Tony Ferguson reflects on never being able to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov

OCTOBER 8, 2023 23:59

The most-desired lightweight clash between Tony Ferguson and Khabib Nurmagomedov will remain to be an unfulfilled desire for all UFC fans worldwide. The fight was scheduled to happen 5 times, but for some reason or the other, it got canceled.

Tony Ferguson was supposed to fight Khabib in April 2020, but due to COVID-19 complications, Khabib could not travel, due to which Ferguson ended up facing Justin Gaethje. The outcome of Tony Ferguson vs Khabib Nurmagomedov shall remain to be one of life’s greatest mysteries.

Ferguson believes a part of him was lost after Khabib retired.

Tony Ferguson talks about the Khabib fight

Recently, on The MMA Hour, Tony Ferguson reflected on the time when he was supposed to fight Khabib and explained how he felt after Khabib left the sport forever.

“I’ve never really sat there and thought about the wins, losses, or the trophies, or anything like that. I’ve always just been compete, compete, compete, compete,” Ferguson said, as quoted by mmafighting.com.

“And I know when Khabib left, a little part of me left with that. It kind of sucked a little bit, because we’ve always had that, I won’t say negative energy, but that hype that was built around that. And then when that disappeared and the pandemic hit, and [my] ******* team left, and then just a whole bunch — there was nothing else left for me, kind of, except what I told myself was I wanted to compete.

Ferguson further said: I wanted to compete enough so that I would maybe, possibly, win or lose, Khabib would come back.So I had to find myself, and kind of, like I said, let go over a couple of things, because anger is not one thing you want to keep holding on to, and then that frustration that comes with it, when you don’t have that ability to take care of business or to make that amends.

I still don’t want to shake the ******’* hand. He’s still fat in my book, and Conor’s still a ****** little ***** too. But at the end of the day, there’s another day — the next day”.