Recently Floyd Mayweather Jr. made news by sharing out a mock poster for a bout with UFC lightweight champ, Khabib Nurmagomedov. Since Khabib has expressed an interest in facing the undefeated boxer before, the promotional move probably didn’t shock too many people. But, now Khabib’s father Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov has made a rather interesting proposal, in terms of setting up a fight between the vaunted grappler and the decorated boxer.
Khabib has been talking about fighting Mayweather Jr. for a little while now. In fact, not long after Nurmagomedov tapped out Conor McGregor in October, 2018, the undefeated fighter relayed he’d like to fight Mayweather.
Since Nurmagomedov is really feared for his takedowns, ground-and-pound and submission game, a boxing match with Mayweather probably wouldn’t generate too much buzz. After all, Mayweather beat McGregor in 2017, who is highly regarded for his striking.
If Mayweather agreed to fight Khabib in a MMA bout, however, a lot of folks would probably tune in to see that. But, it’s hard, if not impossible to imagine Floyd agreeing to it.
Well, this could be why Khabib’s father Abdulmanap recently told Tass.ru the following, while discussing the possibility of a bout between his son and Mayweather (quote via MMA News.com).
“Mayweather has statistics on fights of 50 wins and zero losses, he is the greatest in boxing and he wants to fight with the same champion who did not lose a single fight, with Khabib, everything is fine, but now we have Tony Ferguson on the line. We said a long time ago: let us finish with Tony, after that we will work with [the team of Ukrainian boxer Vasily] Lomachenko for six months, then there will be a boxing fight. We offer any day anywhere, with only one condition: 11 rounds in boxing and one in mixed martial arts (MMA). We will stand 11 rounds against the best boxer, so why not go one round according to the rules of MMA with us? But all things will happen after Tony.”
How about that? 11 rules of boxing and round of MMA? This rule set would almost certainly spike interest in the fight no? If Khabib could make it through the stand-up rounds it would be fascinating to see if Mayweather can battle through the UFC champ’s wrestling and top game.
Although these rules would make the fight much more marketable, it’s really hard to imagine it materializing. Mayweather has repeatedly teased about taking a MMA fight, but it’s never happened and it’s hard to imagine him agreeing to face Khabib in anything but a straight boxing match.
Further, Nurmagomedov has talked about retiring in the not too distant future, and Dana White’s made it clear he wants McGregor to fight him again (if he beats Ferguson on April 18th). In addition, both Khabib and Georges St-Pierre have talked about fighting one another.
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