UFC 296 – New Blood!

The world’s largest mixed martial arts (MMA) promotion bids farewell to 2023 this Saturday (Dec. 16, 2023) with UFC 296, a pay-per-view (PPV) card so name-heavy that it only had room for one newbie. On this edition of New Blood — the series that lives and dies based on how many fights promotions upload to YouTube — we checkout a Dagestani colossus with a 91 percent finish rate.

As always, episodes of the most recent Contender Series season are on ESPN+:

Shamil Gaziev

Weight Class: Heavyweight
Age: 33
Record: 11-0 (7 KO, 3 SUB)
Notable Victories: Greg Velasko, Darko Stosic, Pavel Dailidko, Kirill Kornilov

Gaziev — a training partner of Muhammad Mokaev at KHK MMA — went 9-2 as an amateur and undefeated (7-0) as a professional before scoring major wins in ARES FC and BRAVE CF. This success carried him to Contender Series, where he choked out fellow unbeaten, Greg Velasco.

An absolute fridge of a man at 6’4”, 259.5 pounds, Gaziev possesses enormous punching power and impressive raw strength to go along with it. Though he’s experimented with staying patient and utilizing jittery upper-body movement, he’s generally a squared-up stalker, walking opponents down and looking to blast their heads off with one or two punches at a time. He genuinely only needs one clean connection to send his opponent crashing to the mat, as seen in his three consecutive knockout victories.

That said, he’s held back by some worrying defensive habits. Beyond moving in and out in straight lines, he tends to keep his hands extremely low, especially during or after his punches. His head movement is very inconsistent; he showed a bit against Pavel Dailidko three fights back, though he couldn’t seem to move his feet at the same time. One fight later, his immobile head was an easy target for UFC veteran, Darko Stosic, who repeatedly hammered Gaziev with check hooks and even dropped him once before Gaziev snuck a bomb of an uppercut through his guard to put him away.

You can have poor head movement. You can move in straight lines. You can keep your hands too far away from your chin to properly protect it. You can be flat-footed. You can stand square. You just can’t do all those things at once if you don’t want to get your block knocked off.

For as dangerous as he is on the feet, Gaziev’s “Plan A” seems to be grappling. He’s not one for technical, high-speed double-legs, instead using the traditional big boy tactic of leaning forward and charging into the clinch before trying to wrench people down from the body lock. He’s got some knowledge of chain wrestling, as you’d expect from someone who trains with Mokaev, so stopping his initial shot won’t necessarily make him back off. He couldn’t get anything meaningful done from the top against Kirill Kornilov four fights back, but did pass Velasco’s guard with ease en route to the rear-naked choke, so he may be improving on that front.

Overall, though, his grappling success is decidedly mixed. Dailidko did a good job of stiff-arming and framing to keep Gaziev from tying up, while Stosic sprawled on the first shot so hard that Gaziev stuck to striking from then on. Kornilov spent virtually the entire first round of their fight underneath Gaziev, but then nearly wrenched his arm off with a kimura before sweeping into top position. While Gaziev did quickly make it to his feet, the exchange left him completely gassed midway through the second. Even Velasco nearly turned the tables on him. Indeed, Gaziev dropped him with his first punch and tried to jump on him, only for Velasco to effortlessly sit through and transition directly to Gaziev’s back.

Being big, powerful, and at least a functional grappler should be enough to put Gaziev on the fringe of Heavyweight contention, though I don’t see him cracking the Top 10 anytime soon. I also don’t see him having much fun in his UFC debut against Martin Buday. That’s because “Badys” may be slow and easy to hit, but he’s also tough as nails and exhausting to fight. Considering how badly Gaziev’s cardio failed its last test, he’s screwed if he can’t put Buday down inside the first few minutes.

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Remember that MMAmania.com will deliver LIVE round-by-round, blow-by-blow coverage of the entire UFC 296 fight card right here, starting with the early ESPN+ “Prelims” matches online, which are scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. ET (simulcast on ESPN2 at 8 p.m. ET), before the pay-per-view (PPV) main card start time at 10 p.m. ET (also on ESPN+).

To check out the latest and greatest UFC 296: “Edwards vs. Covington” news and notes be sure to hit up our comprehensive event archive right here.