Chapo Trap House - 787 - Octagonal Relations feat. Karim Zidan (12/4/23)

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Sports journalist Karim Zidan returns to the show to catch up with Felix about the world of combat sports and their attendant politics. They discuss responses to Israel/Gaza in the MMA world, developments in Saudi Arabia’s use of sports for soft power, political use of fight sports in Chechnya, and the deep bromance between Dana White and Donald Trump. Find Karim's writing at: https://www.sportspolitika.news/ Follow Karim at: https://twitter.com/ZidanSports Prod note: we’re putting out two public episodes today, partially to re-align the episode numberings to keep Monday eps even and Thursday eps odd. Obviously something only I care about, but also just letting you know to expect a regular Patreon ep this Thursday.

Music Sports, their past time for some lifestyle for others. For most of our listeners, they are the thing that the normal members of their families watch while they are editing the Assassin's Creed Wiki during Thanksgiving. But beyond that, they're a vital tool for Statecraft. In a long overdue and much requested return, we are joined today by Kremes Adon, who has written extensively on the many connections

between sports, international politics, the use of sports by malign state actors, and the new forms of diplomacy emerging from modern trends in sports investment. Cream, thank you for joining us today. Hey Felix, I can't believe it's been five years, I think, since the last time I've been on Chapo. Can you believe that?

Yeah, holy shit. I was like, when I was putting our notes together, I was like looking up your last appearance on the Patreon. It was fucking 2017. Oh my God, six years ago. Oh, okay. Yeah, it like made me feel old. I was like,

Oh, how? I felt like more recent than that. Fuck. I don't. So much has happened since then. Like while while I was running the questions, I was like, holy shit, I can't ask him to recap like six years of Cotterall.

Like we'd be here all day. Oh yeah, no, we really would be. Well, we will get to that eventually, but Karim, since you, you know, you write a lot about sports washing, that's something we talked a lot about on your last appearance, but instead of that, I'm sort of curious to know, sort of about the MMA world's response to Gaza. Could you talk a little bit about what's been going on with active roster

UFC fighters and the sort of weird dance that Dana White has been doing with UFC flag policy? Oh, absolutely. And I really think just for your listeners to have some background on this, understand the contrast between the UFC and the response from its athletes versus mainstream sports in the United States. Let's go back and say just right after the attacks happened on October 7th, I think the responses were immediate from say LeBron James, the NBA, you know, Major League Baseball, other major US leagues, they immediately release all these statements saying they stand with Israel.

And they made no mention of Palestine then, of course. And you know, in the month or so thereafter, as the death toll continues to rise, they've still made no statement with regards to Palestine. So the hypocrisy is quite striking there. So it's interesting to me that even the fans at that point were responding to LeBron James. I remember one comment that was really interesting was that the picture of Malcolm X was posted to LeBron James and it said, what part... It was a picture of, I think, him reading Malcolm X's autobiography. And the comment said,

what part of Malcolm X's autobiography told you that it's okay to support oppression? So that's kind of the incidents happening in the mainstream. And you've got, of course, like flag banning taking place in the MLS and elsewhere. And they say that it's just general flag banning that you can't bring in any national flag. But I mean, it's all occurring right after the October 7th attack, and as we're into this razo-war. So, I mean, it's very clear what's actually happening. So let's contrast that with what's occurring in the UFC. Very quickly, you had UFC fighters speaking out. I mean, and you could see the tribalism almost immediately there.

You had vast majority of the Muslim fighters. I mean, your dagestanic contingent from Khabib Narmagomedov to Islam Makhashev, etc. and the list goes on to Khamsa Chaya from Chachniya, all responding straight away, putting out statements in solidarity with Palestine to one extent or another, really coming out in full-throated support for Palestine. On the other end of the spectrum, you've got Natan Levy, who's an Israeli UFC fighter, coming out in very, very strong support for Israel. I think things have since descended from then on, unfortunately.

Let's go back to a couple of UFC paper views ago. So UFC 294 took place in Abu Dhabi and that card featured Islam Maheshyev in the main event and Hamza Chemiyev in the Komein. So here's two interesting things that happen to that event. Hamza Chimaya won his fight and then proceeded to give this sort of post-fight speech in the octagon where in English he called for peace. Just a general, you know, ambiguous call for peace, really not referencing anything specific, nothing in Sindhieri, in any way shape or form. whatever in the world who cried and cheerio Afghanistan

police time you said doesn't matter when kids died it's hard guys I love the kids and then he takes the mic from Joe Rogan and turns and starts speaking in Chetchen thanks to my country Chetchen so the translation to what he said in Chetchen was first of all he was speaking directly to Ramzan Kadeerov calling him his chief and saying, please send me to Palestine. I want to die in Palestine fighting with my brothers.

So that was his actual statement in Chechen. You see the contrast between that to what he said in English. Islam Maheshyev, on the other hand, also had sort of a much simpler sort of eye-stand with Palestine statements after his find. He was draped in a Palestinian flag as well. Interestingly enough, all that was edited out of the YouTube footage that the UFC later posted online, which I mean. You want to talk about hypocrisy, UFC that seen that claims to be willing to stand for any politics and has been very open about letting its fighters speak out in support of, say, Donald Trump, right?

But when it came to Gaza, it's where they seem to have drawn the line when it comes to Palestine. So another example of how things have sort of deteriorated in mixed martial arts is there is an Israeli MMA fighter. His name is Zaheim Ghazali and he goes by the Israeli Batman. He used to once fight for Bellator. So he posted some really pretty disgusting photos on Instagram at one point. One of them was of an artillery shell that he had inscribed with the names of Muslim MMA fighters, mainly Rabib, Islam Maheshav, Hamza Chimayev, and the Palestinian UFC fighter, Bilal Muhammad. So we're seeing some pretty awful things taking place in MMA in a way that's just in mainstream

sports, a lot of athletes are staying silent, have only really seen Michael Bennett from the NFL actually speak out and he's retired athlete anyway. Many athletes are saying that they just don't want to put out a statement for one reason or another, but here's the UFC. And I mean, the UFC's never been shy of controversy and there's tons of it to go around right now Felix. I saw the thing with right in the Fender's name on the artillery piece, that was just fucking shocking. I thought the specific thing that happened

with Islam Makachev and the flag was particularly interesting because I did see some people on Twitter, like, you know, most people watch this through paper, view in America, but it's televised through TV deals and some other countries. And I did see some people say while this was going on that they didn't televised like, you know, any, any part where he was displaying the flag or like the walk out. And this like, it was sort of one of those perfect UFC things that happens where Dana Kind of paints himself into a corner because you remember like about a month before

The attacks Dana made this big show about how like The flag bands fucking stupid. We're done with it. We're done with it. And first of all, like, he's the one who instituted it. Like he's, he's acting like some invisible hire up told him to do it. No, he's the single person behind the flag band policy. And he was like, if you're offended by a flag, fuck you. And then of course, you've had reasons. Remember, he wouldn't give any reasons, either as to why he was banning the flag. He's like, oh, you know why. And then the same thing happened when he unbanded. People are like, well, what happened? What changed?

He's like, oh, you know why? What you know, what changed? It's like, well, give us an answer. Yeah. Yeah. No, it just it defied reason. And of course, like, yeah, they edited out like any reference to Palestine. I mean, I understand the not broadcasting the message to Kediraov. Actually, that was the only one that was broadcast, believe it or not. What? I'm not even kidding. I believe even if you go back to the YouTube page at least at the time when I was writing my article about it, that T trechen translation was still live and online. I think if I have to guess, really when it's stuff like this, when it comes to you,

if see it's always incompetence, really. And I think they just didn't have a translation. They assumed it was nothing important and they just let it hang there for a while. And I know it definitely aired live because I watched it. So, yeah, it's an interesting one. Yeah, no. I mean, I knew it aired live because I watched it. So yeah, it's an interesting one. Yeah, no, I mean, I knew it aired live, but like the fact that it's in like, replays and stuff is like, you would figure that they would have at least someone on staff who speaks Chetchen after all this time. After so many, like

so many Chetchen, LinkedIn, and Dagestani fighters have dominated, like all these divisions, they would have someone who could go, hey, listen to what this guy said. They definitely have, even when it came to Dagestani, they're always lucky with regards to translated because it was usually Habib's, his other manager, not Ali Abdulaziz, the Egyptian, but the other manager, R Ali Abdelaziz, the Egyptian, but the other manager, Rizwan Magomedov, is Dagestani, so they'd usually have him and the Octagon translating for them. But I don't think they've had ever really anybody translating Chechen for them.

And yes, this is a great example of where it worked out against them. Yeah, I think, like, in general, just like in the institutional sports world, as you talked about earlier, there is a policy towards like Israel Palestine, and it's a pretty codified, well articulated policy of just either not touching it or showing overt support for Israel. Whereas with the UFC, it's like they're trying to do the same thing as any other major sports league or team or anything, but they're just too incompetent to even pull that off. The result is just pure incoherence. Oh yeah, it's very characteristic really for the UFC

to display this level of incompetence with something like this, but also the hypocrisy is so stark, Felix at the same time. When you think of just last weekend, the most recent pay-per-view event that they had, they had, it took place in Madison Square Garden and at one point, you had Donald Trump walk out with Dana White, with Kid Rock, with Tucker Carlson, and with

Donald Trump Jr. That's a political statement right there in their Mad about Reza, seriously? Yeah, and Dana, whenever Dana talks about Trump, It's always the same thing. It's like, hey, you know, when we just, Fred first bought the UFC and we didn't know this would work out, Donald Trump came to one of our events in Atlantic City. And that was huge. And so he tries to characterize like supporting Trump is like overtly non-political. So like this is just his friend who really did him a solid like 20 years ago. That's and that's something it's it's almost like a lie. He's only trying to pass off to sports fans and the MMA media because honestly it's not

like he's not making appearances regularly on Fox, you know, at a variety of shows from Sean Hannity to Tucker Carlson. I mean, he had Tucker Carlson do like a three-part sit-down with him, and they went to his office, and Tucker Carlson was gonna have an orgasm over the random things in Dana White's office at the time. The connection between the UFC, Dana White, and Trump's GOP is very, very clear, and I don't think they've ever really attempted to hide it very much. If anything, they've just taken advantage of it to make it part of the brand. They see themselves as apparently counter-culture, right?

And this is the, they figured out their target audience in the United States, and that really hasn't changed since the UFC was taken over by Endeavor. If anything, the UFC under Ari Emanuel has become even more overtly political between its relationship with Donald Trump and onwards in other countries. It's opening itself up to other markets now between China, between Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and established partnership there. They have no qualms with working with autocrats and authoritarian regimes around the world. It's so interesting because like that sort of like pro Trump like this general universe of content, right?

Whether it's like pro Trump or talker or like bar or stool. A certain type of like male demographic they're going for, right? And being like overtly pro-Israel isn't really like part of that set of things, even if Trump himself as president was, you know, incredibly pro-Israel. And you know, he moved the embassy to Jerusalem, he did all these things, but just as a cultural thing, that's not really part of it anymore. But it's so weird that they embrace this branding of controversy and fuck your feelings, but they're just terrified of pissing anyone off by acknowledging this, acknowledging that anything is happening in Gaza. Like having any of their fighters even show concern, it really just makes them look terrified.

Well, it does because I mean, they're walking a very strange tightrope here, aren't they? By trying to expand the brand and grow it and really present themselves as mainstream building sponsorships and partnerships, unlike they've ever done before. I mean, the UFC is far more profitable than it's ever been. It makes well over a billion dollars in revenue a year. That's incredible for the organization. It does that off the back of exploitative labor of fighters at the end of the day. But this has long been the UFC's brand

as far as I'm concerned. It doesn't change very much here, really. Yeah, yeah, like the brand is sort of like the appearance of boldness or the appearance of not caring. When in fact, these are people who, you know, like anyone with a multi-billion dollar business care very much. Exactly, exactly.

But I mean, Dana White's still going to go off. And I think he just recently said that sponsors were very mad or one of his main sponsors. He didn't cite who in the UFC was very upset about, I think it was the Donald Trump walkout or something like that. And Dana White apparently, he told the media, he's like, I told that sponsor to go fuck himself. So, I mean, I wonder if that's something

that Dano White's gonna get a talking to from you know, Ari manual afterwards. Or because to me, it just still seems like Dano's operating as if this is the old UFC under the Fertida brothers where it was all about them being niche and fighting back and standing up to the man, etc. But I don't think they realized just how much they've just become the man in that sense now, really. They are a corporation like no other from the exploitation to the pursuit of profit at the expense of absolutely

anything else. That is the UFC through and through. And Donald Trump fits perfectly into that. And I mean, he is, this is a mutually beneficial thing. It's not just like it's just a UFC that's benefiting from this. I mean, I don't know if you've got to see this feel like, but a couple of months ago, Donald Trump sat down for an interview with the UFC podcast thing called UFC unfiltered. It was with Matt Sarah. And I can't remember the other guy that, that's Jim Norton. Yeah, that's exactly a Jim Norton and Matt Sarah. And the whole interview would struck me about it as I,

because I stand down to watch it thinking he's gonna just take this over and make it political. But actually there wasn't a single mention of politics whatsoever. It was a sit down where he talked about his love of, you know, boxing, his favorite boxers back in the day, his experiences with Mike Tyson and whatnot. You look at the comment section beneath that.

In the YouTube clip or anywhere else, really where it was shared. A lot of the comments say, oh my goodness, I didn't realize Trump was so knowledgeable about the sport. It's so cool to see a president who's this knowledgeable. Trump is benefiting in a multitude of ways. His relationship with the UFC presents him. If you can even believe this as this masculine figure is a multitude of ways. His relationship with the UFC presents him. I mean, if you can even believe this, as sort of this masculine figure,

is a show of strength to a certain extent. I mean, that only really works on a certain audience. I look at it and I roll my eyes, and I'm sure you do as well, but it works on some people. And then at the same time, he's able to reach out to this more apolitical audience in the first place.

It's not even interested in listening to politics, but it finds it appealing that one of these actual political figures out there is just another guy and just like them and can shoot the shit about Mike Tyson and stuff like that. So it's effective strategy and combat sports somehow falls into part of the presidential campaigning as it's done for the last two elections. It's crazy. Yeah, and that, yeah, that Trump appearance on the U.S. podcast, that's a very efficient, just in a nutshell, that's kind of what sports washing is at the end of the day. In its most base vulgar form, it is using sports so that a very not normal entity, whether

it is a country or just an individual politician doing it, so that they appear as normal. Like that really is it. It's just whether it's Saudi Arabia doing it or Donald Trump. It's a way for someone or someplace that's incredibly weird and unrelated to appear as such. Absolutely. It's a phenomenal form of reputation laundering and for Donald Trump, it works great. I mean, especially at a point where he's facing all sorts of charges and court cases and hearings and in the lead up to an election. It's a great time to win over a generally growing, you know, nihilists and apolitical and apathetic base that exists sound there.

When you look at the world and the state of the world, it's not exactly like everybody psyched up to go vote right now. So he's appealing to people in a very different way, whether it works long-term or not, that's really not my specialty here. But I did find that interview very interesting because it was also, unlike any of the ones he's done before Felix, really, even when he's, he's always had, Dana White come to his rallies, for instance, in Las Vegas, et cetera.

And he introduced him and talked about, oh, Dana, he made a lot of money, and I've helped Dana make all this money. It always comes down to me and what I've done, which is Donald Trump's way. I mean, he's a narcissist through and through, textbook narcissist, but this really was a very different interview from him. So, he's either narcissist through and through, textbook narcissist. But this really was a very different interview from him. So he's either got phenomenal PR people we working with him. And I believe

actually someone from the UFC formerly worked with the UFC's communication team is actually a member of Trump's campaign right now from non-mistaken. So there's another connection for you right there. That might really be how this is being linked. But it's either that or he's realized he needs to evolve his strategy a little bit here. Yeah, and there's sort of an incredible parity between him and the O.C. both. And, you know, how you said that the O.C. has this branding of like, you know, we're not, we're not some pussy-ass normal Fortune 500 company. We don't, you know, fuck your feelings. We don't care what sponsors we offend. When at the end of the day, they can duck themselves

exactly as like, you know, any other massive company you could think of would. Trump is the same way where he has this branding of not being an outsider, but in reality, in actual practice, as the president, he was for the most part like any other bad Republican president he would have. I mean, yeah, I mean that's maybe that's birds of the feather right there, why Dana White's and Donald Trump relates to each other so much, right?

Yeah. At this point, they're in each other's company a lot. So there must be something beyond sort of the, let's get that picture for our fan bases. There's clearly something there between them. Call it a bear man of sorts. Yeah, unfortunately, I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of that.

Oh, yeah, there's no doubt about it. And I mentioned really earlier, but you didn't know he was here. I just said, you know, he's a champion. He's a winner. He's been a friend of mine for a long time. He's a tough cookie. He's the kind of people that made our country great. Truly, they made our country great.

He started off with two people fighting each other. Then he got four people fighting each other. Then he got a fighting each other, each other. Then he got six and eight and twelve. All of a sudden, people started watching and looking, and I was proud to hold his first event. That's why he loves me. They didn't want they said it's too dangerous. Nobody would take it. I'm the only one that said, take it. We'll take it. And he has been my friend for a long time. He's the UFC president. And they just sold the company. He started it off for about $30. And they just sold it for $4 billion. And the people that bought

it said, we're not buying it unless Dana White stays back and runs it. So Dana White, come on up, he's now a very wealthy guy. Well, let's segue now into the part of the world that last time you were here, the UFC already was doing a lot of business here, but things seem to have exploded in the last few years, especially. I was reading some of your articles about Saudi Arabia's sports strategy, and I noticed that you made a distinction between sports washing, which Saudi Arabia definitely does, and a more sophisticated form of like state craft that they're doing through sports. Could you talk a little bit about how their strategy has evolved with their sports investment because they've been making major moves in the last three years alone?

Oh, absolutely. So, it's funny actually that you asked this question because I was just in Michigan at an Arbor giving an lecture exactly about this topic, the evolution of Saudi sports strategy from 2016 on to where we are in 2023 now, and how this has really gone beyond sportswashing. So as we mentioned, sportswashing, we're defining it as governments using sports or weaponizing them as a form of distracting from human rights abuses or as a form of reputation laundering. Well, that was really only Saudi strategy I'd say for the first few years.

Let's say up until 2019, 2020. And I'll explain why. That was really at the point. If you remember Felix, with the rise of Hamad bin Salman, he went on this sort of reform campaign in the United States, didn't he? He was well-to-do, and open arms, really, by all mainstream media, they all called him the reformer. You know, Saudis about to change dramatically because of this reformer. And then came, you know, the assassination and dismemberment of Jamal Khashoggi, and that really damaged that image, at least for a few months, I really put a dent into that image. But what Saudi had at that time really interestingly was a relationship with the WWE. And when we talk about entities that are led by interesting characters like Dana White for the UFC, well Vince McMahon and the WWE is definitely one that you have to mention.

And another person who has a phenomenal relationship with Donald Trump. But the WWE had just held its first event in Saudi Arabia in April 2018 and that event was a complete propaganda showcase. I mean, we're talking now about scripted entertainment rather than sports. They were really able to dedicate the show to showcasing Saudi Arabia as a reformed and evolving and changing nation. And I mean, they had opened up the stands to families and to women, etc. So it was a great way to really emphasize that point. And every once in a while, they'd stop the broadcasts to take you around Jetta or Riyadh

and talk about the tourism and the opportunities, etc. And at one point, they had, you know, the WWE found it's two, it's two Persian-like American wrestlers. It's two wrestlers with Irani origins, brought them out, paraded them to the stage to booze from the crowd. This is at the point still when Saudi Arabia still had plenty of tension with Iran. And then they brought out two local Saudi wrestlers to kick their asses, and I had never seen.

Oh my God. Oh, bird display of propaganda on a WWE show. It's a still a show like any other show that you're paying for to watch as an American and you're paying for complete utter Saudi propaganda. I mean, that's how powerful that relationship was and to put this into perspective for people, the WWE is reportedly being paid upwards of $50 million per show they do there. That's more than the gate they make for their WrestleMania event, which is the biggest event WWE does. So, safe to say, really Felix that WWE had a lot at stake here. So, their second event was scheduled for November 2018, which was just a few weeks

after Khashoggi was assassinated. And the State Department tried to step in and the US officials tried to step in to stop the event from happening to really, you know, try and convince Vince McMahon not to go forward with the event, but he ended up announcing saying, you know, we have a deal with Saudi and we're about to go through with it. And they did. They went back in November and acted like everything was perfectly normal. He held a second propaganda show and it was all fine. That was, I'd say, the height of Saudi sports washing. For me, the way I visualize it, because despite the fact that Saudi was facing, Saudi government and Hamad bin Salman was facing, probably the biggest smear to his or stain to his facade that he had built, he still was able to convince the sports organizations to come and to normalize,

to continue to normalize the country. That was the boon for them at the time, and thereafter, they started holding major boxing events, including big heavyweight showdowns, right? The Saudi Arabia's huge boxing hub, now I'd say. The Formula One started coming over, they started holding golf events as well, right? It started coming in from there, and eventually eventually they bought, they managed to take, complete a takeover of Newcastle FC from the English Premier League in the 2021. And apparently the Premier League was given these legally binding assurances, the Saudi state would not be involved. But the

entity that purchased Newcastle was the Public Investment Fund, which is Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, which currently has well over $800 billion to just spend an invest right there. And it's chaired by Muhammad bin Salman. So the idea that there's a distinction between the Saudi state and its sports strategy is absolutely ridiculous. But here's where a lot of people would say, well, the Newcastle example is sports washing. Felix, I think it's a bit more complex than that, just when you buy a football club. You've managed to inherit a legion of loyal fans who are now not just a willingly buying

the idea that you are a great country. That's step one, but they are now active participants in it. They are not only just complicit, but many of them are willing propagandists for Saudi Arabia. There are entities in Newcastle that call themselves the Saudi boys now, right? After all, Poulond, they'll go to the events wearing the thugs and the whole thank you Saudi Arabia. They're very delighted with what's happened and it's hard to blame a lot of these fans because Newcastle was in a really tough state in the English Premier League and I mean

ended up finishing fourth last season as in the Champions League now and is doing quite well for itself. So I mean, some people would say, well you know, it was worth it, but that's what Saudi Arabia is trying to do. It's buying influence at this point. It's buying your silence either through, you know, checkbook diplomacy. Truly, just flant, checkbook diplomacy. Seriously, just I will pay you to like me. And that's what Saudi Arabia did with Newcastle United. But since then, it's expanded even more. They're just getting the 2034 World Cup.

And that came to them with no votes. I mean, people were in uproar Felix in 2010 when Qatar got it and we're talking about brief cases of money being exchanged and the vote was rigged and all sorts of reports came out. People were in uproar then. Saudi Arabia got the world cup in 2034 without a vote, without any formalities, just by Gianni and Fintino, the FIFA president announcing it's going to Saudi Arabia. After they did everything possible to rig the 2031 so that nobody could compete in 2034.

By that I mean that in 2030 the event's going to take place between Morocco, Portugal and Spain. And then there's also going to be three matches taking place in Latin America, which now puts those continents out of the running for the following World Cup because you're ineligible to once again bid on the the following World Cup leaving only a handful of Confederation's possibly competing with Saudi Arabia primarily Asia, which is where Saudis bid is and Oshyana, which has New Zealand Which is not really going to be a football nation is it so Saudi Arabia was just given this silver platter gold platter Actually to just could completely come and take over the sport. That's what it's really doing here.

So beyond the fact of sports washing, when we're talking about basic reputation laundering, I really think that some men has reached the point where he doesn't care anymore. We're seeing Saudi Arabia's human rights abuses actually go up right now. We're seeing really cruel and harsh prison sentences being handed out

for people tweeting anonymously, just tweeting their discontent with the state of affairs. And it might not even be a very political tweet. Some of the tweets I saw are very tame, but they're handing down sentences that are harsher than in Egypt where I come from. And that's really, really saying something, right? But yeah, yeah, like I could this is the type of thing. I mean, like I said, I just gave a lecture on this and I spoke for 90 minutes straight. So this is the kind of thing that if you let me go, Felix, I won't stop. So jump in and no, no problem. No, no problem at all. No, I think this is like fascinating because like I've never like really followed pro wrestling, but their relationship with the WWE, as you

pointed out, it seemed like it was their partner of last resort. That was the only major sports entertainment brand that they could still work with them after the Kishogi thing. The Kishogi thing, I don't think people would have taken it well, had it happen at any time, but it happened in a really disinvent, disinvented just time for them internationally, and especially with the American media, because there was, you know, you could link it to like Trump's embrace of Saudi Arabia, the way that he was sort of won over during his first visit there.

It tied into this broader public iteration of journalists in America. It allowed like, you know, people like Jim Acosta to sort of like compare themselves to Kishogi in this kind of sneaky way. And it really like, it was such a dumb move because they pissed off an incredibly useful group of people, American journalist.

And they were painted into a corner for this time. But like you said, it really seems to have taken on this new, more sophisticated form. Probably since like China brokered that, uh, datant with Iran, like that's, everything seems to stem from that. And like, uh, MBS himself, his rule, his era, it's, I guess it's sort of like a brain damage version of, uh of King Faisal. It's the same time. It's like he has a similar ambition for both modernization and moving their weight around

in the region outside of the ages of the United States, sort of moving independently of the United States more and more. But that Newcastle United thing, in particular, is so interesting because it adds to the image that MBS wants so badly, the image of hyper-competence. You can do whatever awful thing you want, whether it's killing people for tweets or the war in Yemen, if you have the appearance of someone who can get

anything done very quickly. Oh yes, and he, I think the new castle is one is really, really interesting because yeah, it was one of those moments where he immediately made himself inevitable, really. The fact that they were able to complete this takeover despite everything that happened, despite all the human rights abuses and all the uproar that the media was putting up a fight in the United Kingdom and particularly over this topic. And the fact that it still ended up going through really showed that

Hammond Binsalman had almost strategized incorrectly to begin with. When he went on his reform campaign, and this might be me looking at hindsight for him rather than what actually occurred here, but I really think they focused so hard on the sports-washing element to begin with. They really thought, you know, we're going to take this soft power, let's attract them slowly and lure them in approach to both sports and to the media in general, which is when we saw this whole campaign, the facade that was put up for

Hamad bin Salman. But when he was actually caught in the act and he realized, all right, you know what, the jig is up. And I can't really lie about this thing anymore. Well, he took a far more aggressive and direct approach, didn't he? With takeovers of actual sports teams. He could have been planning this beforehand, sure, but it just goes to show you the evolution of the interest in sports. Another great example is their hostile takeover of the PGA tour.

I mean, I know everybody's calling it a merger, but let's be real Felix. How is poaching top players and then litigating as aggressively a sound hereby a death threatening antitrust lawsuits? You know what I mean? At the end of the day, that's really intimidating. Your stake, the stake holders and the PJs were leading to a hostile takeover. They made it basically inevitable. Again, I use that term because really that's how I feel about Saudi sports right now.

We're in a position that no matter what you're facing, they're coming at you with more resources and far more ambition. And as you mentioned, the leader who really seems to think that he can emerge as a regional hegemon. Now, we can debate this topic for a while, Felix, because while I think had we had this conversation, saying January or February 2023, right after the Iran deal was broken, I would have been more confident and Muhammad bin Sanman truly being able to take that position. But it's becoming more and more clear that he has a vision for Saudi and Saudi nationalism that doesn't necessarily include a Arab sort of nationalism or more connectivity between

the region. In that sense, I don't think he really wants connectivity between the region. In that sense, I don't think he really wants to lead the region as much as he wants to dominate it through Saudi Arabia. So the Iran deal was interesting because it showed that he was willing to be diplomatic. But a few weeks ago, Saudi Arabia welcomed the world to what they called Readd season, this big winter festival, this annual festival,

and what they did is they started at the event, they inaugurated it with a boxing match, one between former UFC heavyweight champion, Francis Engano and WBO heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury. And this event you want to talk about glitz and glamour and all that stuff, the Saudi brought that in space, they brought celebrities from around the world. You had M&M, you had Kanye West. You had everybody you could think of was, Cristiano Ronaldo was sitting there in the front.

It really was a whos-who list. And the kid, the ring, the boxing ring was brought out from under the ground. There was an opening ceremony for the match. They really put out all the stops. But here's the thing. They did that while the rest of the region was actually in basically a state of mourning having cancelled all events because of the war in Raza.

Everybody else, including in Egypt, where I was at the time, had cancelled a film festival on the Red Sea, which would have attracted less attention as a big boxing match to begin with, and they still cancelled it because they thought it wasn't really the time for us to be celebrating or to be hosting these events. The entire region took that decision. And yet here's Saudi Arabia saying no no no no no no we've been planning this for months we're going ahead anyway. It was that level of selfishness that told me no MBS is in this for himself rather than in this to present even a facade that he is an Arab leader.

He doesn't really care, I don't think about. Right now, I believe that he'd see the current issues, the taking place, the war and raza, the Palestinian cause as a nuisance and an obstacle rather than a pivotal objective of his rule or a pivotal policy point at all as a matter of fact. And we're really seeing that and it was interesting that sports was that magnifying lens for this incident. So that's currently how I feel about this.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because like he did, he had that phone call with Raezy. I'm sure I'm fucking up the pronunciation of his last name. The president of Iran, which was, it was a big deal in and of itself, you know, just that they publicly have this call about Gaza, about the Palestinian cause. But like, I do agree with you that I get the sense from MBS and pretty much every Saudi monarch after King Faisal that the Palestinian cause is more or less like a nuisance, that they have to pay a certain amount of lip service

to it. They maybe will pay for the construction of something and God's every once in a while. They'll issue a strongly worded statement about settlements in the West Bank. But for the most part, it's really, like you said, an unfortunate distraction for that. Faisel was like, he was really the only guy who was like, okay, I will make life harder for all of us based on how much I care about this. Oh, absolutely. This was a key issue for King Fist all he was willing to cut off oil to the Western world

basically implementing his own form of sanctions against the West and it absolutely crippled it crippled the West, right? I mean, the UK had to go on a three-day work week at one point, right? And he, I mean, I think there were threats from the United States at the time that they were willing to bomb the oil fields. And I think King Faisal responded with something along the lines of, where we were once a people who lived on, you know, goats and milk. And we can go back to goats and milk.

That's perfectly fine. Here's the thing now, Fid fine. Here's the thing now, Fyix. I really don't think Saudi Arabia is willing to ever go back to the days of milk. No way. It's never going to happen. And I'll take this one step further. Muhammad bin Salman and his Vision 2030 master plan, this vision for a technocratic future for Saudi Arabia, where it develops all these alternative economic sectors. Well that requires investment and integration with the global economy, right? Even though a lot of this is them taking over entities, but they are heavily invested

in the world. This is not something that they can just turn around and stop doing, right? That completely shuts down his own plans. So in many ways, his rise and his ambitions for his country are still tied to the rest of the world. He can't simply isolate himself anymore. So that leverage that they once had is completely gone and shows you how different they are as rulers, right?

How different how much bin Salman is and the different and the obstacles that he's going to face now. Yeah, it really, the quote we always say on the show, the, the port is quote, we're weaker than our fathers. We don't even look like them. That's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,

that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's,'s, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, that's, who were very invested in modernization and changing some of the rules and laws in the country. And most importantly, making this place that, you know, a lot of the people there didn't always feel like

they were part of a nation, making them feel that way. I mean, I think that is an important distinction with the sports policy, the national pride element with Saudi Arabia. Like it's, there is a sense among like people who watch Gulf politics that citizens of Saudi Arabia, they maybe sometimes didn't always feel like they were citizens of a nation in the way that like, you know, maybe English or like Turkish people would. But it seems to lend some type of like national cohesion and pride. Oh, there's no doubt about it.

Let me tell you, somebody who grew up in the Middle East right between Egypt, I've lived in Bahrain for many years, which is this little tiny island kingdom just across from Saudi Arabia. And I also lived in Saudi Arabia. But when I lived in Bahrain, Bahrain was known as the most liberal of the least conservative, let's say, of the Gulf states. It was basically a place where you could drink. Very much like Dubai. Had that sort of feel to it.

So the Saudis would cross this causeway that connected Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. And every weekend, as like a young kid in an early teenager, I would see drones of these Saudis, drones of these Saudis just flocking and flooding the city, and they're just going into every bar they can and drinking as much as they possibly could. It was almost something to be pity.

They couldn't do absolutely anything in their own country, so they were going everywhere else and I'd see the same things in Egypt. For years, if you told Egyptian to what they thought about Saudis, they tell you all, they're just, you know, they're always drunk and they're acting like assholes on the streets in Egypt. That's because, yeah, when you've been deprived, to that extent, of course, once you start actually seeing what freedom looks like, that's how you're going to end up, you know, acting, it makes me. It makes me think of the kids who grew up in a really isolated environment. They go to university and then they screw up in their first year in university because of that. It feels exactly

like that's what's happening with Saudi. So there's no doubt that there's growing national pride that now they feel like they are superior to other people in that sense. They do. They feel like everything is now happening in Saudi Arabia. And to the extent, I've heard some awful things from some from, you you know Saudis and Emirati saying, well we can buy Egypt if we want to. That's how much they view themselves as superior. These countries now to others in the Arab region, right? So there's a massive shift in nationalism and pride in how they distinguish themselves from the rest of the region as well. If anything, I think the rivalry

is primarily now between Saudi, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar because I think between the three of those countries, they think they can just own, flat out own the rest of the region through their Czech-book diplomacy, right? But when we're talking simply about Saudi, it's definitely clear to me that even through sports, it's strengthening its nationalism. We're really seeing that in its decision, through the public investment fund, to fund, and basically take over, it's domestically. What Saudi Arabia did is they actually bought majority stakes in the four biggest clubs in Saudi Arabia, the four biggest football clubs, between Al-Halal, Al-Nasra, Al-Ahli, those were the clubs that they invested in.

That's where you have seen this incredible unprecedented drive to bring in all these foreign stars to compete in the Saudi domestically from Neymar, to Ronaldo, and the list goes on, Karim Benzema. They're trying to get Muhammad Salah from Egypt to go as well. That has really, apart from it being the obvious, you know, bread and circuses for Saudi youth keeping them distracted because, I mean, half of the country's population is under the age of 35. That's a lot of people you have to keep entertained. But apart from that, it's a great way for them to build this sort of group,

unity and connectivity through sports. Football really does that in the Arab world and Saudi Arabia has always been a very successful you know competitor in football it's actually one of the most successful countries in Asia really and in the Arab world too they've won an incredible amount of Asian cups as well like between I think the Saudi Arabia Egypt and a handful of others that have ever done this well even even though Egypt is in Africa. But it was no surprise to me that they would rely on football like that, right? And then you had Ronaldo appearing in these ad campaigns for El Nostra on Saudi National Day.

We was actually dressed in the Saudi thob and was dancing a folkloric dance while holding a sword, like in a very folkloric style, basically embodying Saudi identity as one of the biggest, most well-known individuals on the face of this earth. Now Saudis, who for the most, but the vast majority of their lives have been deprived from the basic, you know, entertainment that we take for granted in the rest of the world, now get to see the world's top stars, represent them, and identify with them.

That's a massive shift which is wide with Gen Z in particular, Pam had been salmene as extraordinarily popular Felix. He really is, the generation coming up now, they absolutely adore him. Yeah, I remember the first time I heard that, that he was incredibly popular among young people, and I thought that was such a huge deal because traditionally, the problem that most Saudi monarchs have is their population of young men specifically. I mean, Saudi Arabia, really since the late 70s, they did sort of have a policy of what they would do with angry young men,

which is to take the particularly religiously devout ones and, you know, okay, you go to Afghanistan or you go to the Caucasus or you go take part in whatever, you know, whatever regional strategy and act as our proxies and fight over there and don't stay here and do anything crazy like take over the grandmask. But having a monarch who like, you know, young people and young men especially, especially love is again, I think, by, by, is all would be the last guy who kind of had it like that. And even then, Faisal had to contend with things that Phamad Bin Salman doesn't, right? He had to contend with dissenting factions

within his own family, right? He had to, like, with the fact that the religious authority actually had a lot more control and sway than they do on Dramhamad Bin Salman. So those things alone actually make it so that Faisal had his hands tied a little bit. To the extent that, I mean, he was assassinated at the end of the day when he did go and do what he thought was right.

He was assassinated for an ingrante. He was also assassinated by a member of the royal family. So Saudi Arabia has a very interesting history. I don't think it's facing any of these types of threats coming up now. The fact that Muhammad bin Salman was able to not only rise the way he did, basically through what can only be described at this point as a palace coup, working his way up through these various positions. And in the end, actually leading a mass crackdown, what they called was a crackdown on corruption, but it was really a way to eliminate all forms of dissent

and solidify and consolidate his power. When he arrested and threw tycoons, royal family members, etc. into the Ritz Carlton for over a year, somewhere tortured, somewhere psychologically abused, and in the end, a lot had to transfer their assets over to the state. And guess Felix, where a lot of those assets went? To the public investment fund. And from there, way back into investing in sports. So even the money, when people are like, oh, Saudi has changed, Saudi has changed, understand that the money you, you that's being offered to you by Saudi Arabia to begin with is blood money.

If it's not blood money, it was corrupt money before that. It's one of those situations, right? But again, when you have the United States has this thing, especially with its sports and its corporations in general, this unbelievable urge to always pursue maximum profit at all expense. Well, in that case, that's always going to lead you into the hands of people like Hamad Bin Salman. And that's why Felix, I don't think sportswashing really matters to him anymore, because he can really do whatever he wants.

And as long as he flashes that money, people are going to come at him. People are going to keep coming. That's just how it works. Unless there's any regulation to stop it, but I don't even think that kind of regulation is going to come at them. People are going to keep coming. That's just how it works. Unless there's any regulation to stop it, but I don't even think that kind of regulation is going to work. We're seeing that attempted with the PGA tour right now, where you actually have a US Senate subcommittee investigating the merger right now. And I dare say I don't think it's really going to come to anything in the end. And honestly, we don't know if this merger is going to go through because it has until

the end of next month. So that in itself could collapse, but it still feels like Saudi has the upper hand here. At least they have showed their hand into what they're actually capable of doing, which is bringing about the complete capitulation of a US pastime just because they can. They initially wanted to go into partnership with the PGA Felix. They came and approached the PGA saying, hey, we'd just like to invest in you guys and we'd like to host more events and stuff like that. The PGA said, yeah, no thanks. I'm not interested. I bet they think that's a big mistake now. I bet they wish they could take that one back because

Saudi was like, oh, it's going to be like, it's going to be like that. Well, yeah, they just started their own league, poached to players, and ended up forcing a takeover. So we could see that in combat sports as well, speaking of stuff like this, or handling. The UFC, which has never seen any sort of competition, has competing entities, at least, like it has other MMA organizations in its sphere, like the Professional Fighters League. The Professional Fighters League is the organization

that actually signed Francis Ingano, former UFC heavyweight champion when he became a free agent. They also got a $100 million investment from Saudi Arabia, a minority stake that was bought by the public investment fund or a subsidiary of the public investment fund. And not that the two worlds are exactly the same, mind you, they are all independent contractors as well in both the PJ and the UFC. I don't think it's exactly the same. I think the UFC has far more stringent and complex contracts for people to get out of. But I think if Saudi Arabia really wants to, it could put up a fight here. And it has some money to put up a fight. And I don't think the UFC understands what it's facing here. Yeah, no, absolutely.

I mean, for all intents and purposes, they would be going up against someone who has virtually unlimited resources. Going back a little bit, you brought up the rivalry between the UAE and Saudi Arabian Qatar. There's sort of this sense in Gulf politics that the UAE is, they're able to get away with a lot more than Saudi Arabia, right? Like the war in Yemen, which was like this horrible, awful conflict where the Gulf Coalition was humiliated in a fair bit. Like, you know, generals were killed. They would just be unable to take any territory for the longest time. That was sort of thought of as a Saudi thing, more than anything.

Even though the UAE, some people even think that they instigated it, and the UAE was just as culpable as the Saudis. They were kind of the leaders of that coalition. There's been sort of like a growing bitterness between both them and Saudi Arabia, sort of related to the differing factions that the two countries backed in Syria, but also the UAE, when they took over Secotra that island off of Yemen, things seem to really take a turn after that.

Like, the Saudis did seem to become very resentful after that. Could you talk about how the UAE strategy with sports is there's a lot less bomb vast and it sort of mirrors the, I guess, more subtle style of Emirati international politics? Well, it certainly does. First of all, you're absolutely right that the United Air Emirates doesn't get anywhere near the flag that Saudi does. It's very similar to I like to compare it to sometimes the United States and Canada. Canada gets away with pretty much anything because it's got the United States making

all this noise and getting all the attention. But Canada's extraordinarily controversial as well and has done some really horrific things from its treatment to indigenous folks to etc. etc. This goes on. United Arab Emirates really is not much different. As a matter of fact, you really mention it right there with Yemen. If anything, Saudi Arabia has been trying to pull out of this Yemen conflict and guess who is continuing to instigate it.

It's the coalition that's backed or it's the entity that's backed by the United Arab Emirates because they're now on opposing sides of this war. So I think for the longest time, the United Arab Emirates has been able to get away with a lot and it's partly because of two reasons. First of all, they are. It's just like you said, they're not as bombastic as Mohammed bin Salman. They definitely weren't as interested in the limelight in the same way either. I mean, this is a country that has a self-power council. They are well aware of what they're

working with here and they've been doing it for a couple of decades now. By the way that self-power council is chaired by Sheikh Mansour, the younger brother of Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, who's the current leader of the United Arab Emirates. Well, yeah, he's the President of the UAE. Exactly, the current President of the UAE. And Sheikh Montsour is actually the owner of Manchester City, the football club that has been doing spectacularly well in the Premier League and has won the United Arab Emirates

this reputation of shrewd business decisions and shrewd investment strategies. To the point that the UAE has been even able to Buy up land cheap in Manchester itself because it has convinced the council the city council and Manchester that it as an entity Is working to the benefit of the community? It has done so much to invest in Manchester City to improve the stadium, to improve the surrounding area. So of course, why not give them land for cheap? Well it turns out what Abu Dhabi actually did with that land was it ended up buying it

very cheap, as I mentioned, and building these really expensive properties is that they just rented themselves and they take the profits for. It did nothing to benefit actually Manchester itself. And a big report thereafter said that Manchester City Council really shit the bet with that decision. Because the end of the day was just an example of gentrification. At the end of the day, the United Arab Emirates sees not only just an opportunity to improve its own image, but it now truly sees massive investment opportunities.

The UAE unlike Saudi Arabia will eventually run into the issue far quicker of running out of oil. Its investments are a lot more calculated, and they are investing in all sorts of things around the world, and this goes really beyond sports as well. In Egypt, actually, one of the big, really major controversies that happened in the last year, I remember when I was just there, this was one of those big talking points was that the United Arab Emirates had least or a bot or it was really difficult to work out the details, the Egypt's national zoo, and they were

actually about to tear it down and turn it into an open air safari in the middle of Cairo, just because they could, just because they could, just because they could. Yeah. It's just ridiculous things like that. And it will work and it will make the money. And they've bought up chunks of land in Egypt. And who knows what they're going to be doing with this land?

But I mean, we're in a position as a country, Egypt, that's in such a debt crisis right now, that our president, our current military dictators, happily, you know, selling everything off. And the UAE is there to snag it up. And this is a strategy they've applied elsewhere, right? The United Arab Emirates, unlike Saudi Arabia, is not a football country. Believe it or not, I'd say they're more combat sports than any other country in the region.

Their national sport is Jiu Jitsu. They have been applying Jiu Jitsu and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as soft power since the early 2000s, as a matter of fact, Sheikh Tahnoon. Now, Sheikh Tahnoon, he might know him, he might be familiar with him as sort of the spy chief of the United Arab Emirates. Well, guess what? He's actually also known as the UAE's Jiu Jitsu spiritual leader, basically, because in in 1993 when he was in San Diego studying in university, he watched the very first UFC event, fell in love with it, and started training Jiu Jitsu. Guess who he ended up training with? Hanzo Gracie. So, Hanzo Gracie

had this incredible friendship since then, and he went on, he returned to the United Arab Emirates, told his brother, Muhammad bin Zayed, and all his other brothers about this incredible sport he had discovered. How wonderful it was. He started building up these entities, these sports federations, the Abu Dhabi combat club, which now hosts the most prestigious Jiu Jitsu tournaments in the world. They ended up making the sport mandatory in public curriculums in some of the Emirates, and also mandatory in police training and in the military. They ended up bringing in tons of Brazilian jujitsu specialists and trainers to come and teach people in the United Arab

Emirates building this great cultural bond between the UAE and Brazil to the point that Lula, the President of Brazil was actually just in the UAE a few months ago, celebrating Hamad Benzay at four, his influence in Jiu-Jitsu. In many ways, the Jiu-Jitsu country is not Brazil, despite it being BJJ, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It's actually the UAE, and they've used it in a variety of different ways, like I just said, right? So, they're their soft power, their sports washing strategy, however you want to refer to this, is very subtle, very complex, and it's quite insidious as well when you really think about it, because you might not even know it's really happening. That relationship with the WW, with not WB sorry, with the UFC, I'll give this as a last example

Felix, you'll be surprised by this one, is another great one here because while it was promoted for a while during the pandemic, the UFC used to host these fight island events in Abu Dhabi. And at the time, I thought of it as just this tourism opportunity for the UAE. You know, that was what I was used to seeing him, I'm like, okay, they're playing this as a tourism player and I wrote the article as such then at one point I saw that Dana White was wearing a very strange t-shirt I had never seen before and it was an AI company and it was a UAE AI company that was actually invested in all sorts of spy software working with Israel working with all these other entities with the Emirates to present all this different AI-influenced spy technology.

And that was now being promoted on a UFC broadcast. That's how someone was. That's incredible. I'm safe to say after I wrote the article about it, they did not promote it again. One of the rare times that I think the UFC actually responded to something I did. That's kind of amazing that even for them, they're like, oh, this looks really bad. Oh, yeah, every once in a while, they'll surprise you.

It seems they still have limits. We got a call somewhere around April that Dana has a dream to create a fight island. It was in the back of his mind that I don't know where else in the world could have delivered such a massive event with all the operational elements coming together as we see around us at the NABUW. Well, this actually segues nicely into our final topic because you've written extensively about Ramzan Kaderov and Akman Fight Club. The UAE as like a host nation for UFC events, obviously like you mentioned

that like Jiu Jitsu and MMA have this incredible cultural purchase inside the UAE, but hosting events there sort of serves as dual function because they, you know, if you're Kotarov and you are personally under a sanctions regime by the United States Treasury and now even stricter ones from the EU and newer ones from the US since the start of the Ukrainian war, you can still go to the UAE. You're not going to run into any trouble there. Any fighters that are part of Acne Fight Club, they will have no trouble getting visas. There's a long friendship between Chechen leadership and the Emirates. Well, you absolutely said that, yeah, you made the point right there and honestly it surprises

me Felix that the U.S. he didn't catch on sooner that they could dodge the U.S. sanctions by simply hosting all these Ahmad fighters in Abu Dhabi, which is what they did with their with their with their recent events, U.S. 294. That event featured so many Qederoff affiliated fighters, so many of them, including of course, his prize, his puppet, Hamza Chemiyev. And like, that's the big one right there. But what was also interesting to see is that Kederoff's

children, Kederoff's three sons, well, two of the three sons, were in attendance as well. Not just in attendance, they were Hamza Chemiyev's corner man. They were backstage with him. They were dressed in UFC attire. They came out, you know, they stood on the octagon. The whole nine yards is if they were actually his corner man.

This is how blatant it is, the Kedirov's presence. And of course, previously over the years, Kedirov himself has attended UFC events in Abu Dhabi. He attended one, like in the front row, and guess who he was standing by, the Minister of Tolerance of the United Arab Emirates. Talk about the irony of that situation. So maybe he learned something. Oh, absolutely. Oh, yeah, and he can tell they had lots to talk about. But this, and I believe afterwards, Kederaf posted this montage of Hamza Chema

of leaving the event in Abu Dhabi and going back to a house in what appeared to be Jumaira and Dubai from what I could see. And Kederaf was standing there. So Kederaf was actually there at this point as well. So he was still having no issues despite the ongoing war, despite anything, traveling from Chechnya

and landing in the United Arab Emirates for nothing other than to just be present for a Hamza Chemiah fight. He still sees the UFC as this fantastic marketing opportunity for himself. We wanna talk about classic sports washing, Kedirov really embodies that when it comes to the UFC. He's been able to use it as a means to completely make sports fans believe that he's just this

magnanimous patron for the sport, really, and somebody who is standing in support of these Muslim MMA fighters, right? You've got plenty of examples of that, but really it goes far beyond it, I think. I mentioned his kids, and I'm not going to tell you about six years of what I've been doing, covering Ramzan Kedero, but I'll tell you what he's been doing this year alone, that I think you'll find very interesting. Or starting actually with December 2022, one of his sons, this kid named Ali, his middle child, he decided he wanted to become a professional fighter.

And for months, he had been training with Hamza Chimayev, like they'd actually travel, go see other UFC fighters and train with them as if he was an actual fighter, right? And this was all get posted on Instagram and Kederov would promote it and talk about how, look at my son, the fighter fighter and eventually this kid debuts for Kedirov's own promotion, absolute championship Ahmed. Of course he's debuting in Kedirov's promotion and takes part in this extremely obviously fixed fight and wins. And here was what I called an example of Kedirov using this dynastic propaganda. He's using MMA as a way to say look, my offspring are strong, and this dynasty, this legacy I will leave, is going to continue to rule Chechnya onwards and onwards.

He isn't only built himself, a cult of personality, he's built one for the entire Kederov clan, and combat sports play such a crucial role in that. I'll take this one step further for you Felix. A few months later, he posted a video of his other son, Adam. Now Adam has also been regularly seen and spotted at UFC events. As a matter of fact, every time Camaro Usman, the former UFC champion visited Chechnya, he would do so because it was Adam's birthday and he was Adam's favorite fighter. So he was always going because it was this one Kederov kid's invitation.

So Adam had gotten into some hot water in Russia, let's say, because Kederov had posted a video of him clearly beating up a Russian prisoner who had been accused of burning a Quran. And of course, Kedira saw this as an opportunity not only to present himself as the savior of Islam and protector of Islam by saying nobody shall burn a Quran on my watch, but it was also an opportunity for him to showcase how Adam has evolved as an MMA fighter, because most of the assault in the video was basically an MMA thing.

You saw body kicks, you know, liver shots, punches to the head. The way Adam was fighting was clearly somebody who had been trained. And that added another brutal and sick layer to the whole thing, really. When you think about it, right? Like, this is how he's utilizing the sport beyond what you see in a UFC cage beyond the average example of sports washing, right? And the people who are training these kids are UFC stars like Hamza Chimaya. And what blows my mind is that Hamza Chimaya is clearly going the way of his predecessor. Abu Abd al-Abd al-em et al-off. And I don't know if you've heard of what happened to have the Kareem et al-

Oh, oh yeah, yeah, this is shocking. Yes, this was definitely listen. I had gone through a period honestly. I promise you where I wasn't writing about Ramzan Kadeer off. Listen, I moved on. You saw me. We're talking about Saudi. We're talking about all these things.

The fuck, you're just keep doing crazy shit and brings me right back in, right? And this was really one of those. So I'll explain to your listeners, Abdikadim Adelov was sort of the glorified baby sitter before Hamza Chimaya, the glorified baby sitter, the, you know, the Kadirov Prinslings. And he was also a UFC fighter.

He fought with the UFC once before he ended up getting suspended for steroid use, I believe. I was either steroid or was meldonium it was something along those lines, anyway it was performance enhancing drugs. He never ended up fighting for the UFC again. Instead he went on to become this nanny for the Kidder of Kids and as a nanny he would you know take them to Quran sessions, he would basically live with them, he'd take them around everywhere. He was their guardian and protector. And from that, Kedurov ended up eventually giving him a promotion.

He made him deputy prime minister of Chechnya, because apparently, you know, the trajectory of politics in Chechnya is he go from Nani to, you know, deputy prime minister. That's a very natural progression. So, I mean, yeah, and as the war broke out, right, and as Russian Vades Ukraine, you've got pictures of Abdukidim, Edelof, standing alongside Ramzan Kedirov, and he's basically, you know, armed the gills, and he's wearing these bulletproof vests. He looks like he's supposed to be a soldier going out to battle, but he never does. No point does he ever go to the front lines

or anything like that. He just sticks around Kadyerov. But at some point a few months later, word breaks out that he has sort of fallen out of favor and is no longer in the inner circle. Then he simply removed from his position as Deputy Prime Minister. There's just an announcement that goes up that says,

I'm the Kareem Adelov, is no longer serving in this position. A few weeks later, we get word that he's dead. How he has died, Felix remains one of the big mysteries when it comes to reporting on Kadeerov. And unfortunately, it's not as if we can, there aren't many sources who are willing to talk anymore, even my sources,

dry up on topics like this. And it's very hard to get anything transparently figured out when it comes to Kedira, but there are two prevailing stories that have come out. One of them is that Kedira, that abdikidim edelov pissed off one of Kedira's relatives, who happened to be more influential than him. Try to extort him at one point, and that's what led to him getting killed. The other story I'll admit is a little more interesting and it actually involves one of Kiddierov's kids, Adam.

It turns out that at one point they were in Dubai together. It was Adam, Adam's bodyguard and Abdukhidim Adelov. And they had some drugs on them, some sort of infetimines that they had, which by the way these things are quite popular in Chechnya like there's a far more drug abuse that goes on amongst these kiddole-thruling elite than they'd like to let on. So you know, I have the kiddie-metal off in his other bodyguard, have these drugs on them, add them in cysts that he wants some, and they give him, and he just insists then after that he wants to drive.

So they let this 15 year old kid drive, he gets into a car accident and kills a couple of people. And this leads to a massive issue that leads them getting back, they have to get him sent back to Chechnya, Kedero flips out that this has happened, and yeah, he gets rid of the evidence being how the kiddie edeloth in the bodyguard, which by the way, the bodyguard was also killed.

So yeah, it's a really truly wild, wild story. And unfortunately, this is very difficult to verify beyond the extent that I went to in the articles that I've written on this so far. And I were quite comfortable. I mean, the Guardian was comfortable enough with the information we had at the time to go forward the story as well and we're quite confident that he is absolutely dead but As to exactly what happened we really may never know Felix but it's yet another Example of this bizarre MMA-related saga when it comes to rums on Kadeerov It's really amazing how like every Every brutal regime in modern history is just really into

uppers. I've always found that to be funny. But I wanted to ask you about, well, I mean, no one knows if this guy is dead or alive. I mean, if I had to bet, I would probably say dead. But if you knew about the boxer who disappeared, Umar Saleemov. No, unfortunately, even the Chechen, this was reported actually by some of the Chechen dissidents that run these anonymous accounts on telegram. And they've been remarkably accurate with a lot of these reports. And the reports was that sort of there was a attack on one of the villages where Kedira forces, security forces came and kidnapped a bunch of the people who lived in a certain village.

And one of these people was that boxer that you just mentioned, right, Omar. And this is a boxer that's represented by Bob Aram. And Bob Aram has not mentioned anything with regards to this boxer that's just gone missing off the face of this earth And since since I've posted my article about him going missing there have been there's been absolutely no mention of him potentially being still alive It is possible. He's still being detained But it's also very very possible that he has died But really this is what this is something that I think we need to emphasize when it comes to Ramzan Kederov.

He may present his top fighters as these elite figures, right, and elevate them to elite status in society, but that's only when they're beneficial to him, right? At the end of the day, I think he views everybody as expendable in the city's quaint, because he really absolutely does. And it's so clear to me that he's using his fight club as a sort of recruitment ground. And this is another article I had posted around the time of the war when the war broke out. He's actually using his fight club as recruitment ground for the war. So basically, Felix, it just basically comes down to if you're not...

If you're a Chechen MMA fighter and you're not good enough to represent Kizirov in the cage, then you're absolutely good enough to die for him on the battlefield. Yeah, yeah. Just so people know, the boxer that we just spoke about, no one has heard from him since I September 2022. Yeah. One last thing I was curious about that I wanted to ask you is,

you've noted how like a lot of active roster UFC fighters, some very popular former UFC roster fighters like Frank Mir, have gone on these like extensive paid junkets in Chester as as Godorov's guest. I'm assuming that if they tried to do that now, if you're an American fighter, you try to do that now, you would, at the very least, get a pretty heavy fine. I think you'd probably go to prison now, right? For breaking US Treasury sanctions.

I wish that was true Felix. I wish that was true. I honestly have this list and this might be me being skeptical, but honestly, even from our reporting in the New York Times, we did two pieces on the specifically the the the the the Kadeerov sanctions and how they factor into the UFC. And the conclusion we came to really is that the UFC. And the conclusion we came to really is that, unless the treasury is really determined to enforce these sanctions and go through the effort of verifying these things, there's really almost no consequences that these fighters will face. Case in point, when Justin Gachi, Kamaru Usman and Henry Sahuto all former UFC champions, by the way, went to test, you know, firearms at the Russian Special Forces University, which is where Chechny... like, it's a facility

in Chechny that trained soldiers for this specific war, right? So this was juuring the war. That was already taking place. They were there testing out fire arms and posing for the propaganda, and then they came back to the United States and guess what? Just in Gachy, Kamara Usman, they've all been fighting since then. Not a fine, not a care to the United States and guess what? Just in Gagy, Kamora, Usman, they've all been fighting since then. Not a fine, not a care in the world. And they did this publicly in front of everybody. And trust me, we reached out to the State Department repeatedly and the treasury and they each notified us that they were very aware of what was happening.

They were very aware, but they did not want to discuss the matter further. Here's what I think has happened. I think the UFC has finally taken the decision to start moving a lot of these, at least, Ahmed's related fighters, these Chechens onto Abu Dhabi because I think they're going to start facing visa issues. Now, that's probably what has happened with Hamza Chemiyev. I've gotten multiple, let's say, reports that suggested that Hamza Chemiya was currently unable to get a visa into the United States. This is something that US authorities, the State Department, Etcher, will not confirm because

they never discussed the status of somebody's visa, and they're not willing to disclose information like that in public, unfortunately. But it appears to me that Hamza Chemiya is struggling to get a visa. And I think that's what's going to happen to any foreign national who's going to be trying to get into the US. You're going to struggle because of that relationship to Kederov. As for the US-based fighters, you'd think it would be so easy to get, you know, we so clear, but unfortunately when it comes to Treasury sanctions, since they're financial sanctions, they have to now guarantee that these fighters earned their money. First of all, they'd have to prove that they got that they were paid, and then they would have

to trace that money back to the exact entities that are on the sanctions list. And that's where things get even more complicated, right? So we learned about this. Unfortunately, the more I learned about this, the more I realized, oh, so unless the US is absolutely utterly determined to impose these sanctions on them and to apply them, sorry, rather than just imposing them, to actually go ahead and apply them, then nothing is going to really change. Truly. I think right now if Kamara Usman goes again to Chatchan, I think he comes back out of this just fine, apart from the attention he'll get online It might this might be you know fourth times. No, he's gone three times already

So maybe it's the fourth time where he finally gets the fine. I Jit that's just so Crazy to me because like I don't know maybe I guess this is like the difference between me and like a successful MMA fighter But I've such a pussy that like when I go through like customs in Canada, I'm like, oh no, are they going to take my vape stuff? And like if I was violating you as sanctions, all I would be thinking about is like Mark Rich and like dying in federal prison, but I guess if they have to find the actual entity and there are all these ways to obscure that, yeah, I guess.

It's a lot more. It has worked though. You make a great point because it's the intimidation, it's the scaring of people from doing it by sanctioning the entities that usually makes it effective to begin with. That's what I've actually understood from lawyers who've worked on sanctions cases regularly. They're like, yeah, usually people back off immediately as soon as somebody's listed on the sanctions list, which by the way, we technically have seen

with regards to Kedirov A, we're seeing far less mention of him, especially in English on a UFC broadcast. That I believe is pressure from the UFC itself, trying to slowly distance itself from obvious representations of Ahmed and Kedirov on the broadcast, except I guess in Abu Dhabi. So that's one clear example for me, I think. That it's changed other than that, I also think that once upon a time we used to see

better harry, Floyd Mayweather, Mike Tyson regularly go to Chechnya. None of them are making trips anymore, are they? It's been a few years since Kedirov has had a major celebrity who has not been a UFC fighter. So, to an extent, they're starting to work. They've been able to scare off the people who have the most to lose. Unfortunately, I don't think MMA fighters count as the ones with the most to lose. We talked about exploitative labor earlier. I really think, maybe not, well, let's not talk about Camaro and Justin and them who've

made good money, let's say. But a lot of people will be enticed by the money that the Kedirov offers. And for some people, it could be life-changing. Some of those MMA fighters, yeah, 100, 500 grand, that matters to them, right? So in a way that it would never matter to a LeBron James or a Mike Tyson anymore Floyd Mayweather right so yeah, yeah, that's kind of where that's the the people who are going or the people who are still desperate enough to go Yeah, and that unfortunately is a lot of fighters I mean

When you were talking about Abu Dhabi is like early investor in the sport I thought like you know what what a great thing that is for them, because investing in individual fighters and professional grapplers, you can buy them for a song, like compare to investing in football clubs and stuff. But yeah, it's damn, I'm still stuck on that.

Just like, I guess MMA fighters don't know about the Mark Rich case. I'm just still amazed by that. But, Kareem, this has been amazing. We will not wait another six years for the next time to have you back on. I cannot believe it was six years. But if people want to find more of your reporting, where

should they go? Well, I'm still on Twitter at Zidane Sports. You can also find my work on my newsletter at this point, really, media outlet sportspolitica.news. And you'll also find me still regularly reporting for outlets like the Guardian and the New York Times. So I'm still everywhere, Felix. Amazing. I am a actual subscriber to sports politica. I think you might pleasure. We will put links to all of that in the description. Crim, thank you so much. That was awesome Felix. Thank you so much for having me.

I feel that you and I men can chat for hours and hours about this one day. I will meet you in person. you