{"id":210003,"date":"2025-10-13T10:55:09","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T10:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/210003\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T10:55:09","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T10:55:09","slug":"usman-nurmagomedov-khabib-had-me-back-in-gym-a-week-after-win-over-paul-hughes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/210003\/","title":{"rendered":"Usman Nurmagomedov: Khabib had me back in gym a week after win over Paul Hughes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Usman Nurmagomedov chuckles when asked what his cousin Khabib said to him after his hard-fought win over Paul Hughes this month.<\/p>\n

Nurmagomedov retained his PFL lightweight world title<\/a> against the Irishman in Dubai, but Khabib, who was in his corner, could be heard screaming at the Russian during some contentious moments in the fight.<\/p>\n

Nurmagomedov says he is back in the gym despite enjoying only one week of rest after the fight – on Khabib’s orders.<\/p>\n

“At first he was so happy and congratulated me,” Usman tells BBC Sport.<\/p>\n

“But then he said ‘You have to be starting training. Because we don’t have time for stopping and chilling. We’re here to work’.<\/p>\n

“I said ‘OK, brother. Give me one week’. He said ‘OK, one week’.”<\/p>\n

Former UFC lightweight champion Khabib turned to coaching after retiring undefeated in 2020 with 29 wins from 29 fights.<\/p>\n

Nurmagomedov’s victory was his second over Hughes after a narrow win<\/a> in January, but the judges’ scorecards did not reflect a close battle – they scored it 50-45, 49-46 and 48-47.<\/p>\n

“My opinion: I won every round; I took him down in every round. I threw my jab very well. And if he only did a couple of shots, I did more than him,” said Nurmagomedov.<\/p>\n

“In my opinion there was no 50-45. It was like 48-46 or 48-47.<\/p>\n

“People can talk. I don’t care what people think about me or my fight. The people who understand the fight, they know this was high level.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Usman Nurmagomedov chuckles when asked what his cousin Khabib said to him after his hard-fought win over Paul…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":210004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-210003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-mma","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/210004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}