Tony Ferguson may now have the longest losing streak in UFC history, but fans have never forgotten the 12-fight winning streak he went on before that, and neither has his rival Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Back then a fight between lightweight kingpin Nurmagomedov and Ferguson was a fight everyone was clamouring to see, and ‘The Eagle’ has admitted that he’s sad that it never materialized.
“I feel a little bit sad but at the same time, I always understood that my game is worse for him. He doesn’t have wrestling, he doesn’t have grappling, what was he going to do with me? How was he gonna stop me?” Nurmagomedov said on the Inspire Me Podcast.
“The only chance he had to stop me was with a lucky punch, like with everybody. Like with Conor, (Dustin) Poirier, with Justin Gaethje. Everybody talks about like, ‘They can stop him if Khabib is gonna get lucky punch’ but other stuff, how were they gonna stop me?
“When he fought with Danny Castillo, Beneil Dariush, Justin Gaethje, Charles Oliveira, all these guys mauled him. He didn’t have wrestling defense, he didn’t have good grappling, I’m a little bit sad (it didn’t happen).”
Nurmagomedov vs. Ferguson was a fight that the UFC tried to put together on no less than five occasions over the years, but it proved to be a jinxed match-up as it repeatedly fell through for a series of weird and wonderful reasons, including Khabib being hospitalized after a bad weight-cut, Ferguson suffering a knee injury after tripping up on his way to a pre-fight media event, and their final booking together being scrapped in April of 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Just a month later Ferguson would go on to suffer a TKO loss against Justin Gaethje, which would mark the beginning of his stunning 8-fight losing slump, while Khabib then went on to beat Gaethje by 2nd round submission that October before retiring from the sport with an undefeated 29-0 record.
