“Here, I understood that I broke him”
Not long after he had a face-off with Conor McGregor in New York, at the first UFC 229 press conference, Khabib Nurmagomedov described the experience.
In an interview with Brett Okamoto of ESPN, the lightweight champion said: “When I watch his eyes, I don’t feel nothing. He’s like drunk guy. He’s like drunk guy. I feel he’s like, his face is like this (pulls his cheeks back), you know? He nervous, he drunk, and he a little bit white, you know?”
There was a moment during that stare-down – as McGregor declared, “You’re dead mate. You’re dead… Breathe kid. Take a breath” – when Nurmagomedov, he claims, knew he had broken the former champion.
In an interview with Russia Today, Nurmagomedov spoke about the NYC stare-down and one just before their main event fight on 6 October that supposedly told him McGregor was not up for the war he claimed.
Nurmagomedov said: “When you get face to face with your opponent, you can tell a lot from looking into the eyes of your opponent. You can look at my face, because the eyes never lie.
“He can say what he wants, but look where he is looking [in the clip below] and then look where my eyes are looking. Here, I understood that I broke him.”
“A person can say whatever he wants,” Nurmagomedov continued, “but when you stand in front of him – face to face – you can understand what is happening beneath [the surface].”
After he skipped out 15 minutes into the Las Vegas press conference, Nurmagomedov did not see ‘The Notorious’ again until the ceremonial weigh-ins [they had to be dragged apart] and then in The Octagon on fight night.
In his RT interview, the Dagestani spoke about how McGregor again refused to hold his glare.
Credit: UFC“He never even looked me in the eyes,” Nurmagomedov said. “It was like he was looking me in the eyes, but he was never actually looking. I felt like he was looking somewhere here in the middle. Somewhere around the eyes, he never looked right into my eyes. Not once did he look me in the eyes.
“Everything that happened, the press conference, weigh-ins, the open training… the closer we got to the fight, the more he broke. And when we were inside the cage before the fight.
“I looked him in the eyes, I looked at his state and his appearance and I saw that he is already broken.
“I turned to my brother and said this and he told me not to think that and that I should focus. I told him that it’s okay and that he shouldn’t worry.”
In fairness, focus never seemed to be a problem for the champion. McGregor spoke of war but Nurmagomedov delivered one.
