Den lätta-tungvikt och tungviktsmästaren Daniel ”DC” Cormier vill inte se en returmatch mellan lättviktsmästaren Khabib Nurmagomedov och den forne fjäder- och lättviktsmästaren Conor McGregor.
Nurmagomedov besegrade McGregor genom neck crank i rond fyra under UFC 229. DC som är lagkamrat till Nurmagomedov är skeptisk till ett returmöte. I en intervju med MMAFighting säger han att irländaren imponerade i sitt nedtagnignsförsvar, men att det inte var tillräckligt. DC ser inte hur McGregor skulle kunna göra bättre ifrån sig i ett returmöte.
Honestly man, that first takedown, I was like wow, he really made [Nurmagomedov] work for this takedown. 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. 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.
UFC-kommentator Joe Rogan har liknande argument som DC. Ur ett ekonomiskt perspektiv skulle ett returmöte vara givande för UFC. Utöver det är Rogan skeptisk. Genom sin egen Podcast sade han följande.
There’s all this talk about a Conor rematch cause financially that would be a fantastic fight, right? 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.
Rogan anser att den forne interimmästaren i lättvikt, Tony Ferguson, har gjort tillräckligt för att få en chans mot Nurmagomedov.
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. 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.
Enligt Khabibs farbror, Alex Nurmagomedov, skall McGregor erbjudit Khabib hela 134 miljoner kronor för ett returmöte.
