Usman Nurmagomedov And The Phases Of Father's Plan

PFL and the UFC went head to head this weekend. The UFC’s event ended with more finishes but the PFL is dominating the media cycle thanks to their headliner, Usman Nurmagomedov. Today we’re going to talk about his fight, the future of his division, and why all roads lead through Khabib Nurmagomedov’s team.

Instead of doing a prospect preview this week I went back to breakdown Usman’s fights with Irish star Paul Hughes. That is available for Premium Subscribers here.

Before we get into today’s article I have something for all of you that train jiujitsu and are thinking about coaching, owning a gym, or making money from your hobby.

Now let’s get into it.

Usman Nurmagomedov is a 28 year old mixed martial arts savant. He’s the youngest fighter from Team Khabib’s core crew of Islam Makhachev, Umar, Usman, and Khabib Nurmagomedov. And he appears to be the most well rounded of the four.

Usman wrestles well like everyone from that camp. But like his older brother, Umar, Usman has a fast and fancy kicking game. That was what set him apart from his opponent this weekend.

Justin Gaethje’s undefeated training partner, “King” Archie Colgan is a former NCAA Big 12 Champion wrestler and he won Freestyle Nationals. He’s an elite grappler and that means he needs to get inside to get his game going.

Usman used movement, front kicks, and stance switching to maintain a safe striking distance.

Usman has been criticized for doing this ☝️ and not much else in previous fights. But in this fight Usman saw how Colgan was reacting to his kicks and made the most of it.

This was beautiful. The read, accuracy, and killer instinct. Usman carefully kept the pressure on and never let Colgan get started.

Before we talk about what this means for Usman let’s look at what his teammate did on the same night.

Two fights before Usman Nurmagomedov got another win, his teammate and fellow lightweight Amru Magomedov got another finish.

Amru was 10-0 going into this weekend. 5 rear naked chokes, 3 stoppages from strikes, and 2 decisions. He employs much less wrestling than his stablemates do in favor of a long and powerful kicking game but he’s still a solid grappler.

This description certainly reads like someone describing Usman. But Amru tends to root into his stance and rotate through his kicks more. He’s focused on hurting, not just connecting and scoring.

See what I mean? 1 minute in and he’s already dropping his opponent with leg kicks. Before the round was over he knocked Alvarez over with leg kicks again.

Before the midway point of the second round Amru got his final knockdown en route to stopping Alvarez.

Amru stopped Angel Alvarez with ground strikes before this round ended.

Producing these wins on the same night has to feel awesome for Khabib and his whole team. Here’s the problem though.

How is this close-knit team going to deal with having two top fighters at the head of this division?

MMA is in a weird position. The UFC makes like 90% of every dollar in the sport. TKO’s 2026 Q2 financials report the UFC made $535.7 million, up from $415.9 million in 2025. I see it, the fighters seeing it, and Jake Paul is using that as a talking point to scream, “The UFC isn’t giving you your fair share. I’m merging MVP with the PFL to pay fighters what they are worth.”

After Usman Nurmagomedov won, Paul came into the cage to give him the belt, congratulate him, and claim that Usman could beat Justin Gaethje. Usman took his moment on the mic to say, “It was my last fight. MVP, they always trash talk a little bit about Dana – he doesn't pay. Now we're going to see how they're going to pay.”

How could you not love Usman calling Paul’s bluff?

The fallout from this moment is certainly capturing our attention. Yes, the crowd in the arena booed Paul, but that didn’t stop me from writing about his exploits and the fighter he promotes. More importantly, Usman’s post fight interview has more views than any other post fight interview on the weekend, through MMA Junkie’s YouTube channel.

Okay now were comes the complications. I don’t know if the PFL can keep this attention without Usman, and I don’t know how long they have him for.

Usman’s cousin Khabib is responsible for a decade long MMA meme. “Father Plan”.

This plan that is already in motion was for Khabib to win the UFC title and retire. Then Islam would win that same title and hold it until Usman went to the UFC to take it after him. But that means the PFL is on their way to losing their biggest star.

It looks like Khabib is already focused on future phases beyond this initial plan. Look at what he told Amru Magomedov after Amru’s win in February.

How could this be anything other than Khabib queuing Amru up to take a title that Usman will leave sooner or later? And just to make things even more complicated, Usman’s manager is Ali Abdelaziz, a man that’s literally stonewalling the UFC’s current antitrust lawsuit. That’s like a comically obvious conflict of interest. Supervillain levels of evil.

For what it’s worth, this new lightweight star is willing to tell people what he needs to deviate from Father Plan.

Paul might have lucked into the best lightweight in the world. He needs to bend over backwards to keep Usman paid and performing in the PFL.