{"id":273937,"date":"2025-11-09T20:28:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-09T20:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/273937\/"},"modified":"2025-11-09T20:28:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-09T20:28:08","slug":"khabib-details-extreme-pressure-to-fight-again-after-fathers-death","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/273937\/","title":{"rendered":"Khabib details extreme pressure to fight again after father\u2019s death"},"content":{"rendered":"

Khabib Nurmagomedov is one of the few fighters who walked away from the UFC at the top of their game — a perfect 29-0 and with the lightweight belt wrapped around his waist. Some fans and fighters<\/a> have given him flak<\/a> for the decision to listen to his mother<\/a> and step away from the sport after his father \/ coach Abdulmanap died. But Khabib explained his reasoning in a new conversation at the Miftaah Institute.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw a lot of rumors why I retired, because of this or that,\u201d Nurmagomedov said of his decision. \u201cI think if my father was still alive he would have made me fight a little bit longer, because I just turned 32 when I finished. But he passed away and it was very honest, a good conversation with her. It\u2019s hard to explain. Everything happened so fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Khabib described the pressure he was under to step back into the cage for October, 2020 despite his father dying of COVID<\/a> three months earlier in July.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen father passed away, I didn\u2019t even have time to think what to do,\u201d he said. \u201cBecause they make interim title [for Justin Gaethje in May]. Then father passed away, and UFC told me, \u2018We\u2019re gonna give you one month off, after one month come back to us.\u2019 What are you gonna do? It was a very difficult situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom one side it was the whole world waiting for this fight,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd the other side, I have this deal, what happened with me and my father and my mother on the other side. And I chose what mother wished.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite being committed to staying retired,<\/a> Khabib has continued his father\u2019s work training some of the toughest fighters to come out of Dagestan and the surrounding regions. He built a new $5 million facility<\/a> in Makhachkala named after his father, and he continues to mentor Abdulmanap\u2019s other protege Islam Makhachev coming into this weekend\u2019s UFC 322 main event.<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s exactly what his father would want him to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of our conversations were about the future,\u201d Khabib said of his father. \u201cWhat we can do about projects, about our plan, about the guys, about the team. All about investing in people, all about supporting people. My father was never a very big businessman or something like this, but he was always investing with his knowledge and energy to help people. It was his life goal.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Khabib Nurmagomedov is one of the few fighters who walked away from the UFC at the top of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273938,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-273937","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-mma","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273937","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=273937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}