Former UFC heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier has a personal and professional relationship with ex-lightweight titleholder Khabib Nurmagomedov, thanks to time “The Eagle” spent training alongside “DC” at American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) in San Jose.
That’s why Cormier called Nurmagomedov after Conor McGregor fired off a series of “off limits” tweets, including this since-deleted attack on the late Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov, who died last year as a result of complications from COVID-19.
“I feel like from him talking about Dustin’s wife to now Khabib’s father, he is just taking it way too far,” Cormier said on his ESPN show. “When you’re dealing with death and COVID and all these other things that we’ve dealt with over the last year and a half, that’s all off limits. We talked about wives and families being off limits, but when you’re talking about a man’s everything — Khabib’s dad was his everything — and you’re talking about him being gone today due to something that has been so terrible for our entire world, you use that in a sense to get back?”
Nurmagomedov has a long and “dark” history with McGregor, one that includes a submission win over the power-punching Irishman back in late 2018. It seems like “Notorious” was never been able to move on, even spending the holidays perseverating over his loss to “The Eagle.”
“You know what’s most disturbing? This wasn’t done the day after the fight or the same night of the fight,” Cormier continued. “This was done weeks after the fight, so it feels like it was thought of and it was thought through for Conor to tweet something like that. Absolutely crossed the line. I think when stuff like that is being said, it’s a cry for help. Conor has all the money in the world, he has all the fame, but now when you start to dig at that level, it’s like somebody needs to get to McGregor and help him to start to kind of re-shift his mind and his focus and get him back to a better place. It’s unfortunate.”
In addition to his mind, McGregor’s body will also have to get back to a better place after breaking his leg at the UFC 264 pay-per-view (PPV) event, the second straight loss “Notorious” suffered against Dustin Poirier. Like Nurmagomedov, “The Diamond” also endured personal attacks from the Irish trash talker before and after their fights.
“Honestly, when Conor does stuff like that, it’s hard to understand how there’s still this mass amount of people that support that type of behavior,” Cormier said. “I feel like from him talking about Dustin’s wife to now Khabib’s father, he is just taking it way too far.”