Khabib Nurmagomedov has been very disciplined in his professional MMA career. But he’s also made more than most thanks to his good relationship with Dana White and the promotion. Now Nurmagomedov is trying to bootstrap his promotion Eagles FC and break into the US market. This is why Nurmagomedov opted to introduce the 165lbs division and sign former UFC fighters Kevin Lee and Diego Sanchez.
But Nurmagomedov is not opposed to stunts and good marketing – this is why his promotion offered the infamous youtube star turned celebrity boxer a fight contract.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aH7srR5sgs
Paul is on the record as saying he would take the contract if he could fight Nurmagomedov in his first MMA bout. This is a calculated move by Paul – someone as devout as Nurmagomedov is unlikely to have his resolve buckled. He’s also not going to just scrape everything he said over a potentially lucrative paydate. Recently Nurmagomedov guested on the Nelk boys Full Send podcast and shared his honest opinion on Paul’s skills.
“What do you think, he can fight with me?” Khabib asked one of the overeager hosts about Paul’s reply.
To which the hosts replied quickly: “No, absolutely not but I think the world kind of wants to
see him get knocked out, yeah, so what better way to do it than an Eagle fc?”
Khabib replied: “He late a little bit – because I’m finished. And I was like of course we can- we can think about this, like… I watched some like it was sparring or some video of him doing MMA with someone who’s like – he have to learn a lot you know.”
Nurmagomedov is likely talking about Paul’s only public MMA match to date – the rolling session he had with bjj star and Bellator fighter AJ Agazarm.
Nurmagomedov continued:
” In boxing is like- he know how to punch, you know, it’s not bad like on boxing game. Anybody can box, you can box too but you never can wrestle – this is completely different.”