Legendary UFC hall-of-famer Khabib Nurmagomedov has said he doesn’t think it would be a good idea for his protoge, current UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev to move up to challenge welterweight champ Belal Muhammad.
For Nurmagomedov there would be a conflict of interests as while he’s a long-time coach of Makhachev, he also cornered Muhammad for his TKO win over Sean Brady a couple of years ago.
And beyond that, Khabib has admitted that stylistically it would be a challenging match-up for Makhachev.
“If they had asked me to fight with Belal when I was an active fighter, (I would have said) no,” Nurmagomedov said on Henry Cejudo and Kamaru Usman’s ‘Pound For Pound’ podcast. “But for example, Belal and Islam, OK, you have to talk with them. My heart – my heart is not OK. It would be hard to prepare Islam to beat Belal.”
“I don’t think that it’s ever going to happen,” Nurmagomedov continued. “For me, it’s going to be very hard to prepare somebody to beat Belal. If you want to beat Belal, I think you have to stop him. Without a stoppage, it’s going to be very hard. What are you going to do?
OK, if you take him down, it’s very hard to control him for 25 minutes, first of all. Second, it’s very hard to dominate him on striking game in all 25 minutes because he mixes it up. He doesn’t stay with you all 25 minutes. He wrestles and strike, wrestle and strike. He is good.”
Makhachev has unfinished business to attend to first before he could even contemplate such a fight however as he’s currently scheduled to defend his 155lb title in a rematch with Arman Tsarukyan in the main event of UFC 311 in January.
