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Khabib Nurmagomedov knew he might be in trouble in the wee hours of March 3, when his body began revolting during his weight cut. Just hours before he was to take the scale in Las Vegas to make his UFC 209fight with Tony Ferguson official, he found himself in the hospital, dealing with dehydration and liver pain.
In the aftermath, Nurmagomedov — who is already back in Russia recuperating from his lost weekend — has remained fairly quiet as to what exactly happened, although he did issue a statement on Sunday via his Instagram.
“Whoever you are or whatever you do, you’ll get only what God prescribed for you,” he wrote. “AlhamduliLlah for everything God gifted me for my 28 years, I got much more than I asked. I know that many people was waiting for this fight and I fail them. Want to bring my apologies for all my fans, UFC and my opponent Tony. My health is fine now, thanks God. These tough testing only makes me stronger.
“Thank everyone for the support.”
On Monday, his longtime manager and close friend Ali Abdel-Aziz appeared on The MMA Hour and detailed how it all went down.
“Normally we’re supposed to get back at 6 o’clock in the morning and cut weight, but at 3:45 in the morning I went to the room — and my room was right next to his room, and he was in so much pain,” Abdel-Aziz said. “And after that I panicked. Because this is not just somebody I manage, this is my little brother. I have a different relationship with all the guys I manage, because if I can’t be your friend or we can’t be like brothers, we can’t work together.”
After Nurmagomedov was forced to withdraw from the bout on a doctor’s recommendation, UFC president Dana White said during the FS1 UFC 209 weigh-in show that had his camp followed the proper protocol and called the UFC physicians, the fight may have been salvaged. Instead, as White put it, Nurmagomedov’s camp “went rogue” and took him to a “random hospital.”
As it was, given the small hour, Abdel-Aziz said he reacted more as a loved one wanting to get his friend urgent care.
“I panicked, and the first thing I wanted to do, I wanted to help him,” he said. “I wanted to bring some care to him. I thought about calling 911, but I thought, listen, we can pick him up. When we picked him up, the whole group, he couldn’t even walk. We put him in my car and drove straight to the hospital. On the way to the hospital I tried to get a hold of the UFC. It was 4 o’clock in the morning by the time I got to the car.
“Normally, for the last eight or nine years that I’ve worked with the UFC, if anything happens you call two people — the matchmaker, and Dana White — and I did both. But of course at 4 o’clock in the morning, I didn’t know who to call.”
Manager details events that forced Khabib Nurmagomedov out of UFC 209
