The Middle East is now a well established hub for combat sports. Last month, Abu Dhabi hosted UFC 308, where Ilia Topuria successfully defended his featherweight title against Max Holloway in the main event.
Before that, Francis Ngannou made a successful return to mixed martial arts when he downed the giant Renan Ferreira in a heavyweight clash dubbed ‘The Battle of the Giants’ in Riyadh.
Many fighters choose to make the UAE their home or set up camp here in preparation for an upcoming event. Khamzat Chimaev, who beat Robert Whittaker in the co-main event at UFC 308, now resides and fights out of the UAE. Former UFC middleweight champion Whittaker himself trained in Dubai in preparation for the bout.
Senegalese heavyweight Oumar Kane is another who now calls Dubai home. More commonly know as "Reug Reug" (which means someone who’s invisible) has been practising the art of ‘Laamb’, a type of wresting popular in his homeland, since he was six. He trains at the TRIPL3 MMA gym in Jumeirah Lake Towers.
"I’ve been living on and off in Dubai since 2021. But more permanently for the last couple years in order to focus on my training 100 per cent," he told The National.
"I went to train in the US for a few months and then went back to Senegal. After that I came to Dubai, training in a few different gyms until my managers found my current coaches Milano and Ramzi of TRIPL3 MMA – and we have done five fights together already."
Reug Reug, 32, is preparing for his next bout, where he takes on Anatoly Malykhin in the main event at ONE 169 in Bangkok on Saturday for the Russian's heavyweight title.
"I feel good, I’ve had a long camp and every camp I get better. I feel very confident on bringing the belt to Senegal and Dubai." Reug Reug said.
Malykhin, 36, boasts a perfect record of 14 wins and also holds the ONE organisation's light heavyweight and middleweight belts. Despite his underdog status, Reug Reug, who has six wins against one loss in his MMA career, is confident he has the tools to dethrone the Russian.
"I’m still very new to MMA, every fight I am a new version of myself and I’m adding new skills to my game. Wherever it goes I’ll be a problem for Anatoly," he said.
Asked what it would mean to inflict a first defeat of Malykhin's pro career, Reug Reug responded: "I’m focused on my own goals and legacy, beating Malykhin is just part of it. That’s it."
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Kumulus Water
Started: 2021
Founders: Iheb Triki and Mohamed Ali Abid
Based: Tunisia
Sector: Water technology
Number of staff: 22
Investment raised: $4 million
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Gothia Cup 2025
4,872 matches
1,942 teams
116 pitches
76 nations
26 UAE teams
15 Lebanese teams
2 Kuwaiti teams
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'Young girls thinking of big ideas'
Words come easy for aspiring writer Afra Al Muhairb. The business side of books, on the other hand, is entirely foreign to the 16-year-old Emirati. So, she followed her father’s advice and enroled in the Abu Dhabi Education Council’s summer entrepreneurship course at Abu Dhabi University hoping to pick up a few new skills.
“Most of us have this dream of opening a business,” said Afra, referring to her peers are “young girls thinking of big ideas.”
In the three-week class, pupils are challenged to come up with a business and develop an operational and marketing plan to support their idea. But, the learning goes far beyond sales and branding, said teacher Sonia Elhaj.
“It’s not only about starting up a business, it’s all the meta skills that goes with it -- building self confidence, communication,” said Ms Elhaj. “It’s a way to coach them and to harness ideas and to allow them to be creative. They are really hungry to do this and be heard. They are so happy to be actually doing something, to be engaged in creating something new, not only sitting and listening and getting new information and new knowledge. Now they are applying that knowledge.”
Afra’s team decided to focus their business idea on a restaurant modelled after the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Each level would have a different international cuisine and all the meat would be halal. The pupils thought of this after discussing a common problem they face when travelling abroad.
“Sometimes we find the struggle of finding halal food, so we just eat fish and cheese, so it’s hard for us to spend 20 days with fish and cheese,” said Afra. “So we made this tower so every person who comes – from Africa, from America – they will find the right food to eat.”
rpennington@thenational.ae
KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
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