Joe Rogan: ‘Khabib Nurmagomedov Should Fight Tony Ferguson Next’, While Cormier Said ‘If You’re Team McGregor, You’d be Concerned About A Fight With Nurmagomedov’
It’s even less than two weeks since Undefeated Khabib Nurmagomedov scored a dominant victory over Conor McGregor at UFC 229 but speculations run rampant as soon Khabib stepped out of Octagon that who he’ll fight next.
Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov’s showdown was the biggest in the UFC history, and it proved it by breaking all past UFC PPV sales record to 2.4 million pay-per-view buys, so it’s understandable why rematch is necessary.
The rematch will give Mcgregor a chance to avenge his loss to Russian after fighting for the first time in nearly two years.
In two separate interviews, two division champion Daniel Cormier and UFC commentator Joe Rogan have a similar opinion that former UFC champion Conor Mcgregor shouldn’t rematch Khabib anytime soon.
Cormier who is a best friend to Khabib said Mcgregor did an excellent job in defending ‘Eagle’s’ takedowns but isn’t sure if Irishman will do better in a second fight if that happens. (H/T MMAFighting)
“Honestly man, that first takedown, I was like wow, he really made [Nurmagomedov] work for this takedown,” Cormier said. “Because this is what we say at AKA — we try to get you lost in the sauce. We want to get you lost in the sauce, right? Like, when we’re on a leg, we want to give you one [takedown attempt]; okay, you’ll defend; two, you’ll defend; three, then you start going, ‘okay, wait a minute,’ then you start to get lost. You get lost in all the different transitions, from to move to move to move, and eventually we get you down. And once we get you down, obviously it’s very difficult to get back up.
“[McGregor] didn’t get lost in it. Like, Khabib had to go to level four to get that first takedown. He went high crotch, he went crackdown, he went ‘try to get the angle,’ he tried to run the pipe, then he actually had to go to his knees, look across the back to get to a double just to get Conor down the first time. Conor didn’t get lost. He really did a good job, and that’s why if you’re Team McGregor, there’s cause for concern, because I don’t know if he could do that any better and he still got beat in the way that he got beat.
“That’s why, I think if you’re Team McGregor, you’d be concerned about a fight with Nurmagomedov, because I don’t think he could defend any better,” Cormier continued. “I thought was as good as [he could do], because he did a good job and I don’t know if he could do it any better … because then [Nurmagomedov] is going to go to level five, and he going to go to level six, and he’s going to just keep putting different things behind each other until eventually you kinda can’t keep up. That’s what Henry Cejudo does. That’s what he did to DJ a couple times to get those takedowns.
Cormier who also has gone through a phase of hate-love relationship with formal rival Jon Jones, so he understands Khabib’s ire and posts fight mayhem. As it was known that how Mcgregor play with his opponent’s mind before the game, it’s a fight selling tactics.
“I think, Conor, he was building a fight, and there was just a little bit of a difference in the approach,” Cormier said.
“When he was building the fight and kinda going home going, ‘Okay, yeah, I think that might’ve gotten him a little bit,’ or, ‘that got under his skin,’ the whole time it’s causing this guy (Nurmagomedov) to just go, ‘God, I hate him. Man, I can’t stand this dude. I want to hurt him,’ then going back to the gym and training harder and more. So, that’s where the difference lies. It’s like, we (Jones and I) never regretted anything we said to each other or about each other, and it was okay if it just continued to escalate.”
Joe Rogan, who also doesn’t see the need for an immediate rematch considering the fact how well Khabib performed against Mcgregor for the first time.
“There’s all this talk about a Conor rematch cause financially that would be a fantastic fight, right?” Rogan said on his podcast on Monday. “Financially. But when you look at what happened, that was a dominant victory. There was one round where Conor did pretty good, the third round. Other than that, Khabib just sort of dominated him.
“Dropped him in the second, beat the f–king s–t out of him in the fourth and the third was the round where Conor did pretty good cause most of was standing up. But it wasn’t like he won it running away. It wasn’t like he blasted him in the body and had him hurt. There was nothing like that. He edged him.”
The money would probably play the dominating role in determining the McGregor is getting an immediate rematch against Khabib.
Rogan said Mcgregor lost the first fight to Nate Diaz in 2016 than in the same year in an immediate rematch Mcgregor won via majority decision that showed a marked improvement from Irishman.
Being said that, Rogan feels Tony Ferguson is a man who should get to see Khabib Nurmagomedov next as ‘El Cucuy’ who has won 11 straight fights at this point and freshly won a bloody war against Anthony Pettis. Due to his knee injury, UFC abruptly stripped him of his interim title. (H/T MMAMania)
“I guess you could say that’s sort of what happened in the Nate Diaz fight and Conor came back and won the rematch. This is the argument,” Rogan said. “Conor was rusty, he’s out of the cage for two years, he gets back in, let’s do [a rematch] and then financially I mean Jesus Christ, it was the biggest fight of all time. They’re saying it was above 2.4 million pay-per-view buys, which is f–king bananas. So that’s huge. If they could talk people into a rematch, I get it.
“But I don’t want to see that. I want to see Tony [Ferguson]. I want to see Tony and Khabib.”
Share your thoughts, who you want to see Khabib Nurmagomedov face next, Conor Mcgregor or Tony Ferguson?
