FF-FilesThe FF-Files: Mother Russia
“Mother Russia poetry majestic, tells the time of a great empire. Turning ‘round the old man ponders, reminiscing an age gone by.” – Iron Maiden, “Mother Russia”
In terms of Sherdog Fight Finder, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States have had a rough week. Whether a symptom of the apparent success of UFC Baku, an emboldening towards perceived American adversaries or some other reason, numerous submitters from the region have acted foolishly as of late. Insults fly at the first sign of an imagined slight or request for more information, and refusals to add falsified details are met with threats or worse. On the weekend of UFC 317 alone, we have not one, not two, but three surprising acts of defiance and hostility to note from three individuals who have worked with Sherdog for quite some time.
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The first perpetrator is a man named Sureb Kusto, who has sent in a comical number of illegitimate requests dating back to December 2022. The main Fight Finder inbox depository has received what it lists as “many” emails from him, most of them approved outright. Unfortunately, this unscrupulous manager-slash-promoter got bagged early in his attempt to send us information, and skirted our rules for far too long. He got caught in a one-off attempt to file details for a now-deleted 2016 event in Ukraine that we learned never happened, and thought he could get away with it. He circled back later to fail on pushing through an illegitimate win for Bakhodir Tillabaev with video that obviously came from another card. He wasn’t even close to done at that point.
Things took yet another turn when he sent in this video above for a match in China, allegedly involving Khristas Muratidi and Axel Sohai. As if he thought he had an “in” with Sherdog and could send in any request he pleased, not just those in his area. Imagine thinking that video would suffice at identifying the fighters, a specific event and that date. To make matters worse, he sent in a date of the event that was impossible, because the victor of that questionable bout posted a clip of it on social media years before Kusto wrote that the fight “happened.” On the first challenge of his claim, he bailed on it. We still have yet to nail down that match, and not for lack of trying.
Moving along as if nothing had happened, he submitted the “event” above. This contest with literal children was actually on the document he sent to us involving results from this not-quite-MMA show, where matches either involved kids or lasted one round of three minutes. Like always, he abandoned this avenue of approach when we called him on it, only to come back for another try later. This next one set us ablaze, and should have been grounds for his ban by itself.
In 2019, up-and-comer Bekzod Nurmatov from Uzbekistan faced Beslan Isaev in the 100th ACA event, and he lost a tough decision. The damage he sustained during the bout proved to be too significant, and he tragically passed away from his injuries. This absolute muppet of a submitter dared to try to besmirch this deceased fighter’s name years later, claiming that this 10-1 middleweight suddenly decided to take an amateur match in the bout before his final fight. Kusto sent this so he could help his guy, Zhakyp Tuganbaev, pull an early loss off his profile. He included a crooked, trash document he said was from the Batyr Bashy organization to verify they held an amateur match right smack in the middle of a pro card. The main problem? Batyr Bashy didn’t operate that way. We told him to get bent.
Looking back on this now, Kusto should have been dusto on Fight Finder, a mere drop of aggravation in a sea of funny business. Perhaps because we feel that everyone makes mistakes, we gave him every benefit of the doubt. This absolute train wreck of a fight poster, coupled with grainy potato cam footage of two fuzzy blobs recorded far from the cage, did not cut the mustard. He actually told us that “due to the bad Internet, the first fights were not broadcast.” Imagine thinking that this insane hack job to boost Xusanboy Atabayev—another thorn in the side of Fight Finder staff based on how many names he goes by to avoid detection—would convince anyone that actually looked at it. Was he joking?
Kusto licked his wounds for a while, switching his email address and stating that his previous account was blocked for some reason. We even let him slide when he sent in a bogus fight from Dubai-based celebrity boxing league Wicked N’ Bad, featuring the girthy, Photoshop-assisted “Iranian Hulk” getting his clock cleaned by the not-gigantic “Kazakh Titan.” As seen on the above poster, it was Bakhromjon Ruziev vs. Terence Sameh, with Kusto writing that Ruziev won a decision after 15 minutes of combat. In the since-deleted video Kusto himself willingly provided, the announcer, in English clear as day, declared during its intro that Ruziev-Sameh was a 3x3 MMA exhibition. Apparently, Kusto thinks our team members do not have eyeballs, or earballs, for that matter.
Did we burn him after that? No, although he had blown way past three strikes by then. Shifting gears, he sent in details for a new region: Iran. Pitching for this league called New Fighting Mode intent on helping growing problem child Alireza Shariati. Kusto passed off some garbage to try to force it through after we had shut down others for the same baseless footage. In that instance, the referee, Mohammad Salarvand, also proved to be involved in the operation of the organization—an enormous no-no. NFM was banned by Sherdog for about six frustrating reasons ranging from fight fixing to passing off old footage as new fights, and we told Kusto to knock it off and leave well enough alone. He did, for about two weeks.
Kusto then tried to dig in for another fighter, attempting to reverse a submission loss for Magomedali Amirov at The Old Guard Fight Club Divizion 9 in 2023 to a no contest on the grounds there was an uncalled groin strike. He sent in this sheet claiming it was from the organization itself, telling us the document confirms this. Apparently unaware that we have staff members that can read Russian, we shut him down, as the page actually read that the fight result should stay the same because the foul did not influence the outcome of the match. Does he not think we can read?
He bounced back and forth, serving as an unreliable submitter that we brush off every now and then. He would give us three good entries, and then try to tell us that the latest General Fighting Championship 4 event in Armenia only had three fights on it, and then after confronting him—there were actually six, we checked, including the one above—cried that we allowed some other event to be incomplete. Would you believe he even went to bat for the now-defunct WCBC organization that we later exposed in our “I Fought the Law” installment of FF-Files in Azerbaijan?
Worry not, intrepid readers. The sordid tale of Sureb Kusto is nearly coming to a close. To jump to the end for a moment, he is no longer welcome to submit information to Sherdog Fight Finder. What drove us to that final, irrevocable moment was actually a one-two punch on his behalf. Across the last couple months, Kusto has been pushing for a self-described Pop MMA organization called Perviy Rubezh, or “First Frontier,” which clearly indicated that it would not follow the standard rules of MMA for “entertainment” purposes.
The hapless Russian—that is, he has always mailed us from a Russia-based address, so we may be assuming his nation of origin but cannot find any information to the contrary—swore up and down that mixed in with the rubbish was a legitimate MMA offering or two. Nope. Around the same time, he hurled the 13th Contender Series-type of event of a league called Motiv Warriors at us, with a date and location that did not match anything we reviewed. After ample back-and-forth that went nowhere, he asserted that when confronted with actual details of the event he was offering, it was a typo. One he sent without correcting at least a half-dozen times.
Having it up to here with this chucklehead, we demanded he contact the organizer, telling him the only way we could possibly update this Motiv card is if they sent the information to us. They did. Weaved in with those emails was more information about Perviy Rubezh, which continued to not stack up. It all came to a boil when he sent us a pair of documents “from” the Belarusian Federation. The first falsely stated there was a single professional match on the billing—there may have been many MMA fights, plural, but none of them followed pro rules—and the second, sent a month later, suggested there were four.
It was immediately evident that he had taken an official document from that federation and replaced it with his own text written in the Russian version of the “Papyrus” font. It did not match any other text on paper, and it also kept the same date as the first even though it was supposedly newly written by the federation. That was it. Enough was enough. We had to take action. Years in the making, we handed down his ban from Sherdog Fight Finder. The jig was up; the news was out. We finally found him. The renegade, who had it made, retrieved for a bounty. Nevermore to go astray, this is the end today of the wanted man.
Don’t do what Sureb Kusto did. If you are actually interested in making the sport better and not lining your own pockets, send your Fight Finder-related emails to fightfinder@sherdog.com.
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