PFL sensation Abdoul Abdouraguimov will finally make his return to the cage on Saturday in Dubai, facing off with short-notice replacement Kendly St. Louis and feels a different man after a 14-month layoff.
“Lazy King” is a fan-favorite in PFL, especially at shows held in France, but felt that being expected to deliver both inside and outside of the cages became “a trap.”
“To be honest, I was like that in some part of my career,” Abdouraguimov told MMA Fighting. “I was just listening around me and I wanted to prove [myself]. At the beginning, when I started, it was just for me. I was doing it because I liked it and my mindset was, ‘I want to try it. Do the best I can do and let’s see.’ With that mindset, it was easier to fight because you have nothing, too much thinking. I was present at the fight and I was doing my thing.
“But at some point of my career I was too much thinking about expectations and about the future. That’s when fights began to be a little bit difficult. Not because my opponents — of course they were strong, the level got up —, but I knew that I could do better with a different mindset. So now I’m trying to find the balance, to go back to the beginnings, take the best and mix with the experience that I’ve got now.”
A former two-division champion in Ares FC, winning the welterweight and middleweight belts to then join PFL as a 16-1 talent, Abdouraguimov admitted that competing in the sport became “less fun” as he moved up the rankings.
“To be honest, a little bit less, yes. It’s less fun,” Abdouraguimov said. “But now I’m starting to change all this because in life you have this difference between a boy and a man. Now I’m starting to become a man, you know? [laughs] 30 years old. It’s about me. I am choosing. I don’t need to let all the environment influence me. And this is what I’m trying to do, to have fun, because I know how to have fun.”
It’s not always easy, though.
“I say to myself I’m not attached to the world, but at the same time, when I’m fighting, I think too much,” Abdouraguimov said. “That means that inside my heart I’m not aligned with what I feel and what I say, with my head. So that’s the goal for me now, to align myself and then life is gonna be easy. Because when you think like that — if you lose, for example, so what? If you win, so what? If you always keep asking questions yourself and then you respond like this, ‘so what?’ Because at the end, really, what’s gonna happen, man?
“We have to risk in this life, you know? Without risk, there is nothing. I am here because in the beginning I took every risk. My first fight was a tournament fight, two fights in the night — professional directly, I didn’t go through amateur fights. I took the risk because I believed in my techniques and so. And then my third fight they gave me a Cage Warriors champion, veteran. Everybody around me talked, ‘it’s too risky because you’re only the beginning.’ I took the risk. The more I took the risk, the more I’m here. This is life.”
“Lazy King” said he has no idea what makes him a fan-favorite in the sport. Winning three in a row under the PFL banner definitely helped make him more popular after an already successful career in smaller promotions like Ares FC and Brave CF, but Abdouraguimov believes the key to success in gaining fans is be yourself instead of “play the role.”
“I try to be myself and have fun,” he said. “But now I need to find the balance with fun or seriously, all at the same time, because it’s not always fun in life. We have to work also. This is my journey now. I’m finding the balance right now. For me, the martial arts journey is not like fitness. For me, it’s really when I do martial arts at my gym, I don’t just only practice and then go home. We also talk about life because this is part. The martial arts, what I learned here, I always tried to practice in my life. Life is the same thing, we have to learn to when you’re knocked down to stay up and then try again. This is the same thing in life. You have just to find out how to use the techniques that I’ve learned at the gym now in real life. Stay calm and do what’s needed to do.”
Abdouraguimov’s upcoming bout is his first since a cancelled fight in Nantes, France when he announced on social media complaints about the promotion led to his withdrawal. “Lazy King” said he is happy with his relationship with the company today, and learned valuable lessons over time.
“It’s life,” Abdouraguimov said. “At the of the day I feel great, everything is good, I’m just learning. When something happens in life we think it’s bad, but when you take time, with time you see it’s not so bad, it’s even good. Sometimes you need time. Patience is key. It’s not easy, man. I admit I’m not very patient guy, but sometimes you have to be patient. No choice. … When I look at the good sides, there are a lot of good things in my life, you know? Of course there are bad things, but why look at the bad things if you have good things?”
St. Louis, his opponent Saturday, is looking to rebound after suffering the sole defeat of his four-fight PFL run, and “Lazy King” says it could be a tougher match-up than original opponent Magomed Umalatov because “he has nothing to lose.” Abdouraguimov remained focused on the task ahead but hopes to earn a shot at the belt with an emphatic performance.
“I’m always looking for the finish but my last fights, my mindset was I was too much holding to not to lose,” Abdouraguimov said. “That’s make it difficult to finish. When you want to finish someone, you don’t have to push it too much or you can’t pull it, you have to be in the middle. When you chase too much something it’s difficult. When I started my jiu-jitsu career and so I was always going in, takedown, take position and go for the finish. This was my game plan always. And MMA was the same, but sometimes it doesn’t work.
“But for me, it’s not a pressure. I’m used to look for the finish. For me, the most difficult part is to be in the middle, not to chase too much because of expectations and all that. Just to be myself and be creative and I will find it. When I in the mindset of creativity, I was find something.”
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