Our Deal league sports director Armen Ghulyan spoke about tactical shortcomings in an interview with Alexandra Shablia in a title fight with Usman Nurmagomedov at the Bellator tournament on September 7 in San Diego.
Former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov’s first cousin Usman Nurmagomedov defended his Bellator lightweight championship belt, defeating Shabliy by unanimous decision. The fight went the full distance, with two of the three judges awarding the challenger just one round out of five.
— What did Alexander Chabliy do wrong in this battle?
— Sasha followed the example of his opponent, whose task was to work at a distance and, at his discretion, shorten or break it. Sasha accepted these rules of the game, waited, looked for moments for his attack in the position. And in the end I worked like this for five rounds. In my opinion, Alexander Shablius had to put pressure on him, rush at his opponent, load him with blows, press him, look for the development of work at the middle distance. He probably could not act in this format because he was afraid of Usman’s attacks, but as it turned out, for five rounds he simply followed the example of his opponent and never became active.
Perhaps, in training with other opponents, Alexander performed such work with pressure, actively walked forward, struck or simply shot from a distance while standing. But in a fight that was no longer going in his favor, he did not rebuild himself, did not begin to apply even more pressure, and only in the fifth round did he begin to work as he should have worked throughout the fight. Let us remember his fight with Eduard Vartanyan, which took place on a collision course. In the first round, Edik constantly moved forward and applied pressure, even after a strong miss. Here, Alexander had to enter with serious series of multiple blows, pressing on the opponent, because in principle, Alexander has a very good punching technique.
— Why did the battle turn out to be quite boring for the viewer?
— Because Alexander had a good margin of safety, despite the fact that the fight went according to the plan of Nurmagomedov, who shot from a distance and looked for opportunities for more accurate and dense blows. Once he shook Alexander with a high kick and rushed to finish him off, but there was only one such episode, it seems, in the fourth round. And so Alexander, for the most part, could not find his distances and impose his work, “Gulyan told .
Live broadcasts of mixed martial arts tournaments can be seen on and Match! Fighter, as well as on the websites matchtv.ru and sportbox.ru.
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I am Ashley Ortiz and I am a professional journalist working for Athletistic. My specialty is in sports journalism, particularly boxing. I have written articles for some of the most renowned publications on the subject, and my work has been featured across both print and digital media platforms.
