Shara Bullet Signs With RAF as the UFC-to-Wrestling Pipeline Grows

Shara Magomedov is the newest UFC name to trade the cage for the wrestling mat. RAF, the freestyle wrestling promotion, announced Friday that 'Shara Bullet' — a 17-1 middleweight who was knocking on the door of the UFC's top 15 — has signed on to compete under its banner. An opponent and a date haven't been set yet.

Bullet is stepping into a pool that's getting deeper by the month. RAF has already stacked its roster with former UFC champions Merab Dvalishvili, Henry Cejudo, Belal Muhammad (24-6) and Khamzat Chimaev, and the promotion built new Crossover Championship titles specifically to house the MMA transplants. That's on top of purpose-built wrestlers like Kyle Snyder, Kyle Dake, David Carr and Helen Maroulis chasing RAF belts.

The Résumé He Brings

Bullet built one of the more eye-catching starts in recent memory, ripping off 15 straight wins as a pro before Michael Page handed him his first loss on the scorecards. He didn't sulk. Back-to-back victories over Michel Pereira and Marc-Andre Barriault steadied the ship and kept him hovering just outside the middleweight rankings.

The mat isn't unfamiliar territory for him, either. Over the past several months Bullet took a pair of high-profile grappling bouts under the Hype FC banner, tangling with UFC lightweights Edson Barboza and Arman Tsarukyan. The Tsarukyan match, contested this past December, was unscored — and by most accounts the No. 2-ranked lightweight (23-3) ran the show.

Why RAF Keeps Winning These Bids

The bigger story here is the pipeline itself. RAF has quietly become a landing spot for name-brand UFC fighters looking for something between fights, and the recent headlines back that up: Dvalishvili and Cejudo ran it back at RAF 12, and Colby Covington's grudge match with Belal Muhammad has been simmering since a post-event melee at RAF 11.

For Bullet, the appeal is obvious. Grappling exposure keeps him sharp, keeps him visible, and adds a wrinkle to a game already built on volume and pressure. Whether it eventually sharpens his UFC ceiling is a separate question — but the timing, coming off two straight wins, suggests a fighter keeping his options open rather than one stepping away.