Trump Could Hand Kadyrov His First UFC Champion
Khamzat Chimaev—UFC superstar and Kadyrov’s favorite fighter—credits Trump for his U.S. return. Now, he’s on the verge of becoming champion.
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From Donald Trump’s takeover of D.C., to out-of-control wildfires sweeping across Europe and North America, to Israel’s far-right government edging closer to annexing more Palestinian territory—it's been a chaotic few weeks. So you’d be forgiven for missing this: Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov may finally get his first UFC champion this weekend…and he has Trump to thank for it.
On Saturday, Khamzat Chimaev—the UFC superstar and outspoken Kadyrov ally—will challenge Dricus du Plessis for the middleweight championship at UFC 319. The fight is set to take place on U.S. soil, which is significant because, until recently, Chimaev was barred from entering the country.
Last year, I reported exclusively for Sports Politika that Chimaev was barred from entering the United States, primarily due to his relationship with Kadyrov, who’s long faced U.S. sanctions. In 2020, the United States Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on Kadyrov’s fight club and MMA promotion — the first time a country had targeted his sports investments. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, OFAC stated that Kadyrov had “recruited for Russia’s war efforts through mixed martial arts clubs, enabling him and his units to continue their activity in Ukraine.” In response to the invasion, the State Department imposed visa restrictions on 910 Russians. While the list was never made public, sources close to the matter have suggested that Chimaev’s name was among those included.
How a UFC star was banned from entering the United States
The UFC reportedly wanted Khamzat Chimaev to headline UFC 300. However, the Chechen fighter is unable to enter the US due to his connections with warlord Ramzan Kadyrov.
The last time Chimaev competed on U.S. soil was on Sep. 10, 2022 at UFC 279. The visa restrictions came into effect 20 days later on Sep. 30, 2022. By the time Chimaev steps into the cage at UFC 319, it will have been nearly three years since his last fight in the U.S..
Chimaev would have likely continued fighting in Abu Dhabi had Trump not won the 2024 presidential race. The U.S. President is a fan of the UFC, whose leadership and fighters helped him win back the White House. It comes as no surprise that Trump would put an end to Chimaev’s visa troubles as a favor to UFC President Dana White and Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel, his former agent.
In an interview with the BBC, the Chechen fighter credited Trump for his ability to return to the UFC.
"This wasn't my bad. This wasn't my fault," Chimaev said about not fighting in the United States. "Everyone knows I didn't have the visa to [travel to] the US. That's why I didn't fight only once [but twice] in Abu Dhabi. So now Donald Trump is here, we go for a fight."
This isn’t the first time that a Trump administration has circumvented visa restrictions for a UFC fighter. In 2019, Richard Grenell, a political operative who served as the U.S. ambassador to Germany and acting director of national intelligence under Trump, helped secure a visa waiver for German-Moroccan UFC fighter Abu Azaitar to enter the U.S. despite his violent criminal past. You can read more of more reporting on Azaitar here.
If Chimaev wins the title, he would become Kadyrov’s first UFC champion — and it would be thanks in part to Trump, who helped secure his entry into the United States. The irony is hard to miss: while Trump is actively deporting migrants through ICE, he made an exception for a warlord’s favored fighter, all to do a favor for his UFC friends.
News
Canada will host Israel in Davis Cup despite pushback
In January 2024, I published an op-ed for The Guardian making a case for sports sanctions against Israel. 20 months later, the sports world has done next to nothing to pressure Israel to end its ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in Gaza.
In fact, despite the case being made stronger by the Israeli government’s active starvation of more than two million people in Gaza, countries continue to welcome Israeli athletes to participate in sports events. For example, Canada is expected to host Israel in the upcoming Davis Cup tennis tournament in September. Tennis Canada, which oversees tennis events in the country, has responded to calls to ban the match by defending “the principle of sport to bring unity, separate from political conflicts.”
These canned statements about “unity” through sports have become a cliche within the sports world. FIFA and the Olympic Games propagate this notion that sports are a harbinger of peace, though they offer no legitimate proof to back up their romanticized claims—just naive hope. The truth is that sports actually reflect the worst of our world: the corruption, the injustice, and the lack of humanity.
According to the Palestinian Football Association (PFA), at least 668 athletes have been killed by Israeli forces since the onset of the war in October 2023, including at least 339 footballers. Earlier this month, Suleiman al-Obeid—known as the Palestinian Pele—was killed by Israeli forces while waiting for humanitarian aid. At least eight others were killed by the IDF this month.
And while there has been some pushback, including a German football club that canceled the signing of an Israeli striker over his appalling anti-Gaza social media posts, the vast majority of sports organizations continues to hide behind claims of “unity” and “peace,” as though hundreds of Palestinian athletes haven’t already been slaughtered.
Some may argue against sanctions on the grounds that many affected athletes have no direct involvement in the war. But the reality is that sports serve as a potent tool of soft power for the Israeli state. Denying that platform — cutting off its means of reputation laundering and image management — is a straightforward way to pressure Israel to end its genocidal campaign. The fact that such measures have not already been implemented will leave a bloody stain on the entire sports community.
Trump to Lead LA28 Task Force
Last week, Trump announced that he would lead a special task force to ensure the Olympics that are set to be held in Democrat-governed Los Angeles are “safe, seamless and historically successful.” Trump also views the event as a
“premier opportunity to showcase American exceptionalism,” according to a White House statement.
Despite The Los Angeles Times arguing in an op-ed that the city should withdraw from hosting the Games due to Trump’s involvement, LA28 Chairman Casey Wasserman defended Trump’s decision to name himself as chair of the task force, arguing it “shows the importance of this event to the president and the federal government.”
Wasserman even handed Trump a box of Olympic medals from the 1984 games in LA during the White House ceremony announcing the task force. After a round of applause from those in attendance, Trump asked, “Can I say I won them athletically?”
US Ramps Up War on Trans Athletes
Last week, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services said it has now updated its immigration policy to restrict visa eligibility for Trans athletes and will now consider "the fact that a male athlete has been competing against women" as a negative factor when evaluating access petitions in categories such as O-1A for extraordinary ability, EB-1 and EB-2 green cards for highly skilled workers, and national interest waivers.
"Men do not belong in women's sports. USCIS is closing the loophole for foreign male athletes whose only chance at winning elite sports is to change their gender identity and leverage their biological advantages against women," said USCIS Spokesperson Matthew Tragesser through a statement on the federal agency’s website.
The fact that the USCIS, which is responsible for establishing policies regarding immigration services, is involving itself in the debate surrounding Trans athletes underscores how this narrative is embedded in the essence of Trump’s politics and the political institutions under his control.
McGregor Launches Petition to Get on Ballot for Irish Presidency
While British outlets have irresponsibly run with headlines such as Daily Mail’s Michael Flatley to challenge Connor McGregor for Irish Presidency and The Daily Telegraph’s King of the ring takes on lord of the dance, the truth is that there is almost no chance that Conor McGregor can run for Irish presidency.
Despite appearing alongside Trump at the White House on St. Patrick’s Day and claiming he would run for the Irish presidency, the disgraced former UFC star must also either be nominated by at least 20 members of the Oireachtas (Irish parliament), or by at least four of Ireland's 31 local authorities. There are simply no 20 Oireachtas members who will back the bid of a man found liable for raping and battering a woman in Dublin, and who has also faced other allegations of sexual assault in at least two other countries.
McGregor is widely unpopular across Ireland except among the country’s far-right reactionaries, who consider him a darling for his xenophobic anti-immigration rants. This is why he is now resorting to one last-ditch act of desperation: he launched a petition to circumvent Irish law.
What I’m Reading
Attention, Men: Books Are Sexy! [New York Times]
Men are reading less. Women make up 80 percent of fiction sales. “Young men have regressed educationally, emotionally and culturally,” David J. Morris wrote in a Times essay titled “The Disappearance of Literary Men Should Worry Everyone.”
The fiction gap makes me sad. A man staring into a phone is not sexy. But a man with a book has become so rare, such an object of fantasy, that there’s a popular Instagram account called “Hot Dudes Reading.”
The Pain of Perfectionism [The New Yorker]
The critic and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips has written that the superego, with its relentless demand for perfection, is a “boring and vicious soliloquist with an audience of one.” If so, why do we keep listening? Phillips suggests that it’s because the soliloquist promises to “know us in a way that no one else, including ourselves, can ever do.” Any avid self-deprecator immediately understands this logic: if we believe that the worst version of ourselves is the true one, we’re protected from being ambushed by our own inadequacy. Better to overestimate our flaws than to fail to see them in the first place. But this strategy is fundamentally isolating, leading us to create a brittle carapace of a “perfect” self that doesn’t need anything from anyone. Perfectionism estranges us from everyone else, Phillips argues, and traps us in endless conflict with ourselves: “We continually, if unconsciously, mutilate and deform our own character. So unrelenting is this internal violence that we have no idea what we’d be like without it.”
The Talented Mr. Bruseaux [The Atavist]
Nearly a decade into Prohibition, Chicagoans had become inured to a certain amount of murder and mayhem. But the daylight execution of a principled political reformer shocked the populace. A special prosecutor was appointed to bring the perpetrators to justice. His first task was to hire someone to lead the investigation into the killing—someone fearless and independent, free from influence by the city’s notoriously troubled police department. A series of reputable investigative agencies, however, failed to make any headway in the case. Frustrated, the prosecutor turned to an unlikely choice—a Black man, one who had been blazing an extraordinary path through the world of criminal investigation: Sheridan Bruseaux.
Should Police Officers Be More Like U.F.C. Fighters? [The New Yorker]
Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, has said that he wants to get mixed-martial-arts fighters to train his field agents. But a version of this is already happening, with law-enforcement agencies embracing Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
ICYMI
I'm writing a book
I signed a deal with Simon & Schuster to publish my first book, tentatively titled In the Shadow of the Cage.
On war, peace, and sports
It has been almost a year since FIFA president Gianni Infantino issued a plea for a temporary ceasefire in all conflicts for the duration of the 2022 World Cup in Qatar while having lunch with G20 leaders in Bali, Indonesia.
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