Losing a fight is one thing. Losing it, then torching your opponent and the promotion that signs your checks in a since-deleted rant, is another. That’s the position Mike Davis found himself in after UFC Abu Dhabi, and on Saturday, “Beast Boy” tried to walk part of it back.

Davis fell to Nurullo Aliev by unanimous decision at Etihad Arena, dropped to 12-4 overall and 5-3 in the UFC, as Aliev, the unbeaten “Tajik Eagle,” improved to 12-0. The fight was one-sided in a way that had nothing to do with strikes landed. Aliev spent roughly 12 to 13 minutes controlling Davis on the mat across eight takedowns, grinding out a decision that left almost no room for Davis to find offense.

What followed was uglier than the fight itself. Minutes after the loss, Davis posted an Instagram video ripping Aliev’s style and, in the process, using language aimed at wrestlers broadly that crossed well past criticism of a game plan.

“For the UFC, I thought you were cutting wrestlers, bro,” he said. “All they do is s–k d— for 15 minutes. What are we doing? You have been cutting people on undefeated streaks all the time for wrestling. This isn’t RAF. This is g–, bro… G– people in the UFC, get them the f— out of here. Stand with me; I just want to bang, bro.”

The video came down soon after, but not before it spread. By Saturday, Davis had returned to X with a considerably different tone, apologizing directly to Aliev by name.

“@NurulloAliev, hopefully you see this,” he wrote. “I understand you were being a nice guy in the end, amazing sportsmanship. In the heat of the moment, I was/am severely disappointed in myself. In what I went through to help the @ufc by flying out here while sick and injured. Disappointed in what I was told before the fight, disappointed that I wasn’t able to give them what they wanted and secure my dream. I hope you never have to experience the pain of a loss.”

The 33-year-old also made it clear that he wasn’t blaming Nurullo Aliev for the result.

“It’s not your fault; you did what you are extremely good at, and it worked,” he added. “I respect that. I respect you. I appreciate you for taking the fight and being present in it all.

“I apologize for what I said. I’m a damn good fighter, and my frustration took over, and my fear of not being able to help my family made me act out. Wish you great success brother.”

The apology covered the way he lashed out. But it did not cover what he was lashing out about.

Davis Still Thinks The Style That Beat Him Is Killing The Sport

Davis walked back the language, not the argument. In a follow-up post, he made the case that a decision built entirely on control time isn’t the same thing as winning a fight.

“If I did nothing and he did nothing, who the f— got dominated,” Davis added in a later post. “Its embarrassing that you can win a fight by stalling. You can’t even call that wrestling. He just held onto me from bell to bell. Even gave him option to break off and strike me free of charge, and he just keep holding on.

“We are in the entertainment industry. We get paid when we make the crowd scream. Were you genuinely entertained by that? I would seriously like to know.”

That argument, stripped of the slurs, isn’t as far from the UFC’s own thinking as it might seem. Dana White has repeatedly criticized control-heavy fights with minimal offense, arguing fans pay for finishes, not grinding. The promotion’s current bonus structure backs that up in practice: every knockout, TKO, or submission earns a fighter a guaranteed $25,000 finish bonus, unless they already collected the $100,000 Performance of the Night award, in which case the finish bonus doesn’t stack on top of it. Either way, the message is the same. Finishing fights pays, and grinding out decisions increasingly does not.

The roster has felt that shift too. Muhammad Mokaev, undefeated at the time, was released by the UFC to considerable backlash, and has since suggested his wrestling-heavy style played a role in the promotion moving on from him.

None of that erases how Davis chose to make his point. But it does mean his underlying complaint, that fights like this one aren’t what fans are paying for, isn’t a fringe opinion inside the company he was venting at.

For Aliev, the win pushes him to 12-0, though only two of those wins have come by finish. If the UFC’s current bonus structure is any indication of where the promotion wants the sport headed, staying unbeaten may not be enough on its own. Davis’s next assignment hasn’t been announced, and neither has Aliev’s, but both fighters now carry a version of the same question into their next outing, whether either can finish a fight before someone questions if they belong on the roster at all.