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Islam Makhachev has said Luke Rockhold compared him to Michael Jordan during a one-sided sparring session.
The AKA family features a plethora of high profile fighters, many of whom regularly compete at the elite level in the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
Luke Rockhold has long since been viewed as one of the most successful members of that gym, with Daniel Cormier, Cain Velasquez and Khabib Nurmagomedov also being part of that equation.
Can Islam Makhachev be champion?
Now, however, Islam Makhachev is ready to step up to the next level - and as he noted during a recent interview with RT Sport, he’s been preparing for this moment for a long time now.
Catch the full interview below:
“When he was preparing for the Machida fight, Machida was a southpaw. I appeared to be the only southpaw in the gym at that moment. Luke is big compared to myself but Javier asked me: ‘Islam, please have a couple of rounds with him, we need a southpaw’. I always agreed.
“So we sparred a lot of times, and I don’t remember a single case where I failed to do a judo double leg takedown on him. It was more than one or two, five or ten times, much more.
“So he comes in for another sparring, gives me small gloves and says ‘today you won’t throw me’. So the sparring starts and I throw him again, and he is in the air, truly upset and already shouting loud.
“Then he said: ‘You are like Jordan in basketball in terms of those throws’. But those were hard sparring sessions for me.”
Islam Makhachev is easily a top five lightweight in the UFC, and with a fight against Rafael dos Anjos on the horizon, it’s easy to imagine a scenario in which he fights for the title before the end of 2022.
Whether or not Luke Rockhold gets back to his very best depends heavily on whether he can beat Sean Strickland in his upcoming return, but either way, it’s important to remember just what a bunch of killers AKA was - and still is - within the context of the mixed martial arts universe, with Islam Makhachev leading the charge.
