Who is Asxab Tamaev, MMA fighter promoting 'Mini Khabib' and Abdu Rozik's fight?

Russian fighter Asxab Tamaev has been one of the most talked-about people in the MMA community because of a fight he promoted a few days ago.

Hailing from Grozny, Chechnya, Asxab Tamaev is a 19-year-old mixed martial artist competing in the heavyweight department. According to Sherdog, he stands six feet tall and has one professional fight in his career. He fought against Ukrainian star Philip 'Marvin' Tretiak and secured a second-round submission win.

The fight took place in December 2018, when Asxab Tamaev was only 17.

Asxab Tamaev unleashed absolute carnage on Philip Tretiak in his MMA debut and submitted the Ukrainian in the center of the cage in dominant fashion.

Nicknamed the 'Russian KGB Hulk', Asxab Tamaev has earned the moniker because of his massive body mass and monstrous training videos he uploads to his social media channels.

During the build-up to his first fight, Asxab Tamaev claimed to have the thickest neck of any 17-year-old in the world with a girth of 54cm. News.com.au reported that he developed his ripped body with the help of curling, benching, and squatting with farm equipment.

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Asxab Tamaev promotes fight between Hasbulla Magomedov and Abdu Rozik

Asxab Tamaev recently made headlines, not for any bout of his own, but for officiating the fight between Russian TikTok star Hasbulla Magomedov a.k.a 'Mini Khabib' and Tajik YouTuber Abdu Rozik.

Asxab Tamaev uploaded a video of the face-off between the two online celebrities. The fight was set to take place on May 18, 2021.

No video clip of the actual fight has been made public yet by any of the individuals associated.

Hasbulla Magomedov and Abdu Rozik suffer from certain conditions that restrict their growth and give them a stature resembling that of a child. This has been the main attention-drawing factor behind the whole promotion.

Uliana Podpalnaya, the head of the Russian Dwarf Athletic Association, condemned the act, calling it 'unethical and wrong.'

"It's not even like a show fight – they get paid a lot of money and it’s a show to make people laugh. There’s nothing serious about this, this isn’t sport.”“This is unethical, wrong, from my point of view. It seems to me that only on the one hand it can be correct and beautiful – if martial arts among small people are made a Paralympic sport," Uliana Podpalnaya told Gazeta.ru (Translation courtesy: RT Sport)

While one half of the MMA community accepts the fight as regular entertainment, the other half looks at it as an offensive PR stunt.

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