When UFC legend Khabib Nurmagomedov sat down for an evening event in Chicago, the conversation took an unexpected turn from mixed martial arts to basketball. During the interview, he talked specifically about the wild version played in his homeland of Dagestan.
What started as a discussion about Chicago’s sports legacy and Michael Jordan quickly evolved into a hilarious revelation about how Dagestanis have transformed basketball into something the NBA’s greatest player would find utterly foreign.
During the event, the moderator brought up Chicago’s most famous athlete, asking Khabib about his awareness of Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls dynasty. The retired UFC champion recalled watching Jordan during his championship runs in the mid-1990s, when Khabib was just a young boy in his mountain village where basketball wasn’t particularly popular. However, Jordan’s global fame meant even remote Dagestan caught glimpses of his greatness.
But then Khabib dropped a bombshell that left the audience both bewildered and amused: “Dagestani basketball, I know how to play basketball. If you read about this, maybe we have some connection basketball in Chicago. But Dagestani basketball—nobody can come even close. It’s like, no, no, no. We don’t do this like, like, how to say, two-step. You have to do this crazy things.”
When pressed to explain what makes Dagestani basketball so different, Khabib’s description painted a picture of organized chaos. “When we was playing in California and when we begin play, [they] stop it. It’s like, ‘What are you talking about? Let’s play. There is no rules,'” he explained. “But I don’t know—maybe Chicago has different rules. But in Dagestani basketball, there is no rules. You can wrestle, you can choke people, you can do whatever you want.”
The revelation drew roars of laughter and applause from the Chicago audience, who could hardly imagine a version of basketball where grappling, tackling, and submission holds are not only allowed but encouraged.
For a region that has produced some of the world’s most dominant MMA fighters, turning basketball into a contact sport makes perfect sense.
