According to Dana White, Khabib Nurmagomedov already believes there is someone who deserves a world title shot, and he won’t be competing at UFC 257.
Yesterday, Dana White was able to tell the public the future of Khabib Nurmagomeodv after finally meeting with him on Friday. Unfortunately, the answers regarding Khabib’s future were still far from definitive. Essentially, Khabib said that he was impressed by Charles Oliveira but that he will be watching UFC 257 to see if any of the competitors on that card can make him want to compete against them.
Those competitors of course area headliners Conor McGregor/Dustin Poirier and co-headliners Dan Hooker and Michael Chandler, who will be making his UFC debut. So Khabib’s response on returning seems more or less to be an “it depends” or a “maybe,” but that’s not how Dana White interpreted it.
“I don’t think it was a maybe,” White said at the UFC on ABC: Holloway vs. Kattar post-fight press conference. “The thing with him is, when you make the decision to retire, I knew he made the decision under unbelievable emotional stress. His dad died. He got hurt during that camp, couldn’t even train right, couldn’t cut weight right. All the things that he went through and then went out and performed the way that he performed, and then made that decision that night. Listen, you’re not tying anything up. Just go home, spend some time with your family, heal up, think about it.
“And then, he and I got together, and he’s like, ‘I want to see if somebody really blows me away and impresses me next week.’ You got the co-main event and the main event. Obviously, Oliveira looked awesome against Tony Ferguson. So that’s an interesting fight to him. And we’ll see what these guys do this weekend.”
One Name Stands Out From The Pack For Khabib
It seems that of all the lightweight contenders, Charles Oliveira is the only one who has already impressed the champion. In fact, White claims that Khabib already expressed to him that Oliveira has already done enough to deserve a world title shot.
“To him, he wants to see everybody,” White said. “He wants to see all these guys fight. He already said Oliveira looked awesome, that guy looked great, and felt like he deserves a shot at the title. Let’s see what everybody brings next weekend.”
One interpretation for readers to consider is that perhaps Khabib feels that Charles Oliveira is currently deserving of a title shot above anyone else and that it will take an amazing performance at UFC 257 for anyone to jump ahead of him. This interpretation would make it highly likely that we see Khabib compete again since there is already at least one person he seems excited to compete against: Charles “Do Bronx” Oliveira.
Would you like to see a world championship fight between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Charles Oliveira?
This article first appeared on MMANews.com on January 17, 2021
