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“I will fight Khabib at one point or another. He will see me before he retires. We’ll make that a point.”
Tony Ferguson is adamant about fighting Khabib Nurmagomedov despite their fight falling through a whopping five times since 2015.
Ferguson, who will be keeping a close eye on Khabib’s lightweight title unification bout against Justin Gaethje at UFC 254, believes he and Nurmagomedov are destined to fight each other at one point or another.
“I see fear in his voice if he thinks he has to talk bad about people,” Ferguson told ESPN’s Brett Okamoto ahead of UFC 254. “He can’t put that sh*t in my head. I will fight Khabib at one point or another. He will see me before he retires. We’ll make that a point.”
‘El Cucuy’ suffered a fifth-round TKO loss to Justin Gaethje at UFC 249 and, although some fans are already writing him off, the 36-year-old UFC veteran knows the hardcore fans will always have his back.
“I think everybody is writing me off after one loss, and f*ck them,” Ferguson said. “The casual fan base is trying to, but my hard-core fans are too much. They know too much. My value is way too much.”
Ferguson would like to return to the octagon in December and is open to fighting Michael Chandler so long as he’s compensated fairly and paid his worth.
“Michael Chandler hasn’t earned his way to the top,” Ferguson said. “But if that’s who Dana White wants me to fight, you know me: I put my boots on, and I go to work. When it came to COVID, I made weight, and I went to work. There was a point, 72 hours, it was myself, Dana, Sean Shelby and my wife, just trying to make that sh*t happen. If I hadn’t taken that fight, how many people would not have gotten paid?
“Do I want to fight? Yes. I want to fight in December. I’m f*cking training. Let’s go. But I don’t think somebody who doesn’t even belong here should be paid more than me. That’s what I’m saying.”
Ferguson (25-4 MMA, 15-2 UFC) is currently #3 in the UFC lightweight rankings and #13 in the UFC men’s pound-for-pound rankings.