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Khabib Nurmagomedov received a lot of flak in the last couple of days after he made his opinion on UFC 249 public in a statement on social media.
He explained his reason for unavailability and also took a shot at UFC for not announcing a venue for the event, but ended up being criticized for "running away" by his opponent Tony Ferguson, former rival Conor McGregor and many others.
With UFC 249 still without a confirmed location, Khabib opened up in an interview with ESPN's Brett Okamoto about his stance in the matter and took some aimed shots at McGregor while at it.
Khabib responds to McGregor's tweets
After Khabib posted his statement on Instagram, McGregor took to Twitter to throw shade on the Russian. He congratulated Ferguson for winning the 'game of chicken' the two of them were playing in the tweet.
He sent out another tweet claiming he was in great shape and would have followed through and won if any fight was scheduled for him in the middle of this crisis.
In the interview with ESPN, Khabib called Conor out and accused him of being a hypocrite. The Irishman has been very local ever since the pandemic broke out, urging everyone to stay home and stay safe.
Khabib feels Conor is being fake and pretentious with this sudden attack at him.
"A couple days ago he send message ‘hey people please take care of family, be safe, stay home, government ask us stay home.’ A couple days ago, now he talk about ‘I am good shape..blah blah blah, someone have to fight, someone have to fly.’ For me this is fake, I was always real, maybe someone like, maybe someone don’t like, this is not my job but I was always real. But this guy is fake, what are you talking about, about his shape?"
He also brought up their October 2018 fight when Khabib submitted Conor and the latter blamed it on his 'bad shape' for his poor performance.
"What happened October 6, 2018? When you have six months training camp, you do everything you can, you come inside the cage, you talk a lot of bad things before the fight, six months you train very hard, you come inside the cage and tap like chicken."
Khabib claims he will always be the best in the Lightweight division, with Tony Ferguson deserving the spot of an interim Champion. McGregor is the number 2 contender in his opinion, and nothing about this equation will change anytime soon.
"When I’m in the UFC, always Tony going to be interim champion, and always Conor [McGregor] going to be No. 2 when I’m here... This is good, make them interim title, Tony deserve interim title, Conor No. 2, and everybody knows who’s the best."
