Khabib Nurmagomedov joked with Justin Gaethje about his rival's jet lag during their title fight in Abu Dhabi at UFC 254.
The Dagestani fighter was amazed to learn his rival was arriving from America with just a week to get acclimatised to the air in the Middle East, and made sure to mention it during their brief fight. The lightweight title bout was to unify the division after Gaethje had won the interim belt from Tony Ferguson, but it only lasted two rounds before Nurmagomedov landed a submission.
However, during those two minutes, the legendary undefeated fighter was able to do his trademark mid-fight trash talk, asking Gaethje if he was suffering from jet lag. The American insisted that he was fine, but Nurmagomedov, who retired that same night, believes that it is impossible to be in top form for a weight cut and fight with just a week to get ready in Abu Dhabi.
"When I fought with Justin Gaethje I was following when he was going to come here," Nurmagomedov told The Muslim Money Guys podcast. "It said he would come here Saturday and then fight next Saturday, I was like 'no, next Saturday is going to be worse for him'. During the fight I was talking to him and I tell him 'brother, jet lag?' and he went 'no, no, no jet lag'. But I knew, he felt it."
UFC President Dana White has previously backed up this story, telling reporters at a press conference following Max Holloway's win over Calvin Kattar in the Etihad Arena that he had heard a similar tale. "I was with Khabib last night and he was telling me, and I didn’t know this, maybe you guys did, all the stuff that him and Gaethje were talking about during their fight," White said last year.
"Gaethje hit him with a couple of shots and he thought Gaethje looked kind of weird so he pointed at him and said ‘you have jet lag’ in the middle of the fight. Gaethje said ‘no, I don’t’ and hit him with an uppercut and a left-hook, then Khabib said something to him again and he leg kicked him.
"And then I guess when he took him down, Khabib was on top of him, he said ‘now what are you going to do?’ and he’s telling me all this s*** these two are talking about during their fight. First of all, the fight didn’t go that long, I don’t know how much of a conversation they could have had!"
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Nurmagomedov is in the corner this weekend for UFC 280, when his pal Islam Makhachev fights Charles Oliveira for the belt he relinquished after that Gaethje match-up. And he was passionate about the team arriving early to acclimatise, having felt the extreme conditions during his bouts with Dustin Poirier and Gaethje during his career.
"First time we came here when I was preparing for the Dustin Poirier fight it was like the beginning of August because the fight was the beginning of September," he explained. "Here is very crazy weather, if you want to fight, make weight, recover and not feel jet lag, you have to be here 30 days.
"All the time when we fight here in Abu Dhabi we have to get here a month before because jet lag is crazy. A lot of people under-estimate this. For example, if you fight in Mexico City it is more than 3,000-metres [above] the sea, but we're from mountains so we can go to Mexico and fight, it's easy.
"But because we're from the mountain, for us it's very hard to deal with dessert weather. Over time I came here and we had at least two weeks of jet lag. For all of us, not only for me everybody is complaining about the air and the jet lag and saying they cannot sleep."
