Having not won a title despite being one of the most highly touted
Professional Fighters League welterweights, Magomed
Umalatov has changed things going into his third season with
the PFL.
Umalatov (14-0) was 9-0 with all stoppage wins when he started his
PFL journey in 2021. Despite picking up consecutive wins over
Kyron
Bowen and Leandro
Silva, Umalatov wasn’t featured in the playoffs that year.
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“Prince” scored a knockout win over Jarrah
Al-Silawi in July 2022 to earn the last playoff spot for the
PFL 2022 season. However, visa issues forced Umalatov out of a
scheduled booking against Rory McDonald. Umalatov scored
back-to-back wins over Dilano
Taylor and Nayib Lopez
in PFL’s 2023 regular season but withdrew from a bout against
Magomed
Magomedkerimov due to undisclosed reasons.
Umalatov is now slated to start his PFL 2024 season against former
Bellator
MMA champ Andrey
Koreshkov (27-4) at
PFL 3 on April 19 (tune into ESPN and ESPN+ at 9:30 p.m. ET)
Umalatov claims to have trained smarter going into this season as
opposed to overtraining in the previous seasons.
“Yeah, this is my third year,” the 32-year-old said during media
day. “Every year I feel I got good experience. My mistake [the]
last couple years; I always over trained. For this season, I was
smarter [during] training camp.”
While Koreshkov has a ton of high-level experience, Umalatov
believes he has the edge over “Spartan” in terms of overall
skills.
“I think I’m a more complete fighter because I [have] everything.
He’s just [a] good striker and that’s it; that’s why I’m sure I can
beat him.”
After being forced out of PFL 2022 due to visa issues, Umalatov
relocated to Florida where he trains at the
American Top Team. ATT fighters had mammoth success last
weekend, going 8-0 in the
PFL 2 and UFC
300 cards combined. Umalatov hopes to bring one more belt to
ATT, which is already home to champions like Johnny
Eblen and Alexandre
Pantoja.
“For sure, I will be very happy to bring one more belt because I
trained [with] American Top Team for three years. and the manager
always told me I have to bring one more belt.”