UFC lightweight contender Rafael dos Anjos got the Russian he wanted, and he’s ready to face off with Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC on Fox 11 in April. He was originally scheduled to meet Rustam Khabilov after a bit of a mix-up, but Khabilov got hurt and now he’s fighting the man that has been having a very hard time finding an opponent of late. It appears that RDA isn’t very fond of Khabib, and gave his opinion of him in an interview with MSN Esportes.
First, he discussed how this bout is bigger and compared the two opponents (translated by Fernando Arbex):
“I was preparing to fight, almost ready, with no injuries and my opponent hurt himself. But, in the end, I liked it because they gave an opponent with more expression. Khabib is undefeated. I believe that winning on him would be a bigger than one over Khabilov”.
“I think that Khabilov has better wrestling than Khabib, he has better takedowns, but in general they have a similar style, both have heavy right hands and my training was kept in the same way. But he is the fighter with the best record that I have ever faced, no doubt”.
He believes a win could get him a title fight:
“That is the idea (receive a title shot in case of winning), but sometimes it’s not possible. I train as hard as it is possible to be able to finish my fights, my idea is to beat this Russian, break his pace and impose his first loss”.
He also pointed out that he wasn’t a fan of a shirt Nurmagomedov wore before his bout with Thiago Tavares last year in Brazil that said “If Sambo was easy it would be called Jiu Jitsu”:
“You can wait for me coming too prepared and I definitely will bring this win. I’m going to make Khabib stop this talking of nobody wanting to fight him because he is a guy who is talking a lot. I’m going to shut him up so he can learn to not bad talk jiu-jitsu and I’m going to make him throw that shirt in the garbage”.
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