World Sports Summit<\/a>. \u201cBecause there are so many hungry fighters coming, and they don\u2019t like to talk, they don\u2019t like trash talk. They just come, smash people, and take money. And U.S. promotions, they don\u2019t like this. They like trash talking, they like entertainment.<\/p>\n\u201cI understand. In one way, it\u2019s business. But at end of day, this is sport. It\u2019s sport. One-on-one, you go alone inside of cage, and we\u2019ll see who is the best in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, Nurmagomedov had an incredible career, which has carried over to other members of his team, such as current welterweight champion Islam Makhachev, and bantamweight contender Umar Nurmagomedov.<\/p>\n
The road for Nurmagomdov to finally get to a title shot was a long one, but at least he had a road to travel \u2014 which is something \u201cThe Eagle\u201d is no concerned about when it comes to his young fighters trying to be the best of the best in the sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of young guys coming,\u201d Nurmagomedov explained. \u201cFor example, in my gym \u2014 I have a couple of gyms in Dagestan \u2014 and there are 500 amateur guys, and they all want to be like Khabib. They all want to be champion. They all want to take over in the world, and they\u2019re all good. What are we going to do with them? Like, how are you going to stop them?<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s very hard, or just not sign them. Right now, I see some promotions, they follow the politics and just don\u2019t sign them because they\u2019re tired. Because all Magomedov, Nurmagomedov, they jump to the UFC and take over. In the last couple of years, they changed a little bit of politics, and I don\u2019t like this, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
Recently, we\u2019ve seen the UFC make some questionable roster moves that have had fans scratching their heads. Earlier this month, Rinat Fakhretdinov, who was unbeaten in the UFC over seven fights, and had a 54-second knockout victory in September, was not re-signed after fighting out his deal.<\/p>\n
Nurmagomedov knows there\u2019s not much he can do about it, but he feels talking about it could be a step forward to changing that narrative.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, like I said, this is sport. It has to be fair,\u201d Nurmagomedov said. \u201cAnd even in the last couple of years, we saw so many fighters cut. They cut so many fighters that don\u2019t even lose in UFC. They just finish contract, they don\u2019t give them new contract.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, somebody has to talk about this, and I think this is not fair. This is what I don\u2019t like.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Khabib Nurmagomedov believes MMA should be sport first, entertainment second \u2014 and that\u2019s from the UFC on down.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":377568,"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-377567","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\/377567","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=377567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/377567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/377568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=377567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=377567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=377567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}