Is the Pressure Getting to Khabib Nurmagamedov? His Face is Visibly Covered With Marks and Bruises in Recent Photos and Video Interviews…
Khabib Nurmagamedov is fighting Conor McGregor in less than a week now. If you’re as insanely excited as us, you’ll have been following the build-up for this fight since the bus attack. With no disrespect to the Russian fighter, it’s fair to say that he’s never been in a pressure cooker like this one.
That’s not saying Conor McGregor ‘won’ their recent press conference. What we’re talking about are the implications a win would have for his career. He’s being put on a stage for a mainstream audience for the first time, and the financial rewards could be incredible if he gets through it.
With this in mind, his most recent photos and images are very interesting. In an interview from the past couple of days with Brett Okamoto and his Instagram photos, his face is noticeably marked. Hard sparring during fight week? Really?
Visible
As you can see from the image above, we’re not exaggerating. He has visible marks under his eye, and along with his forehead and the sides of his face. Khabib has been sparring with heavy weights for this fight including Cain Velasquez and Daniel Cormier. While from a wrestling perspective that’s useful, because McGregor won’t come close to that level of strength, Khabib has clearly been taking damage.
It’s also very risky to spar hard that close to fight week. The interview below with Brett Okamoto was done over the weekend, so it’s clearly very fresh. This will definitely be a confidence booster for Conor McGregor. The pair is set to meet at a press conference on Thursday, which will be open to the public.
Anxiety Training
This isn’t the first time a champion has entered fight week against Conor McGregor with a battered face. Eddie Alvarez did the same, and we all saw how that turned out. McGregor’s head coach John Kavanagh had some very interesting and revealing comments to make about that. They could very well apply to Khabib too. He said about Alvarez:
“I did notice he has a pretty good black eye there. I saw that on the (UFC) Embedded and that was eight days out. Sometimes Julian Dalby will call that ‘anxiety training’ where you feel a big is contest coming up so you go extra hard.”
”You have to balance out, eight days, nine days out, a really tough and hard sparring session – how much skill improvement can you get? And is that micro- per cent worth walking in seven or eight days later bruised and sore? No, is the answer.”
Here's a quick clip from my sit down with Khabib Nurmagomedov (@TeamKhabib) on Friday. Outlining his plans for Conor McGregor (@TheNotoriousMMA) next weekend. The way he delivers that last sentence … Full interview coming soon. pic.twitter.com/FdE7EfCnkE
— Brett Okamoto (@bokamotoESPN) September 30, 2018
Striker
You don’t get your face messed up like that from wrestling – which is, of course, Khabib’s game. He’s clearly been working hard on his striking and has got lit up. Is there anxiety there that he won’t be able to live with McGregor’s lethal hands? Working with heavyweights won’t prepare him for the Irishman’s dynamic movement and slick counterpunching style. Kavanagh explained further about skill development:
”Your skill development is over months not over a session, so we kind of stopped any of the heavy contact sessions over two weeks out because there’s nothing really to be gained from that other than knocks and bangs.”
”But anxiety will sometimes make you do it. ‘I have to do another heavy one. I have to do another hard one because of this big contest coming up’. Like I said that’s anxiety training. It doesn’t actually lead to a massive improvement on skill if you were to measure it. What’s much better to do at that stage is start focusing on rest and recovery.”
