“My manager and my brother said, ‘Are you crazy? You can’t fight like that,’ and they said no.”
Umar Nurmagomedov recently suggested that Merab Dvalishvili might withdraw from their UFC 311 pay-per-view (PPV) title fight on Jan. 18 in Los Angeles, but now fans on social media are wondering if the undefeated contender is the one in danger of pulling out.
That’s because Nurmagomedov went into lengthy detail about a broken arm suffered late last year, which he initially claimed was too severe to accept a fight in January. Then came a surprise booking against Dvalishvili for the UFC 311 co-main event in “The Golden State.”
“After I was in Dagestan, I punch my arm,” Nurmagomedov told ESPN MMA’s Brett Okamoto. “I go to show the doctor and I show them. They did X-ray and they said, ‘You broke [your arm].’ You know after that, after 20 days I go again even when I was broken, I was running. I want to still be in shape, you know. Even that time I try to run, try to do shadowboxing, try to be in shape. And after 20 days I go again, and it’s become much better.”
Matchmakers appeared to be hellbent on getting their fight booked for UFC 311.
“Even my punches and other things, I do grapple, I do wrestling class, everything I can do,” Nurmagomedov continued. “Then I called my manager Ali [Abdelaziz] and I said to him, ‘Hey, I want to fight.’ He said, ‘But we said we’re injured,’ and I said, ‘I told you, take this fight.’ My manager and my brother said, ‘Are you crazy? You can’t fight like that,’ and they said no. [UFC] asked again, they called me again, ‘Will you fight with Merab?’ Of course, I already called with Ali and said make it happen. I want to fight in Ramadan, if Merab wants to fight in Ramadan I want to be active.”
UFC will lose multiple fighters to Ramadan at the end of next month.
That’s probably why the promotion was in such a hurry to get Nurmagomedov and Dvalishvili on the calendar for January, but Umar’s admission could raise questions with California State Athletic Commission (CSAC) and potentially jeopardize the fight.
UFC has since pulled the Nurmagomedov interview from YouTube.