Umar Nurmagomedov suffered a knockout loss to Song Yadong last month and it’s led him to rethink his fighting strategy from this point forward.
“I’m done with wrestling,” the fighter’s manager Ali Abdelaziz says Umar Nurmagomedov told him after the dust settled on his latest defeat.
“Umar called me the other day, and he was like, ‘I’m not a wrestler. I’m not gonna wrestle again. I’m just gonna knock everybody out. I’m gonna make sure I make it look easy.’”
The 30-year-old Nurmagomedov only has two victories via strikes on his overall 20-2 record, with one of them being a 1st round KO finish of this weekend’s UFC Fight Night 289 headliner Raoni Barcelos – the only loss via strikes of the Brazilian’s 14-year career.
Nurmagomedov does have a further 7 wins by submission though, and so it’s hard to imagine him completely abandoning his ground game altogether.
The KO loss was clearly a big disappointment for him though, but his brother, PFL and Bellator lightweight champion Usman Nurmagomedov, insists that it’s not the end of the world, and that Umar will bounce back.
“It is what it is. We’ll keep moving forward, correct mistakes, and come back stronger,” Usman said. “Why should we [hide from the defeat]? He who doesn’t fall does not rise. So, it’s all good.
“This is MMA. Of course, it’s unpleasant when it happens to your brother right in front of you. But we are in this sport; that’s the way it is. We put someone’s lights off, and someone puts our lights off. It’s uncomfortable. But we live with it [and] come back.”
