Khabib Willing To Go 11 Rounds With Mayweather For 1 Round Of MMA

Photo by Valery SharifulinTASS via Getty Images

Khabib has no interest in a straight boxing match with Floyd Mayweather … but add a single five minute round of MMA at the end, and that changes everything.

Floyd Mayweather is still sniffing around the MMA world, looking for another big easy payday. But it isn’t going to come against Khabib Nurmagomedov.

The Dagestani lightweight champion had previously expressed an interest in boxing Mayweather, but in a recent interview with TMZ Sports he walked that way back. Now the only way he’d do it is if Floyd would agree to split the fight into a boxing / MMA hybrid match. And let’s be clear before we share the quote, because it’s less obvious written down than it is in the video: the whole topic of discussion seems to be more of a laugh for Nurmagomedov than anything else. He doesn’t seem to be seriously proposing anything.

”He just wanna be on top media,” Khabib said about Mayweather. “I saw his birthday to become 49 or 48, but my father, he’s almost like my father’s age. I no understand how I’m going to punch his face!”

”If you wanna fight, come to the UFC,” he continued. “This is real fight. I’m not boxer, I’m not just wrestler, I am MMA fighter. If interested, maybe we can make something like – my father talk about this before – like maybe eleven rounds box, one round MMA. Like eleven rounds three minute box. And the last round: five minutes MMA. If he makes this deal, I can fight. I don’t think he can knock me out in eleven rounds. And what’s he going to do last round? Five minutes with me, I’m gonna take him down, I’m going to maul this guy. What’s he going to do?”

”You know, of course in boxing he’s very good,” Nurmagomedov finished. “I agree with you. But I don’t think he can knock me out.”

After taking out Conor McGregor in 2017 and Tenshin Nakusawa on New Year’s Eve to start his 2019, Mayweather finished the year by declaring he was coming out of retirement in 2020. No concrete plans have come out since then but of course there’s been a lot of speculation on who he could face. Manny Pacquiao? Conor McGregor again? Interestingly enough, one thing that has been ironed out is a partner: UFC president Dana White. White and Mayweather knocked out a handshake deal while sitting courtside at a basketball game, which increasing the chances Floyd’s comeback will include some sort of UFC angle to it.

What that may be, we’ll just have to wait and see. And hope whatever it is doesn’t waste a large chunk of a legit fighter like McGregor or Khabib’s year.