You may not recognize the name Magomed Zaynukov, but we bet you\u2019re familiar with him via his viral nom de guerre, \u201cJohn Pork.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zainukov recently earned a UFC contract through Dana White\u2019s Contender Series, and then introduced himself to the wider fanbase by beating the crap out of Dillon Danis<\/a> cageside at UFC 322. His fighting style is exciting, and his real nickname \u201cChanko\u201d is also catchy. But there\u2019s no escaping \u201cJohn Pork,\u201d which came after people misheard Islam Makhachev saying \u201cChanko.\u201d<\/p>\n Now it\u2019s all \u201cJohn Pork.\u201d Where many fans have to google what a fighter\u2019s nickname is, in this case they\u2019re googling what \u201cJohn Pork\u2019s\u201d real name is. And because of that, the big fight archives like Sherdog and Tapology all list Zainukov as \u201cJohn Pork.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll talk to those guys so they can correct it, they\u2019ve gone a bit too far.\u201d Zainukov\u2019s manager Rizvan Magomedov said in a recent interview with MMA Arena. But past that, Magomedov believes his client should embrace the name because it\u2019s clearly not going anywhere.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to take this calmly,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s understandable that it\u2019s an unpleasant nickname, but I think the more attention Magomed puts on it or the more he tries, the less it\u2019s going to change. It\u2019s already permeated the fan base. And every time you try to deny it, you\u2019ll probably just push it on yourself even more, hyping it up.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to approach this with a healthy dose of humor, and it won\u2019t change anything in life.\u201d<\/p>\n The name is controversial because Zainukov is Muslim and pork is haram, leading some to consider it a racist insult. But those cheering on \u201cJohn Pork\u201d are some of his biggest fans, and the origin of the name clearly came from a misunderstanding via his teammate and friend Makhachev, not some racist taunt.<\/p>\n \u201cIf anyone looked at the way [Islam] pronounced \u2018Chanko,\u2019 we all know \u2018Chanko,\u2019 it\u2019s a familiar word to us,\u201d Magomedov said. \u201cBut Americans might have misheard it a bit. And so the story went. But you see, every PR stunt has two sides. It served him well among Western audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n Magomed Zainukov has already become one of the most hyped names coming out of Khabib Nurmagomedov\u2019s Dagestani power camp, and the \u201cJohn Pork\u201d name played a big part in that. If there\u2019s an issue he\u2019ll have to deal with before breaking through into true MMA stardom, it\u2019s being potentially banned from the U.S.<\/a> for sucker punching Dillon Danis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You may not recognize the name Magomed Zaynukov, but we bet you\u2019re familiar with him via his viral…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,638,82,702],"class_list":["post-361070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=361070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}