Justin Gaethje is confident that Tony Ferguson has never been an elite fighter, and the reigning UFC lightweight champion, Khabib Nurmagomedov, agrees with this point of view.
“I swear I never considered him an elite lightweight,” the undefeated Russian fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov said in an interview with Magomed Ismailov. “First, it’s impossible to be an elite lightweight at 37. No one has ever succeeded, and even Khabib will not succeed, that is, me. This is a belief that no one will change for me. Secondly, since 2016, he has fought with Kevin Lee, Edson Barboza, Anthony Pettis and Donald Cerrone – four of them have had twenty defeats in these four years. That is, for almost five years he did not fight with anyone normal. And now he met with the young, good, top lightweights, Charles Oliveira and Justin Gaethje, who took him apart like a schoolboy. In both battles there was absolute dominance. “
The UFC champion Khabib Nurmagomedov has no doubt that even if he dominated Ferguson, he would not have been able to avoid criticism.
“I always dreamed of meeting him so that there would be no more conversations, but God did not want this. Either I nearly died in the hospital, then he had an operation – when not destined, it is simply impossible to carry out. But at the same time, I am sure that after my domination over him, like over everyone else – he would not have done anything to me in the standing position, and on the ground I would have crushed him like a skating rink – all the same, the same conversations would have been. They will always be, because when a person has never lost, people are always interested in how he falls. This is psychology, a person is born that way – they just want to see how Mayweather can fall. But I have no problem with that. Someone wants me to lose, someone wants me to win. This is what our sport is based on ”