Muhammad Mokaev is right, and the fact that he's an awkward person to be right about doesn't change it one bit. On October 16, 2026, he went on X and accused the UFC of putting entertainment ahead of sport, set off by the promotion deciding not to re-sign undefeated Afghan prospect Farid Basharat. His exact words: "Dana used to say best vs the best But today it is all about entertainment From the business side they're right but from the sport perspective they're wrong At least they could of wait until 'their best fighters' took away our unefeated record."
Spelling aside, that is the clearest description anyone has given of how the modern UFC actually operates.
Start with the receipts, because they're ugly. Martin Buday was cut with a 7-1 record inside the promotion. Daniel Marcos, 18-1 as a pro, was released after going 5-1 in the UFC, and he said himself he still doesn't know why. Mokaev was shown the door while undefeated, then went and won his Karate Combat debut to stay perfect. Three fighters did the one thing the sport is supposed to measure, winning, and got a pink slip for it.
Now look at who gets to stay. Tai Tuivasa walked into UFC 331 in September and lost for the eighth straight time, tying Tony Ferguson for the longest losing streak in UFC history. Eight in a row. He's beloved, he throws bombs, he does his shoey, and the crowd eats it up, so he keeps getting matchmade while fighters with winning records clean out their lockers. I like watching Tuivasa too. That's exactly the problem. Likeability became a job qualification and winning became optional.
The company will tell you this is just business, and on that narrow point they're correct. The UFC makes its money selling fights people want to watch. A promotion that only booked the most efficient grappler at every weight would go broke, and nobody's buying a pay-per-view to watch someone hug his way to a decision. Entertainment matters. But Dana White built this empire on a sentence, best versus the best, and that sentence became the sport's founding promise. You don't get to keep the slogan while quietly swapping out the thing it described. That's the betrayal, and the people deciding the roster are the ones who own it. The fighters are left confused about why they're still on it.
Mokaev makes himself easy to dismiss, and his critics aren't inventing this. His UFC run was studded with grudge matches and feuds, a brawl that broke out before his bout even started at UFC 304, back-and-forths with Manel Kape and Kai Kara-France. He's combustible, and his own release almost certainly had messier causes than "too boring." Fine. A flawed man can still read a situation correctly. The diagnosis doesn't become false because the person delivering it has enemies.
The part of Mokaev's complaint the UFC can't answer is simple: let the best fighters beat these guys before you erase them. People who decided the octagon wasn't a good enough judge legislated Marcos, Buday and Mokaev out of relevance. Take away the idea that winning keeps you employed and all you've built is a touring show with good athletes.
The ugly footnote is that most of the fans howling about this won't follow a single one of these fighters anywhere else. They'll complain, then tune back in for the next card. Which is precisely why the UFC can keep doing it. The promotion gives the audience exactly what it rewards, then acts wounded when someone like Mokaev says it out loud.
He said it out loud. Dana White built a sport on winning and now runs a show on charisma, and no amount of Mokaev's baggage makes that any less true.
