Frodo Khasbulaev won the season eight featherweight tournament eleven months ago when he defeated Mike Richman at Bellator 95, but he is currently dealing with visa issues that does not allow him to travel to the United States. 
During his post fight scrum last night, Bellator MMA Chairman and CEO Bjorn Rebney was asked for an update on the situation and stated that there has been no progress on Khasbulaev’s visa.
Bellator continues to work on the visa issue that Khasbulaev is currently dealing with and a timetable for a resolution is not known at this time. When discussing the visa issues, Rebney said dealing with immigration is like dealing with the DMV.
“It’s funny because immigration if like going to the DMV and trying to get something done,” Rebney said. “They don’t tell you everything and what is going on and why. They just give you the no stamp and it’s discouraging because Frodo is a beast. Frodo ranks up there with Straus and Curran in some of the best featherweights that we got, but they won’t let him in.”
This is not the first time that Bellator has dealt with a fighter dealing with visa issues. Over the last year, Bellator has ended up releasing welterweight Paul Daley and Ryan Ford due to their visa issues with the United States.
While Rebney does not know the exact issue on why Khasbulaev can not get into the United States, he did state that this situation is much different that the issues that Daley has had with his visa.
“The Daley sitation was different and had a lot of legal situations around it. Enough was enough and we finally just backed off and let him go. We will keep him busy and we have a lot of friends in the Russian market that put on fights and keep him busy. It doesn’t appear to be one of those things that will keep him out forever but it has keep him out for the last nine months to a year. We just got to keep working on it.”