Retirement has been a topic of conversation associated with UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov for some time now, but Khabib is not thinking about it as much for a very good reason.
One of the first times Khabib Nurmagomedov mentioned retirement was after his health scare following his weigh-in failure at UFC 209 in 2017. Since then, Nurmagomedov has sporadically mentioned retirement. In a recent interview with RT Sport, the UFC lightweight champion revealed that he has not been preoccupied with the topic, but he still knows that he is beyond the middle of his career. (Via RT Sport):
“Well, we don’t have a plan for when we’re going to finish but I do know it is not over the mountains, as they say,” Khabib said in a recent Q&A. “That time is very close.”
Khabib Nurmagomedov is an ardent student of the sport; and as such, he knows full well that the last thing a fighter who is about to be locked in a cage with Tony Ferguson should be thinking about is retirement:
“I don’t want to think about the future, I still have to live to April, I still have to fight, I need to win,” Khabib said. “So, I don’t like to look too far ahead. Now we have an opponent, Tony Ferguson, a very serious opponent. And I think it’s necessary to have this fight then we’ll sit down and think about what’s next.
“We’ll consider whether there’s any point in fighting any more. There will always be a reason to fight, money. But will we need it? We’ll think about it. I feel good now. I’m 31 and it’s a very good age to fight, and for sport. I’m far from retirement age, but it’s around the corner.”
How much longer do you believe Khabib Nurmagomedov will be competing in mixed martial arts?
