In a parallel universe, Movsar Evloev may be held in similar esteem as the Shavkat Rakhmonovs and Ian Machado Garrys of this world, but that kind of love seems as elusive as his chin. As it stands, he’s the meanest pariah in martial arts. A dominant yawn that can’t be held back. Even after he defeated longtime featherweight contender Arnold Allen for his eighth straight UFC win in January, UFC CEO Dana White talked about him like he was the human equivalent of boredom.

“The least fun fight anyone has ever seen,” White said of the UFC 297 appearance.

Which was of course a little unfair. Evloev didn’t do anything stupid that night in Toronto. He delivered a deft masterclass in outdoing Allen, with a performance that might have been good enough to earn a shot at the title. But a reputation as a “boring” fighter can cloud objectivity, and so this instead landed him a fight against former bantamweight champion Aljamain Sterling, a full 11 months after the fact.

Relegated to the dark side of the prelims, so to speak, in a major pay-per-view fight, in what could easily be viewed as a decisive fight for the title.

“And I agree with that,” says Evloev when asked. “No, it’s fine, no problem. Yes, but people will understand after the fight.”

There’s a sense that Evloev has a subtle chip on his shoulder. He is 18-0 as a professional and has been a juggernaut in the featherweight division since his UFC debut five and a half years ago. However, it can be said that he is also rare, having only averaged a single fight per year since 2021. At the rate he’s currently fighting at, we probably wouldn’t see him win or lose again until UFC 323 late next year. Why is that?

“Because nobody wants to fight,” he says frankly. “I was supposed to fight Aljamain in August. Then he said September, then October. Then he retired and now it’s December. It was like trying to get another opponent, but the UFC wouldn’t let him go.”

Then of course there is the imperative for Evloev to have referees in the cage. In each of his eight UFC fights, all eight went on the scorecards. The opponent didn’t seem to matter. Choi Seung-woo had the same fate as Arnold Allen. It doesn’t help that most of his fights feel decisive halfway through the first round, as Evloev generally establishes a pattern of dominance that leaves his opponents hopeless. He’s a full-fledged custody fighter, good enough to eliminate danger from the threat in front of him, but not good enough to repel it.

At least that seems to be the consensus.

But we’re not dealing with an ordinary Jon Fitch here. The 30-year-old Evloev is at the peak of his powers heading into the fight with Sterling and – realistically – plays a crucial role in the intrigue at featherweight. With UFC champion Ilia Topuria already knocking out the division’s legends in Max Holloway and Alexander Volkanovski, the question is, who poses the biggest threat to Topuria? Diego Lopes? Evloev defeated Lopes at UFC 288 in Newark, a cold performance that highlighted Lopes’ fighting spirit at the time as he was engulfed by the Movsar vortex.

No, the biggest threat to Topuria as it currently stands is probably Evloev. A machine that drains opponents’ will in real time and has no real desire (or ability) to express emotion. An Evloev title fight? The thought may make the UFC shudder, although we’re at the point where it might be inevitable.

“I’m used to finding a problem or problem within myself, so maybe I need to do more, show more, to get them to talk about me,” he says. “But sitting here and waiting for someone to notice me or help me is not my habit. I’m used to moving forward and taking what’s mine.”

What do we do Really Do you know this quiet, will-sapping group from the Russian hinterland? He can wrestle, boy. He can plant bodies in the soft earth. The deadpan tones whenever a microphone is placed in front of him are creepy, and the rich bangs’ tones become more and more reminiscent of the summer tundra. We know that he comes from Sunzha, where the ragged Ingush highlanders settled a few hundred years ago, but we cannot understand why coming from the former Ordzhonikidzevskaya seems so intimidating. For whatever reason, so many Zs and Vs roughly translate to “this man is a damn problem” in English fighting game parlance.

But why really doesn’t Evloev get the love he deserves? And the respect? He more than outplayed Lopes in the attacking department and defeated Allen five times. His scrambles are pure cinema. He treated poor Mike Gundy as a tackling dummy for 15 dizzying minutes while bringing down Dan Ige and Hakeem Dawadu a total of 18 times. His struggles become someone else’s struggle against meaninglessness. What’s wrong with that?

If it were Khabib Nurmagomedov, his praises would be sung in every promo. But for Evloev? Somehow his style gets lost in translation. Which raises the burning question: What does he think makes for an exciting fight?

“I think it’s the skill that defines the sport, because as someone who’s been a martial artist all my life, I’ve learned something about it,” he says. “I am constantly improving. I know what needs to be done to move to the next step or get out of a step or implement something I want to implement. For me, it’s more interesting to watch the sport that I understand or know a lot about.”

He says that art, especially high-minded art, is really in the eye of the beholder.

“For example, if it’s a fan who comes out of nowhere and says, ‘Okay, I’m going to cheer for MMA, but I don’t know anything about it,’ that’s like me coming in and trying to cheer for baseball. When I watch a baseball game, I have no idea what’s going on, so I’d just be a fake fan. It’s the same thing here. It’s more interesting when you watch a sport that you know, that you understand, because it’s more fun that way.”