The plans and position of Kazakh featherweight Zhasulan Akimzhan (7-2) have changed several times over the past weeks. The main contender for the league belt, Eagle FC, may now lose even this status, according to bbabo.net correspondent.
Today, February 18, Moscow will host the 45th tournament of the league owned by Khabib Nurmagomedov. It was originally planned that the Kyrgyz featherweight champion Busurmankul Abdibait (14-3-1) would face challenger Akimzhan in the main event of the evening.
Both athletes diligently prepared for the fight, held training camps in Dagestan. But at the end of January it became known that Zhasulan was out of action due to a hernia of the cervical spine. Thus, Busurmankul was temporarily left without an opponent, but the league quickly found another contender - Rasul Magomedov (10-3).
But less than two days before the tournament, the champion Abdibait also dropped out of the fight. As it became known to insider Igor Lazorin, Busurmankul was admitted to the hospital during a weight cut. The fighter was diagnosed with acute kidney injury, and, according to the source, he will stay in the hospital for at least a week. Eagle FC had to urgently look for another replacement fighter, and it turned out to be Abdurakhman Gitinovasov (8-1), who was originally on the event card, but in a different fight. Now two Dagestan fighters who came on as a substitute will fight each other.
Fans of Akimzhan, upset before by the injury of their fighter, after the situation of Busurmankul began to think about a possible reapproval of the fight at a later date. Since both are out of action, then just the title fight can be scheduled at a more suitable time and nothing needs to be changed.
But here the league has already made its own adjustments. It turned out that Magomedov and Gitinovasov would fight for the belt of the interim champion of the league. And this decision is difficult to explain now. Both athletes were originally not supposed to fight in a title fight, but will now challenge the interim championship.
The temporary belt is a direct path to the unification fight for the main belt. It turns out that the winner of the fight between Magomedov and Gitinovasov will become the next opponent of the full-fledged champion Busurmankul. Akimzhan, in this case, will again be in the queue. Now there are no guarantees that 24-year-old Zhasulan will hold his next fight for the belt. Recall that Akimzhan is on a series of three victories. In total, he spent five fights in the league, winning four victories in them.
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