As one of the characters with a voice and influence on the world MMA as well as UFC in particular, Khabib Nurmagomedov recently made controversial statements. In the latest interview, the former UFC champion of the Lightweight weightweight was surprised when he said that the international MMA was going down.
At the peak period, Khabib owns an unbeaten record with 29 victories. He defeated all of UFC's most mighty boxers like Conor McGregor, Dustin Poirier and Just Gaethje to maintain the number one position of the champion. Khabib retired in 2020 and spent time training and developing MMA.
No, MMA has not gone up in recent years, even showing down,” Khabib said. “Perhaps I was a little bit of heaven when I said that because the flame of the competition in me was off. I might be wrong when I thought so, but from my perspective, I saw the backward of MMA.”
Commenting on UFC, Khabib said that the communication and promotion team of this organization is working more and more effectively. After 3 decades of formation and development, UFC has turned MMA into a mass martial arts and mass sport. Most recently, UFC also signed a contract with Facebook to stream events on the Meta platform.
Since Khabib retired, UFC has continuously developed and has more new champions. However, none of them can create great attraction like Khabib and McGregor before. This may be part of the reason why Khabib said that MMA now no longer grew as strong as his time.