Khabib pushed the pace, attempted to finish or advance position. That’s not what I consider a boring crotch sniffer. I enjoyed his fights. There’s lots of good wrestling based fighters I wouldn’t call that. Watching a dude stall a fight and do nothing is not appealing. That was a pathetic performance after all the “hold me back bro” stuff and the alleged sucker punch in the lead up.
Being a boring fighter with a bunch of out of ring drama and being notoriously hard to work with is not a recipe for success, especially not at flyweight. It would have taken a sizeable dislike for dealing the fighter for me to cut him though if I was running the show.
I mean you're criticising the wrong guy. The whole first round was on the feet and the striker didn't strike. Mokaev threw twice as many strikes as Kape did, and lead the whole fight in both strikes from distance (landed and thrown) and significant strikes (landed and thrown).
Mokaev also only had 3 takedowns in the fight, Khabib's record is 21 takedowns in a 3 round fight. Saying Mokaev is a boring crotch sniffer when he out struck a striker and had 1/7th of the takedowns of the guy you said isn't a crotch sniffer... Idk man, think your dislike is misplaced.
Mokaev also has 3 wins against ranked fighters (4 if you count Durden). That's more than #3 ranked Albazzi, #5 ranked Taira, and #7 ranked Erceg, who already got a title shot. All I'm saying is it's a bad business move to cut one of the best prospects in the sport. Would have liked to see his career progress in the UFC.