Aiemann Zahabi is finally getting busy more frequently in the cage. After long bouts of inactivity over the course of his career, he’s now coming off a much shorter break for UFC Vegas 87. He’ll get a chance to fight Javid Basharat with a spot in the top 15 potentially on the line.
However, before he gets to get busy with his hands again, he got busy with his mouth. Back in January, Zahabi got the invite to commentate on Unified MMA 55. He immediately jumped at the opportunity.
“It was a dream come true – another little thing I can do on the side,” he said. “I really thought it was fun to do because I have a lot of fight experience and a lot of training experience, so I thought I would do really well.”
The reaction to his work was mostly positive, but with a twist. Many felt like he brought a much different angle to the commentating booth compared to the traditional format.
“A lot of the feedback that I got was that I sounded more like a coach in the commentary booth,” Zahabi said with a laugh. “I think that might be my schtick. I was giving cornerman advice and during the fights, some of the guys could hear me as they were fighting and started doing what I was advising.”
After the event, Zahabi felt like he had discovered something for himself. Peeople instantly liked his work. Perhaps more important than that, he enjoyed it as well. That led him to begin his plans to extend that work to the UFC.
“I’m going to start my own YouTube channel. That’s my project for after this fight,” he said. “I want to watch the UFC and do alternative commentary on YouTube.”
The idea is in its infancy, but he is beginning to lay the groundwork of what that might look like as well as who might be guests on the show. Zahabi is casting a pretty wide net for it all.
“The first one is probably going to be me doing a test run by myself just to see how the setup is going to go. I’m not the most tech savvy guy,” he said. “Then I was thinking of inviting another UFC fight or another guy from the gym. Maybe have my wife do some with me too. It could be fun because some guys do watch the fights with their girlfriends or wives and it could be funny to have that casual – my wife could be the casual.”
Before we’ll get a chance to see any of that, we’ll see him again in the cage. That fight with Javid Basharat will take place at UFC Vegas 87 this Saturday. The fight card starts at 1:30pm EST on ESPN+.
