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Former UFC title contender turned ESPN analyst Chael Sonnen is a bit worried about Khabib’s ability to make weight for UFC 242 this weekend.
Undefeated UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov has been out of action for almost a year, due to a suspension he served for his involvement in the UFC 229 brawl in October 2018. This period of inactivity is leaving Chael Sonnen in doubt about whether or not “The Eagle” will be able to make weight in time for UFC 242 this weekend.
“If you’re in Vegas, or you’ve got a line on a sportsbook and you want to place some outside action on this fight, you should place it in one place and one place only: Khabib Nurmagomedov to make weight,” Sonnen said on his podcast (transcript by BJPenn.com).
“Khabib to make weight. That’s the bet right there,” he continued. “If what I’m saying is true, if Khabib has not been training the same because he’s been out for a year, if Khabib lives in Dagestan and trains in San Jose, if he’s got any kind of the rise like everybody else does where when something great happens to him [and he thinks] ‘I don’t need to work as hard, and I’ve got this one figured out, and I just beat the biggest star, so beating a guy lower ranked than him that he lost to, I got this all figured out.’
“Guys, you’re dealing with a man who’s missed weight one, two, three, four times — while fighting three times a year,” Sonnen added. “How there is no dialogue that we’re going to have some drama getting Khabib to the scale when he hasn’t been in there since 2018?
“I’m just telling you, it does surprise me.”
Khabib did miss weight for his UFC 160 fight against Abel Trujillo in 2013. He also pulled out of his scheduled matchup against Tony Ferguson at UFC 209 in 2017, which according to his coach Javier Mendez, had “a lot to do with losing weight.”