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Usman Nurmagomedov insists he’s completely unfazed by Paul Hughes’ trash talk.
Hughes (14-2) has not minced his words towards Nurmagomedov (19-0) and his manager Ali Abdelaziz, insisting that they wanted no part of a rematch. He also vowed to break Nurmagomedov when they fight again.
Hughes lost their first fight by majority decision this past January in the PFL Champions Series: Road to Dubai headliner, and the pair will run things back for the lightweight title Oct. 3 in the PFL Champions Series: Dubai main event.
“Brother, it doesn’t matter what he’s going to say after losing,” Nurmagomedov told MMA Junkie. “He’s looking like Conor (McGregor). Khabib (Nurmagomedov) took his soul, and he keeps going to talk, but nobody cares. Everybody saw what happened. Same thing. Yes, he showed people he was so close to punch me, he was so close to win, but he didn’t do anything for that. He saved his energy because he was scared to get tired. He wasn’t going to wrestle, he wasn’t going to come to the clinch.
“He didn’t do anything. He just punched a couple of times to the body, a couple of times to the face, and that’s it. But what I did: I landed a lot of kicks, punches, took him down. I did everything from MMA. That’s why I’m champion. But he wants to talk, he wants to say I did, I’m going to this, I’m going to break (him). Who can he break? Only person he can break is maybe somebody from his teammates.”
Nurmagomedov said he has since watched their fight three or four times, and sees just one main thing he did wrong.
“I made mistakes when I held him in the clinch. I didn’t throw knees,” Nurmagomedov said. “It was my mistake, and that’s it. Other things were very good. From clinch take him down, landed kicks, landed punches. Other things, it’s MMA, I did very good. Only one thing: I was waiting. I made a mistake when I took his neck and just held him there. I don’t know why I did that. But next time, it’s not going to happen anymore.”
