Abdul Azim Badakhshi appears to be back in India. He was photographed cageside at Matrix Fight Night 9 last weekend but the Afghan featherweight appears to have more international ambitions.
He shared a video of him working out during a recent trip to Tiger Muay Thai in Phuket and told his 255,000 followers that there was ‘big news coming’:
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Crowd trouble
Badakhshi is Matrix Fight Night’s biggest star and has headlined two of the promotion’s last three cards. He holds a record of 13-3 and has spent the majority of his career competing in India.
But last weekend one of the Matrix Fight Night founders announced that they were banning Afghan fighters from competing on their cards. This potentially leaves Badakhshi with a very uncertain future.
Whether the ban is going to be put permanently in place remains to be seen. It was announced on Instagram in the aftermath of a brawl at Matrix Fight Night 9 in Delhi last weekend.
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Immediate ban
The Afghans in the crowd were unhappy at the timekeeping in the fight between Seth Rosario and Zahor Shah. The latter won by stoppage after 4:36 of round 1 but the clock in the stadium had not been paused when the bout was halted by the referee in order to warn the Afghan.
As a result the Afghans who were in attendance to support Shah thought that the round had been allowed to continue for more than five minutes and that Rosario had finished the fight as a result. But afterwards promoter Ayesha Shroff declared on Instagram that ‘that’s the last time an Afghan fighter features on an MFN card’.
Among the people leaving supportive comments under Badakhshi’s latest Instagram post was her daughter, Krishna Shroff, who is also part of the MFN promotional team. So the Afghan seems to still enjoy their support despite the announcement that he and his compatriots would no longer be featured on the fight cards.
