Legendary former UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov was well aware of the threat his cousin Umar Nurmagomedov faced this past weekend, according to coach Javier Mendez in his podcast post the fight.
For his first fight in more than a year, Umar Nurmagomedov made his comeback on the main card of Saturday’s UFC Fight Night event at the Apex. After defeating Raoni Barcelos in a dramatic knockout match in January of last year, the Dagestani’s opportunity to advance against Cory Sandhagen was lost due to injury.
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Umar Nurmagomedov’s Coach’s Take on Khabib Being Nervous
Umar Nurmogomedov made his comeback against a newcomer fighter Bekzat Almakhan. Although the much-heralded bantamweight went into the cage as the clear favourite, Umar was nevertheless cautious about the risks he would face from his Kazakh opponent.
Many believe Nurmagomedov (17-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC) has champion potential in the bantamweight class, therefore he took a major gamble by agreeing to fight against rookie Almakhan (14-2 MMA, 0-1 UFC) at the UFC Apex. It nearly went wrong when he was knocked out in the first few seconds of the battle, but that was the only time he was in danger.
Moreover, Umar Nurmagomedov in the post-fight podcast stated “Khabib was nervous” and that it was valid for him to feel that way, to ease his nervousness the coach said that he showed Khabib Umar’s training videos, but still that wasn’t enough.
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Mendez said:
“And you know why he’s nervous? Because whenever you have an individual that can put you out, you’ve gotta be nervous. You can’t be overconfident when you have someone that good, and this kid’s that good. Props to him, he never gave up.”
Umar coach says, that it is better to be nervous on stage and never underestimate the opponent, rather than being overconfident and underestimating.
Looking into Umar’s record he has aced a perfect professional fighting score record of 17-0.
