Nurmagomedov submitting McGregor (photo via YouTube)

By FCF Staff

Recently Conor McGregor claimed Khabib Nurmagomedov is “chickening out” of his April 18th bout with Tony Ferguson, and the UFC’s lightweight champ has responded.

McGregor accused Nurmagomedov of ducking the UFC 249 headliner. The champion recently headed back to Russia, before a travel ban was enacted in the country, due to the coronavirus pandemic. As a result of the ban, it appears all but certain Nurmagomedov will not be able to attend UFC 249.

In a follow-up interview with ESPN, however, Khabib said the following about McGregor’s recent comments (quotes via MMA Fighting).

“I no understand. This guy [Conor] talks about he’s in good shape but when I smash him last time he’s like, ‘My foot is blame’ or something like this. ‘It was not my good shape.’ How he right now is good shape? How we can talk about shape when I smash his face and he tap? He say ‘It was my bad shape, I was without shape, blah, blah, blah’ Now we talk about ‘I am good shape, I can come in.’

“Okay, a couple days ago he send message, ‘Hey people, take care of family, please, be safe, stay home, government ask us to stay home.’ Now he talks ‘I’m good shape, blah, blah, blah, someone has to fight, someone has to fly.’ This is fake. For me, it’s fake. I was always real. Maybe someone like, maybe someone don’t like, this is not my job. But I was always real, but this guy’s fake. What are you talking about, talking about his shape? He goes to some island and sits home all day, scared about this coronavirus but he don’t talk about this. He judges someone, ‘He has to fly here, he has to go there, he has to fight.’

“What happened, October 6th, 2018?” Khabib asked. “When you have six month training camp before the fight, you do everything that you can and you come inside the cage, you talk a lot of bad things before the fight, six months you train very hard, and you come inside the cage and tap like chicken. What are you talking about?”

McGregor has made several, public comments recently about the need for people to self-quarantine as a means to slow the pandemic.