Khabib Nurmagomedov was in the corner of Abubakar at UFC 260 (UFC Twitter)
2021 has seen Khabib Nurmagomedov coach a lot of fighters to victory
Soon after Khabib hung up his gloves after UFC 254, he took up coaching his fellow Dagestani brothers and fighters.
In 2021 alone he has coached 4 fighters to victory. Khabib made his coaching debut when his cousin Umar Nurmagomedov took on Sergey Morozov at UFC Fight Night in January. Umar won the fight via. submission in the second round.
His next coaching assignment was UFC lightweight and fellow Dagestani, Islam Makhachev, who took on Drew Dober at UFC 259. Makhachev won via. third-round submission.
It was then followed by Abubakar Nurmagomedov beating Jared Gooden at UFC 260 and Usman Nurmagomdedov’s victory over Mike Hamel at Bellator 255.
More recently, there have been lots of talks of Khabib being even more successful as a coach than he was as a fighter.
Khabib’s coach Javier Mendez of American Kickboxing Academy addressed this in a recent interview with the Schmo. While he did point to the fact that Khabib would become a great coach, he still felt that ‘The Eagle’ had a lot to learn.
“He is gonna be one hell of a coach. He is still learning, he’s still messing up. He fixes his mistakes.”
Mendez then went on to mention an incident during Umar’s fight against Morozov. Mendez revealed that Khabib was full of himself (not in a very negative way) and didn’t pay heed to what he had to say.
And only when Khabib came to Mendez asking how his coaching had been, he had realized that he hadn’t let Mendez say anything or listen to him.
However, Khabib had corrected his mistakes in the next fights, as Mendez mentioned:
“He learns really quick. I’m the head coach for a reason but he is the real leader.”
Khabib Nurmagomedov dropped some serious knowledge on Luke Rockhold and Javier Mendez during a recent training session.
Rockhold can be seen boasting about being a Strikeforce champion back in 2011, when Khabib hadn’t made a name for himself. Khabib then says Strikeforce was just an average or okay’ish’ promotion.
Mendez and Rockhold interrupt Khabib saying that it had great champions and was elite in its own way. That’s when Khabib schools them saying:
“I have a question. 2011 when he won the Strikeforce world championship, who was the best in the world, by the way? Anderson Silva! How can he become the world champion if he does not beat Anderson Silva!”
You don’t mess with the Eagle!
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