YouTuber and hobby boxer Logan Paul took credit for almost, but not quite, booking Nurmagomedov vs. McGregor 2.
Professional influencer, and occasional boxer, Logan Paul continues to encroach further across the combat sports landscape. The YouTuber, who boxed Floyd Mayweather in an exhibition earlier in the summer, recently claimed that he was almost responsible for former UFC champions—and bitter rivals—Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov brawling in a restaurant.
The wild claim, which features a lot of speculation, came on Paul’s Impaulsive Podcast.
“I was almost responsible for a massive altercation between two of the biggest combat sports stars on the planet,” bragged Paul (ht Sports Bible).
Paul then went on to explain how he secured a table at a fancy restaurant for a his chef, a man named Eric. “I didn’t think anything of it,” said Paul.
However, Paul claimed he later received a text from someone at the restaurant informing him of a near miss between ‘The Eagle’ and ‘Notorious’.
“I got a text the next morning saying ‘yo, Eric showed up with Conor McGregor’ because he was cooking for Conor in his camp. I don’t know why I didn’t make that connection. She was like ‘yeah, Khabib was here 10 minutes before McGregor walked in’. 10 minutes!”
If this story is true, then it is likely that we all narrowly avoided having to hear about the Irishman and Dagestani, and their camps, brawling insider an eatery.
McGregor and Nurmagomedov maintain one of the most bitter feuds ever witnessed inside the sport of MMA.
That all began in 2018 when Nurmagomedov and his team confronted McGregor’s friend Artem Lobov ahead of UFC 223 in Brooklyn. That lead to an ugly incident in which McGregor and his team circled a bus shuttling fighters from a UFC media event. During that incident McGregor threw a metal dolly at a bus containing Nurmagomedov and a number of other fighters.
The feud between the pair intensified when they were matched up for Nurmagomedov’s UFC lightweight title. The build-up to that fight included trash talk from McGregor, which at the time was considered bad taste, though it looks tame compared to his latest exploits.
When the pair met at UFC 229, Nurmagomedov predictably squashed McGregor, submitting him with a neck crank in the fourth round. The fight is better remembered for Nurmagomedov then soaring off the cage apron to attack McGregor’s corner. This lead to brawls in the Octagon, in the front row and across the arena.
Despite their fight being long over, there remains a bitterness between the two. Both men seize upon any opportunity to slam the other in the press and occasionally one will launch an unprovoked attack at the other.
Recently, Nurmagomedov commented that “good always defeats evil” when referring to Dustin Poirier’s latest win over McGregor at UFC 264. McGregor twisted that comment asking if Nurmagomedov’s father Abdulnanap was evil and COVID-19, the virus he died from, was good.
McGregor has since followed up that attack with more tweets referencing Nurmagomedov’s family.