Whenever a big fight falls through because of a botched weight cut, everyone immediately wants answers.
What went wrong? How did this happen? Why are the MMA Gods so cruel? And so on, and so forth.
Few bigger fights in recent memory have been scrapped because of weight-cutting related issues than UFC 209’s scheduled co-main event.
When Khabib Nurmagomedov was struggling ahead of his interim lightweight title fight against Tony Ferguson, his team rushed him to the hospital without telling anyone from the promotion. Reports began circulating of the news and after he failed to tip the scales on time, the UFC confirmed that he had been hospitalised due to ‘weight management medical issues‘ and the fight was off.
A couple of days later, Nurmagomedov released a statement offering his apologies, then his manager released some details about what went wrong.
However, a couple of sources are claiming the Dagestani Sambo master was not acting professionally in the lead up to the biggest fight of his career.
Could Khabib's loss be Diaz's gain? #UFC209 https://t.co/RGDB9RNcoz
— SportsJOE (@SportsJOEdotie) March 7, 2017
Former UFC heavyweight Brendan Schaub dropped a bombshell on the Fighter and the Kid podcast. The podcaster/stand-up comedian claimed that Nurmagomedov was overweight heading into fight week after consuming junk food.
“He was being unprofessional. He was eating ice-cream. He was eating all this bullshit food. He comes in way overweight the week of the fight. That’s just being unprofessional. It doesn’t matter if he’s cutting at 170 or 145 or 185, if you’re coming unprofessional, you’re not going to make the weight.”
When co-host Bryan Callen asked him if he knew for sure that Nurmagomedov was consuming ‘bullshit food,’ he nodded and explained that it was his job to know these things.
His opponent, Ferguson, who successfully made weight also talked about this claim on the MMA Hour. He was referenced a clip of the Russian in a restaurant with his entourage, eating some tiramisu and announcing ‘This is Russian style. Before we eat, we eat tiramisu.”
“I found out too that he was eating tiramisu a couple of weeks ago on Embedded. Like, what is this guy doing? Really? It’s plain disrespectful. It’s very unprofessional.”
Unsurprisingly, Ferguson was very annoyed when he heard about the footage, and he feels that because he showed up and did his job, he deserves nothing less than a title fight in his next trip to the Octagon.
