Dan Manasoiu is arranging to take on Muslim Patsarigov in a match at Grapplefest 15 on February 18th, 2023, and he’s clearly incredibly confident in his ability to win. It seems as though Manasoiu is going to follow in his training partner Gordon Ryan’s footsteps in gambling an absurd amount of money on his ability to win. Manasoiu is actually willing to bet $70,000 of his own money on him defeating Patsarigov and he’s already arranged with the promoter to have that money held in an escrow account while the match takes place.
The proposed match would take place without any weight limit in place and will be contested over a single ten-minute round under the standard Grapplefest rules. At the time of writing, Patsarigov has not yet formally agreed to the match but has been reached out to by Grapplefest director Chris Thompson with the contract offer. It’s also unclear when the match will take place on the upcoming Grapplefest 15 fight card if it is accepted, but it seems reasonable to assume that this would likely serve as either the main event or co-main event.
Manasoiu has rose to prominence in the BJJ world training under John Danaher at New Wave Jiu-Jitsu with his crowning achievement to date coming in 2022 when he won ADCC trials. Muslim Patsarigov on the other hand has never managed to win trials, although he has come second in the past and was submitted by Dan Manasoiu in the 2022 edition. He is a Chechen wrestler originally who transitioned to BJJ and is perhaps best known for the fact that he has been disqualified from competition on multiple occasions for striking his opponents, including most recently Manasoiu’s teammate Oliver Taza.
Dan Manasoiu announced the news of his $70,000 contract offer for a fight with Muslim Patsarigov by screenshotting the message sent to him by Grapplefest director Chris Thompson and uploading it in a post to his official Instagram account: