Despite being able to outwrestle a bear, Khabib Nurmagomedov fears snakes after getting pranked by his teammates.
The 33 year old Khabib is one of the finest grappler to ever enter the cage. This is why he was inducted into the UFC Hall of fame earlier this year.
But two years ago, when he was getting ready for a match, Nurmagomedov’s teammates played a prank on the UFC champion.
Two guys brought in a giant live snake while Khabib was training. They started chasing everyone around with it after.
While his other campmates were forced to face the snake, Khabib was observed making a swift getaway.
The reptile was brought in when Nurmagomedov and his team as they were set up inside an Abu Dhabi training facility. But as Nurmagomedov pointed out, he was not the target of the prank at first.
At the time, he said to BT Sport:
“Honestly, I don’t like snakes. I like bear, eagle, lion. They don’t know about me, they know about other guys, they know about other guys but they don’t bring this to bring pressure on me.”
Nurmagomedov learned to fight while growing up in Dagestan. The infamous photos from that time period show the budding UFC champion battling bears at the age of nine.
However, the guy said that after being injured fighting bears, he was obliged to enlist a lion as his covert sparring partner.
In 2016, he said to TMZ Sports: