“We love him,” said John Shahidi, the president of Full Send/Nelk, a lads-will-be-lads media company that has collaborated with Hasbulla and arranged his recent American trip. And his inner circle is a well-meaning but ragtag group that includes a family friend from Dagestan, a Dagestani-American software developer and a fan from the Hasbulla Discord server. (He is Muslim, like most Dagestanis.) During a time of acute geopolitical tension between the West and Russia, he has amassed an enormous Western fan base. He doesn’t speak English and turns down most endorsements because of his religious beliefs. Hasbulla is from Dagestan, a tiny, poor republic of Russia in the North Caucasus, and is a celebrity in the world of mixed martial arts, though he has never officially thrown a competitive elbow.
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