Umar Nurmagomedov says he will be fighting for the bantamweight championship if he can get through Cory Sandhagen in Saturday’s UFC on ABC 7 headliner.
Nurmagomedov (17-0 MMA, 5-0 UFC) will take on the biggest test of his career when he steps onto the main event stage for the first time against perennial contender Sandhagen (17-4 MMA, 10-3 UFC) in a five-round showdown at Etihad Arena on Yas Island, Abu Dhabi (ABC, ESPN2, ESPN+).
It’s not often a fighter in the position of Nurmagomedov, who is No. 10 in the official UFC rankings, gets to take on a No. 2-ranked contender such as Sandhagen, but this is the case here. A win would move him up several spots, and Nurmagomedov said he’s been told he will get the winner of Sean O’Malley vs. Merab Dvalishvili, who fight for the 135-pound belt in the Noche UFC headliner on Sept. 14.
“I hope I will fight next, they said I will fight whoever will win (between Sean O’Malley and Merab Dvalishvili),” Nurmagomedov told MMA Junkie on Tuesday. “Yes, (they told me I will be next).”
Nurmagomedov said he struggles to make a definitive prediction about who will emerge from Noche UFC with the title. He is indifferent about whom he fights but said O’Malley’s recent prediction that he would pull out of the fight against Sandhagen this weekend shows he is trying to resist a progression toward a championship clash.
“I think they pray,” Nurmagomedov said. “They hope I will pull out and will not take this opportunity to fight for the title. They wish this. For me it doesn’t matter who wins. It’s a very hard fight for both. One is a wrestling, one is a striker weight height. He is tall. Stylistically, for me, personally it’s very difficult to say who is going to win. I don’t know.”
O’Malley, to his credit, has somewhat laid the foundation for a future title bout with Nurmagomedov. He’s said in the past he thinks they will eventually fight, and it could be a new-age version of the UFC’s biggest fight of all-time between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor.
Although Nurmagomedov, 28, can’t ever see a fight with O’Malley (18-1 MMA, 10-1 UFC) reaching that level of personal vitriol, he does agree it would be a marquee matchup for the promotion.
“It’s never going to be close to Khabib and Conor because they have personal hate,” Nurmagomedov said. “He talked bad about religion, family, everything – father. I don’t know. I see Sean’s personality, he’s not too dirty of a person to talk bad about my family or my religion. But if we will fight it’s Irish vs. Dagestan again. It’s going to be interesting, but I think it’s not going to be same.
“I just want to beat him. I just want to take his belt. But personally, for him, I don’t know nothing.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ABC 7.
