Khabib Nurmagomedov is keeping his promise.
After the death of his father and coach, Abdulmanap, in June, the undisputed lightweight champion of the world quietly promised his mother that his title defense against Justin Gaethje would be his last fight.
Nobody else knew this. There had been talks for months connecting Khabib to a potential rematch with Conor McGregor, or perhaps a dream match against welterweight GOAT Georges St-Pierre. So when Khabib put away Gaethje with a second-round triangle choke, laid down his gloves in the middle of the Octagon and announced that he would never fight again, it came as a massive shock. Khabib had already established himself as the greatest lightweight ever, but we still didn’t expect to see this, this soon.
Fighters retire all the time, and they’re rarely taken seriously. McGregor has retired three or four times, and he’s going to rematch Dustin Poirier early next year. Fighter retirements, especially when someone is at or near their prime, are so often publicity stunts or negotiation tactics.
But Khabib’s feels different. He’s already achieved everything he can in mixed martial arts. He’s never been beaten, and only rarely ever really challenged. He’s just completed one of the greatest three-fight runs anyone has ever put together – dominating and then submitting McGregor, Poirier and Gaethje all in a row – and he never really seemed in this for the money. As Khabib said after the fight, he only has one parent left, and he’d like to spend some more time with her. He conquered the world, and now he’s going home.
Khabib is leaving on one of the highest points of dominance that any fighter in history has ever reached. Against McGregor, Khabib took combat sports’ biggest worldwide star – a world-beater not just because of his trash talk and skill at self-promotion, but because of the absolute fire in his hands – and reduced him to an absolute mess on the cage floor before damn-near ripping his head off with a neck crank. Next was Poirier, a talent so great that, in another life, he could have been undisputed champ a couple times over. Poirier wasn’t in the fight for a single moment, as Khabib took him down at will, beat him up, and finished him with a rear naked choke.
But Khabib saved one of his best moments of brilliance for Saturday. Gaethje, simply put, is a man with a gift for violence. Once a Division I All-American wrestler at Northern Colorado, Gaethje abandoned his wrestling roots for a job as a full-time bomb-thrower, one who has racked up knockout after knockout in his excellent career. Don’t forget that this was supposed to be the long-awaited fight between Khabib and Tony Ferguson, booked and then canceled five separate times – until Gaethje bathed in Tony’s blood back in May.
Many fans and analysts, such as myself, idly speculated in the weeks leading up to the fight that perhaps Gaethje’s past wrestling acumen would give him a shot of defending Khabib’s takedowns and keeping things standing, where he’s as dangerous as any man alive. But not only was Gaethje unequipped to stop Khabib’s grappling attack, he had trouble on the feet as well.
Gaethje immediately looked out of his depth dealing with Khabib’s pressure – so used to walking into firefights and bringing the action, Gaethje had to instead fight off the back foot against a champion coming after him, and he looked gassed by the end of the first round. Nurmagomedov didn’t score his first takedown until the closing seconds of round one, but he legitimately won that first frame on the feet, backing Gaethje up with a cracking jab, hitting him hard with a jumping knee through Gaethje’s guard, and easily eating the shots the challenger did land.
And when Khabib did get Gaethje down, the way he moved through him looked almost effortless. Khabib hit a double-leg takedown late in the first round, quickly moved into mount and went for an arm – I have little doubt that if time hadn’t run out in the round, the champion would have submitted him right then and there. Instead, he had to wait until the early minutes of round two, when he hit another double-leg, slid easily into mount, set up a triangle choke and dropped backward into the winning submission.
On Saturday, we saw Khabib at the apex of his power. One of the most violent men in the UFC had absolutely nothing for him, and once he decided to take it to the ground, he moved through Gaethje like a hot knife through butter. Khabib will retire as, if not the single greatest MMA fighter of all time, certainly its most dominant grappler – his unstoppable takedowns, knowledge of submissions and arcane methods of manipulating positions, and his overwhelming physical strength have driven him to an undefeated career.
It’s a shame that we’ll never see Khabib and Tony Ferguson finally duke it out, but after five cancellations, we probably were never meant to see it. I don’t think anyone can doubt that it would have gone the exact same way every other Khabib fight ever went. The champ has earned that confidence.
In a sense, it’s a bit of a shame that he’s retiring now: at 32 years old, we could have had plenty more years to marvel at his brilliance. But really, we’ve seen all we need to see. Khabib Nurmagomedov has retired as the single most dominant force ever seen at mixed martial arts’ deepest division – that, in and of itself, may be a good enough case to call him the sport’s greatest of all time.
Khabib was always a lot more than just an undefeated record. But now, that record will forever stay perfect.
The Big Fight 