These dictators are bonding over fight sports
Ramzan Kadyrov’s presence at a boxing event in Saudi Arabia underscores the growing alliance among dictators with a penchant for combat sports.
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When DAZN briefly posted, then promptly deleted, an image revealing a VIP seat reserved for Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov—right behind rap legends Busta Rhymes and Missy Elliott—at a boxing event in Saudi Arabia last week, it set the stage for the troubling spectacle that lay ahead.
The state-sponsored event, dubbed IV Crown Showdown, took place in the Saudi capital of Riyadh during the grand opening of Riyadh Season 2024, the kingdom’s entertainment and sports festival. It was headlined by Chechen boxer Artur Beterbiev, who defeated Russian rival Dmitry Bivol by majority decision to unify boxing’s light-heavyweight titles.
In the immediate aftermath of the fight, Kadyrov—a warlord accused of countless human rights abuses, including the attempted purge of Chechnya’s LGBTQ+ community—could be seen jumping into the ring and embracing Beterbiev. Then, once the decision was announced in the Chechen fighter’s favour, he lifted the champion onto his shoulders and celebrated with his entourage.
Kadyrov has since released a montage video featuring plenty of propaganda footage of his interaction with Beterbiev following the fight.
“Artur did it, friends!” he wrote in the caption that accompanied the video on messaging platform Telegram. “With this historic triumph, he gave a gift to the entire Chechen people.”
Beterbiev, 39, was born in Chechnya and represented Russia during the Beijing and London Olympic Games. He later relocated to Montreal, Canada to pursue a professional boxing career and has fought almost exclusively in his adopted homeland, as well as in the United States. He has since become a Canadian citizen.
Yet despite his status in Canada, Beterbiev continued to maintain ties with the Chechen dictator. Whenever he returned to Chechnya, he was greeted with a hero’s welcome along with state parades in his honor. He posed with Kadyrov for numerous photo-ops and broke bread with the tyrant’s family.
Like many strongmen before him, Kadyrov has long used sports to enhance his cult of personality, bolster his reputation as a benevolent leader, and distract from ongoing abuses in Chechnya. Over the years, the dictator has hosted notable athletes such as Mike Tyson, Floyd Mayweather, as well as a host of UFC champions.
In 2015, Kadyrov founded the Akhmat Fight Club, a government-funded combat sports complex in Chechnya with separate divisions for MMA and boxing. Fighters were given stipends to train full-time at his facilities in the hopes of gaining international recognition. Several of those fighters are now featured in the UFC and other international organizations, while the Akhmat brand has expanded across the Russian Federation and Central Asia.
Kadyrov has also been known to reward fighters who successfully represent his regime with lavish gifts. Beterbiev, himself a member of Kadyrov’s fight club, was awarded a Mercedes Benz and bestowed the title of ‘Honorary Citizen of Grozny’ – one of the highest honors in Chechnya – in December 2021.
It is worth noting that Kadyrov’s Akhmat MMA fight club has been sanctioned by the U.S. treasury department for its role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Kadyrov had already faced sanctions for alleged human rights abuses.
Yet beyond Kadyrov’s attempts to rub shoulders with some of the world’s most successful fighters, the dictator has long used the combat sports arena as a means for diplomacy and to bond with fellow dictators.
Yes, you read that correctly: dictators are bonding over a shared love of prizefighting.
I first noticed this trend in 2017, when Kadyrov arrived in Bahrain for an official state visit with the kingdom’s royal family. During that trip, Kadyrov visited KHK MMA, a training facility founded by Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa, the fifth son of Bahraini King Hamad. Having competed in a pair of amateur MMA bouts himself, Sheikh Khalid was seeking to leverage the sport’s rising popularity as a form of soft power, much like Bahrain had successfully done with Formula 1.
Kadyrov’s visit to Sheikh Khalid’s gym resulted in a long-term exchange program between their respective fight clubs. Sheikh Khalid would even attend one of Kadyrov’s MMA events in Chechnya and sat on a raised dais besides Kadyrov, Mayweather and then UFC heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum. This shared bond went a long way in strengthening diplomatic relations between the two politicians.
Kadyrov would achieve similar success with the United Arab Emirates. He maintains a fruitful friendship with UAE president Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan—a relationship that led to the creation of the Zayed Fund in the Chechen capital of Grozny to support local businesses. In 2018, the fund pledged $50 million in Chechnya’s economic development. The following year, Kadyrov attended a UFC event in Abu Dhabi, where he sat alongside the UAE’s Minister of Tolerance Sheikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan.
It is also speculated that Kadyrov owns at least one upscale property in the UAE, including a residence in the prestigious Palm Jumeirah area of Dubai.
It was also in the UAE when Kadyrov bonded with Saudi’s de facto ruler Mohammed bin Salman during the 2018 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. The two were pictured in an embrace with UAE President Mohammed bin Zayed.
Kadyrov had already established relations with Saudi Arabia earlier that year when, at the invitation of MBS, he made an official visit to the kingdom. The two parities discussed strengthening bilateral relations between Russia and Saudi Arabia. This also underscored how Kadyrov is viewed as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Sunni Muslim envoy to the Middle East. In many ways, it is both Kadyrov’s shared religious beliefs and his penchant for combat sports that makes him such a compelling ally to Gulf state autocrats.
And while the Kremlin gets to reap the benefits of Kadyrov’s sports diplomacy, the Chechen dictator also stands to gain from his newfound alliances. In some cases, he is able to line his own pockets, as when the UAE donated millions to Chechen charitable funds controlled by Kadyrov in 2018. Or through increased influence and political sway, which offers him more leverage within Russia’s ever-changing political landscape.
Kadyrov’s relationship with Gulf state autocrats also enables him to maintain a presence at major combat sports events, especially as more of these high-profile showdowns are now being hosted in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This is especially beneficial to Kadyrov, as the dictator faces sanctions throughout the Western world. Needless to say, those sanctions do not apply in either the UAE or Saudi Arabia.
Of course, this fondness for combat sports is not exclusive to Kadyrov and Gulf state autocrats. Former U.S. President Donald Trump, who made a wide range of authoritarian statements on the campaign trail, maintains a strong relationship with UFC executives and fighters, with the organization going so far as to serve as the sporting arm of his presidential campaigns (Author’s note: This topic is the subject of a a three-part audio series debuting on Sports Politika later this week entitled In The Red Corner.)
Nevertheless, Kadyrov’s presence at the Beterbiev fight in Saudi Arabia was more than just a strongman getting his picture taken with the strong men he admires. It underscored the blossoming bromance between dictators with a penchant for combat sports, proving that modern diplomacy is less about negotiation and more about flexing muscles and throwing punches—literally and metaphorically.
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Watching Kadyrov hoist Berbetiev aloft made me seriously question my life choices.