., at the gym owned and operated by famed trainers Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn.

According to Jackson, it started with lightweight Rustam Khabilov, who suffered a submission loss to Benson Henderson in the main event of UFC Fight Night 42 just this past weekend. When he first showed up on the advice of a former manager, Jackson said, he was the only Dagestani on the mats.

“Now we have a ton of them,” Jackson told USA TODAY Sports.

That’s fine by the renowned coach, who attributes a special combination of culture and lifelong martial arts training in sports like wrestling and combat sambo for the success of the Dagestani fighters.

“For one, they have a great tradition in sports,” Jackson said. “Even in the Soviet Union days, the Soviets pulled most of their great wrestlers from that region. The culture there in Dagestan is very feisty. They’ll fight at the drop of a hat, but they’re also very technical because they have this great tradition of wrestling. They come coachable, with a lot of competition experience.”

Their success comes as no surprise to Murat Keshtov, a coach and trainer at the K Dojo Warrior Tribe gym in Fairfield, N.J., which boasts a fight team made up almost entirely of fighters from that region. Keshtov was born in the North Caucasus, in the capital city of the tiny Karachai-Cherkessia Republic, and from the time he got his first glimpse of MMA he knew the athletes from his home region would thrive in this sport.

“I was always thinking, ‘Man, I wish my guys were here,’” Keshtov said. “‘They would win easily.’”

A lot of the success of Dagestani fighters has to do with the geography and history of the region, Keshtov said, as well as the heterogenous nature of the population, where even small republics might speak 30 different languages within their borders.

“It’s a very strategic point,” said Keshtov. “A lot comes and goes. Invaders come and go. The local people there were fighting off the Tatars, Genghis Khan times. Then the Russians came from the north to take over. They fought them for 100 years. … Eventually it becomes part of your culture without you realizing. If you’re a man there, especially, you have to be a fighter.”

It’s served them well in the UFC so far. Fighters like Bagautinov and Khabilov, along with lightweight Khabib Nurmagomedov, came seemingly out of nowhere to play important roles in their respective divisions.

If Bagautinov (13-2 MMA, 3-0 UFC) can beat the speedy Johnson (19-2-1 MMA, 7-1-1 UFC) this weekend at on the UFC 174 pay-per-view (10 p.m. ET) at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, he’ll become the first Dagestani to wear UFC gold.

“That’s my dream,” Bagautinov said. “For me, it’s something that I was looking forward to, and step-by-step I was going toward it. It’s going to be a final focal point of what I have been working and training toward for the last 15 years.”

As for Jackson, who’ll be in Bagautinov’s corner on Saturday night, he faces a little bit of a language barrier. He doesn’t speak Russian, and Bagautinov is still learning English.

“But pantomiming works pretty well,” Jackson said. “Plus, I do a pretty good Russian accent.”

For more on UFC 174, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

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