YouTube<\/a> when asked to compare the fights. \u201cNot Jon Jones and Pereira.\u201d<\/p>\nJones is widely regarded as one of the greatest fighters in MMA history, having won 28 of 30 bouts, with his lone blemishes being a disqualification loss and a knockout of Daniel Cormier that was overturned to a no-contest when Jones later tested positive for banned substances. The 38-year-old retired this past June, but quickly announced an interest in fighting again at the proposed UFC White House event in 2026 with Pereira frequently mentioned as a possible opponent.<\/p>\n
Pereira, 38, is currently in his second reign as UFC light heavyweight champion, a title Jones successfully defended 11 times in total, and also briefly held the UFC middleweight championship. He is on the same page as Jones as far as wanting to book what would be a historic matchup.<\/p>\n
\u201cStill a big fight, but not on that level,\u201d Nurmagomedov said of Jones vs. Pereira. \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s same level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked about how the UFC White House card should be constructed, Nurmagomedov hinted that the Jones-Pereira fight would be more suitable as a showcase bout than anything else, given the location.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think if you\u2019re making a White House fight, it has to be more American fighters,\u201d Nurmagomedov said. \u201cIt\u2019s very interesting. If a Georgian fighter fights against a Russian fighter, it\u2019s not interesting in front of White House. It has to be American fighters representing their country and they fight against other guys. It seems like it has to be like this, the way how I see it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Khabib Nurmagomedov thinks Islam Makhachev still holds pole position when it comes to putting together the biggest MMA…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":284813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-284812","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}