Khabib Nurmagomedov is comfortably retired from competition and he’s not even sure he could come back if he wanted to.
It’s been almost five years since fans saw the last fight of “The Eagle,” widely regarded as one of the best fighters in MMA history. Nurmagomedov retired with a 29-0 record, officially hanging up the gloves after defeating Justin Gaethje at UFC 254 to record his third straight UFC lightweight title defense. At the time, Nurmagomedov said he had promised his mother he would no longer compete.”
Now 36, Nurmagomedov remains a popular target for comeback speculation, but he explained why it would require a lengthy period of preparation to get him back into the cage.
“You mean fighting shape?” Nurmagomedov said during a Russian interview conducted and translated to English by Hustle Show. “No, two to three months wouldn’t be enough. … I’ll be 37 in two months, in September. If we’re talking purely hypothetically, right? If we’re being honest, it would take at least six months. Because when you’re getting in shape—sometimes people make this mistake—here’s what happens, you look at this: ‘This fighter’s in good shape ahead of the fight.’ But that doesn’t mean anything. How he looks means nothing.
“What matters most is how many sparring rounds he’s done and who he sparred with. Everything else, lifting, fitness, running, it means nothing. How much you lifted, how much you benched, out sport isn’t about running, bodybuilding, fitness, CrossFit, none of that. Our sport is you step in one on one, get in your stance, and you fight.”
Nurmagomedov has stayed active in the gym preparing numerous contenders across a number of promotions, including current UFC lightweight champion Islam Makhachev and current PFL lightweight champion Usman Nurmagomedov. Knowing the level his teammates have to face and defeat elite competition, Nurmagomedov knows it would be a long road back for him to reach his desired standard.
“Back to your question, after my last fight, I sparred a couple of times,” Nurmagomedov said. “Maybe. … Honestly, we don’t really do light sparring. You go in, like, ‘We’ll go easy,’ and one hit, boom, that’s it. It’s on. And to be honest, I haven’t put on gloves in five years. But I wrestle. I’m constantly wrestling. Wherever I am, I always look for someone, even when I’m traveling or whatever, I find someone to grapple with. Someone I can roll with. … So yeah, someone might think, ‘Three months is enough.’ But it’s not.”
To put into perspective how locked in Nurmagomedov was in his prime, he describes his training regiment as involving a complete shutdown of all activities not related to fighting. The routine paid off for Nurmagomedov as he scored numerous notable victories including wins over Gaethje, Dustin Poirier, Conor McGregor, and Rafael dos Anjos.
Nurmagomedov would get so focused, that the slightest disruption caused him to experience intense anxiety.
“You can’t just say, ‘Give me six months, I’ll be ready,’” Nurmagomedov said. “No. To get into fight shape, to get back to your old form, you need a lot of time. But back when I was still fighting, before I retired, I trained regularly too and that was enough for me. It worked. If I was given a fight, boom, in 100 days I’d shut everything off. Completely. No traveling, no meetings, no business contracts. I didn’t touch anything. I told them, ‘Don’t bother me.’ I trained morning and night, morning and night, morning and night, resting only Sundays.
“If I missed even one of those two-a-day sessions, like I said earlier, I’d get a panic attack, because I knew I had to fight and it felt out of control. Like I wasn’t ready. Like that cage door was about to shut on me.”
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