Zabit Magomedsharipov on Why Gi Training Still Matters in BJJ
Few sentences carry more weight in a BJJ academy than a high-level MMA athlete admitting his gi has been gathering dust. That is exactly the position former UFC contender Zabit Magomedsharipov…
Few sentences carry more weight in a BJJ academy than a high-level MMA athlete admitting his gi has been gathering dust. That is exactly the position former UFC contender Zabit Magomedsharipov finds himself in, with his return to competition — a grappling match against Dan Hooker under the ACBJJ banner in Moscow on July 5 — now just two weeks away. According to a report from BJJEE this week, Zabit has been talking about pulling the gi out for the first time in roughly seven years, and what he had to say is a useful prompt for the rest of us about why the kimono refuses to die.
The seven-year drought, and the choice to end it
Zabit's MMA career ran almost entirely no-gi. As he told reporters, the only structured Jiu Jitsu training he ever did consistently came during his time in the United States, twice a week with a coach he respects, focused largely on conditioning the body for grappling exchanges. Wrestling in a gi, he admitted, was a single experiment that left his fingers hurting. The gi at his home, he says, has been sitting in a bag for seven years and has been on his body exactly once in that span.
That's a normal arc for an MMA fighter. What's interesting is that he isn't writing it off. "Once you take off your gi, it becomes much easier without it," he told BJJEE, framing the kimono as a strength tool for grip and finger conditioning rather than a stylistic preference. Ahead of facing Hooker, he is now openly planning to dig it back out. Watch his comments on YouTube.
What a returning MMA star sees in the gi
There is a quiet pattern in elite grappling that gi sceptics keep bumping into. Many of the most dominant no-gi competitors of the last decade — Gordon Ryan, the Ruotolo brothers, Mikey Musumeci, Ffion Davies — came up through the gi or still drop back into it during camps. The lapel game gives you a grip-building load no rashguard ever will. Frames are harder to break, escapes are denser, and the simple act of stripping a sleeve teaches you something about hand-fighting that no-gi sparring tends to skip past.
Zabit is putting his finger on the same idea from the other direction. He's a striker first, a wrestler second, and a casual Jiu Jitsu player by the standards of the people he'll soon face in a grappling-only contest. For him, the gi is a calibration tool — a way to fatigue the forearms, harden the grip, and slow the game down enough to see his own mistakes. Once the kimono comes off, everything moves quicker because there are fewer grips to manage. The friction the gi adds is the whole point.
The lesson for the rest of us on the mats
Most people reading this aren't preparing for an ACBJJ Moscow card. But the underlying argument lands all the same. If you have been training Brazilian Jiu Jitsu exclusively in no-gi for the last couple of years — and a lot of us have, between the rise of submission-only events, the heat of summer, and the convenience of a rashguard — there is a credible case to put the kimono back on this week.
The benefits are not romantic. They are mechanical. Gi rounds force you to defend collar grips, to peel sleeves, to hand-fight before you can establish a frame, and to deal with a partner whose pressure transmits through fabric rather than skin. You will be slower for a few sessions. Your fingers, exactly as Zabit pointed out, will let you know they have not done this work in a while. Then your grip will catch up, your defensive frames will get more honest, and your no-gi game will feel — to borrow his phrase — easier without it.
This is also a reminder that the gi-versus-no-gi argument was never really an argument. The best jiu-jitsu players tend to be the ones who borrow ruthlessly from both formats. Zabit, for all that he is a no-gi athlete by every reasonable measure, has clearly figured out which way the wind blows in 2026 BJJ. If a former UFC contender preparing for a grappling match is digging a seven-year-old gi out of the closet, the rest of us can probably make it to the next gi class.
His match with Hooker should be a fun watch on July 5 regardless of which uniform either man trained in to get there. The more useful takeaway, for everyone else, is on the rack right next to the door of the academy. See you on the mats.
Original report via BJJEE.