More than five years have passed since a trio of former UFC champions —Chris Weidman, Fabricio Werdum, and Frank Mir—visited Grozny, Chechnya to attend the inaugural Akhmat MMA event as the honoured guests of Ramzan Kadyrov.
The UFC invitees toured the city, fired military-style rifles, feasted at the presidential palace, and did their best impressions of the lezginka, the national dance of the North Caucasus region, while Kadyrov—the tyrannical despot who rules over the Russian republic of Chechnya with an iron-fist—watched in delight.
When the fighters returned to the presidential palace following the event, they stopped for pictures with Kadyrov, including one where Mir and Werdum dressed in traditional North Caucasus attire and posed as his bodyguards.