Hasbulla under fire for appearing to punch cat in YouTube video

A clip of popular social media star Hasbulla Magomedov allegedly hitting his cat has surfaced online, and fans aren’t happy at all.

The influencer, who lives in Dagestan (a republic of Russia) rocketed to fame in 2020 largely thanks to TikTok. More recently, he signed with the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). Even if you don’t watch him, chances are that you’ve seen his face - he frequently appears in memes and reaction images. However, as Dexerto reports, his name is now making the rounds for a very unpleasant reason as a video of him seemingly hurting his pet cat has gone viral.

The screen-recorded YouTube Short taken from YouTube channel ‘I am Hasbulla Magomedov’ seems to show Magomedov tugging on his cat’s ear before hitting it on the head twice. It was shared in the tweet below by Twitter user @SamDaKilla1, who questioned: “Why is [Hasbulla] doing this to his cat?” Be warned that some may find the clip upsetting.

Viewers have been expressing their shock, and many are concerned for the cat’s welfare: “This is offensive and needs taking down. Anyone defending it has different values to a real person. RSPCA needs a look. Weird,” tweeted @JohnnyGib68. “This is painful to watch man not the poor kitty,” wrote @ExpertJames1. “So wrong! Why would you abuse an animal! It’s small like you how would you like me to do that to you!” commented @purpyj.

At the time of writing, it doesn’t appear that the video is still publicly available on the YouTube channel, so it might have been taken down. It’s also worth noting that the channel that it was screen recorded from on doesn’t seem to be Magomedov’s official channel.

Magomedov hasn’t addressed the controversy on any of his social media channels yet, either - it remains to be seen if he will.