Yesterday (Tues., January 29, 2019), UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov was handed a nine-month suspension by the Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) at their hearing in Las Vegas.
The sanction, which came with a hefty $500,000 fine, stemmed from Khabib’s involvement in the UFC 229 post-fight brawl. After submitting Conor McGregor in the fourth round of their awaited title fight last October, Khabib leaped into the crowd to assault McGregor’s close friend Dillon Danis. The action began a chain reaction of chaos that created perhaps the most infamous post-fight melee in UFC history.
McGregor was given a six-month suspension and a $50,000 fine for his part. He jumped onto the cage wall to mix it up with Khabib’s teammates Zubaira Tukhugov and Abubakar Nurmagomedov. They each received a one-year suspension. Khabib was not happy overall with his punishment. He released a short statement claiming it was all politics. Then, his manager revealed that Khabib was supposedly done fighting in Las Vegas. He planned to stay out of action until his teammates could return, aiming for Madison Square Garden. That meant he may not be in action until November.
White Reacts
So the hearing that was supposed to give some resolution to this mess arguably added more confusion to it. One name close to the situation is on Khabib’s side, as well. UFC President Dana White spoke up on last night’s ‘Sportscenter’ on ESPN to give his thoughts on how Khabib was punished (via MMA Fighting):
“I was obviously surprised how much they put on Khabib. It was a half-million
Part Of The Game
The brawl was all-out chaos, but White is correct in saying they did have it contained in a matter of seconds. Khabib can return as early as April if he did an anti-bullying campaign, yet he appears unwilling to do so at this time.
White continued on that the beef between Khabib and McGregor was real, likening it to the classic boxing rivalry between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier. The NSAC wanted to cut down on such personal language like that used by McGregor before the fight, but White said it’s just a part of the fight game:
“It’s a fight. At the end of the day, it’s a fight,” he said. “Sometimes you come across people that don’t like each other and there’s a lot of bad blood. That was in the case in this fight. That’s what we do it’s the fight business.
“These guys are talking about fighters saying mean things to each other and all this other stuff. If you break it down and you go back to when Ali fought Frazier, and you look at the times when it happened, the stuff he said about Frazier and to Frazier was horrible. Horrible things you didn’t say to somebody else back then.”
Trash talk will always be part of the fight game, and policing what one fighter says to another is going to be tough. The NSAC has their hands full with issues like steroids. And at the end of the day, bitter rivalries sell far more than any other in MMA.
Could they have taken it easier on the champ?
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