In the aftermath of what is considered one of the fights of the year, the unbeaten Nurmagomedov admitted he had “underestimated” Hughes.<\/p>\n
Whilst Hughes believes that Nurmagomedov will be sharper for the rematch as a result, the 28-year-old also knows he will need to change his approach from the first fight.<\/p>\n
Hughes says that has been his focus this year and he thinks he will be better prepared having taken his record to 14-2 with a 42-second stoppage of Bruno Miranda at the SSE Arena in May in his last fight.<\/p>\n
“I now have five rounds in there with him, so I need to make those adjustments, and I have been making them since I left the cage the first time,” he added.<\/p>\n
“Yes, I had a fight in the time in between that, but my eyes have always been set on that rematch. Every decision I have made in the last couple of months has been with the idea of getting that belt.<\/p>\n
“It’s easy for me to say I’m going to put pressure on him earlier, I am fighting one of the best fighters in the world, you can’t put too much pressure on him early or you’ll get clipped, so I have to find different ways to break him down and because of how close the first fight was he will be the best he can possibly be.”<\/p>\n
Hughes, who will head out to Dubai for a training camp to acclimatise ahead of the co-main event of the PFL Champions Series, also said that the satisfaction of beating Nurmagomedov will mean more than the PFL title.<\/p>\n
“I’m not thinking about the belt, it is about beating Usman. The belt will be a lovely reward but I’m focusing on beating the man,” he continued.<\/p>\n
“I got so close the first time and I believe when I get the job done this time it is MMA superstardom.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the aftermath of what is considered one of the fights of the year, the unbeaten Nurmagomedov admitted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94137,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,785,85],"class_list":["post-94136","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\/94136","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=94136"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94136\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}