By Gus "Walk-Off" Fields
Seven straight wins. Zero losses inside the cage. And still, Muhammad Mokaev got a pink slip from the UFC in 2024 — a release that, by his own account, has never been properly explained.
"I'm still searching for answers," Mokaev told BBC Sport, describing a cut that defied the sport's usual logic: fighters who keep winning usually keep their jobs. Mokaev didn't. The flyweight, once considered one of the promotion's brightest prospects, was let go despite the unbeaten run, and he says the organization has offered him no clear reasoning since.
That kind of silence breeds its own story, and Mokaev has spent the time since turning the mystery into motivation. He told BBC Sport he still dreams of a UFC return — not as a grudging concession, but as the goal he's building toward every day he's out of the organization's cage.
There's something almost old-fashioned about that stubbornness. Combat sports chew through prospects fast, and plenty of cut fighters simply move on, chase paychecks elsewhere, or fade from view. Mokaev, by his own telling, hasn't done either. He's kept fighting for a door that closed on him without explanation, betting that a record like his — unbeaten, undefeated, unresolved — eventually forces someone to open it again.
Whether the UFC ever offers the answers Mokaev is looking for remains to be seen. For now, his case is a reminder that even winning records don't always come with guarantees.
Final score's the last thing that mattered here.
— Compiled from reporting by BBC Sport.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."