Ahead of his interim middleweight title fight in a little over a weeks time, Kelvin Gastelum has warned that the ongoing and increasingly ugly feud between Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov could turn deadly.
“I think there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed,” Gastelum said at a UFC 236 media day. “And this rivalry that’s going on right now is escalating to a point where it shouldn’t have to, you know what I mean?
“I feel like if it keeps escalating the way it is, somebody is going to end up getting hurt or shot, or something. I truly believe that.”
The beef between the two rivals hit a new low earlier this week when McGregor made a racist and Islamaphoic remark about Nurmagomedov’s wife, which led to the UFC lightweight champion retaliating by accusing ‘The Notorious’ of being a racist and posting a photo of him getting up close and personal with a woman who has claimed to have gotten pregnant by the superstar.
“You shouldn’t mess with people’s wives, you shouldn’t mess with people’s lives or their religion, absolutely,” Gastelum said, suggesting that to do so could lead to serious consquences in which bad blood between the fighters might lead to further trouble outside of the Octagon.
It appears there’s few that disagree with Gastelum’s viewpoint, and indeed even UFC president Dana White appeared to recognise that the situation has gotten out of hand as earlier this week he reached out to both fighter’s camps in an attempt to silence the public outbursts between them.
