Khabib Nurmagomedov’s own trainer hadn’t heard about his deplaning incident until he saw a viral video online.
Javier Mendez, the legendary boss of the American Kickboxing Academy, has been coaching Khabib and his teammates for years. And with just days to go until his friend Islam Makhachev and cousin Umar Nurmagomedov get in the octagon at UFC 311, he was heading back to training camp.
The renowned coach reckons that the incident took place last week while his charge was coming back from a ski trip to Utah. But he never even told his trainer as he wanted to keep any negativity away from the camp.
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Khabib Nurmagomedov was removed from plane in viral video
Viral footage has surfaced online after Khabib Nurmagomedov got involved in a dispute with a member of the flight team on a Frontier Airlines plane. Eventually, the dispute got problematic enough to lead to the UFC legend being escorted off the plane.
The disagreement allegedly began out of confusion as it was claimed that the former UFC champion was asked to confirm that he could help other passengers off the plane in case of an emergency as he was sat in the emergency aisle. This is standard procedure when sitting in an exit row.
Despite that, ‘The Eagle’ was subsequently left confused by the question which led to a brief dispute with the flight attendant. “I know the language and I know how to help people,” Khabib pleaded.
“It’s not about the language,” the flight attendant replied. “So what we’re gonna do is we’re either gonna have you switch seats because my flight attendants are not allowing you to sit in the exit row, or you’re gonna have to get off this plane because they’re not comfortable with you sitting in the exit row.”
“It’s not fair. You guys when I was checking in asked me do I know English and I said, ‘Yes’, it’s not fair,” Khabib argued, before the video abruptly cut off.
Khabib Nurmagomedov opens up about what happened in video
In the aftermath of the incident, Khabib opted to remain quiet for a brief period before eventually releasing a statement. In his response, he claimed that the issue may have been racial profiling given that he is from Dagestan and English, while he is fluent, is his second language.
“First of all, I need to clarify that it was @FlyFrontier not AlaskaAir,” he wrote after fans were wrongfully calling for a boycott of Alaska Air.
“Lady who comes to me with questions was very rude from the very beginning, even though I speak very decent English and can understand everything and agreed to assist, she still insists on removing me from my seat. What was the base for that, racial, national or other one, I’m not sure.
“But after 2 minutes of conversation, she called security and I was deplaned from this aircraft, after 1.5 hour I boarded another airline one and left to my destination.
“I did my best to stay calm and respectful as you can see on the video. But those crew members could do better next time and just be nice with clients.”
Khabib Nurmagomedov’s coach gives his side of the story
When all was said and done, it seems that Nurmagomedov did not make much of a stir about it in his personal life. His own trainer Javier Mendez seemed to be unaware of the issue until the video went viral, garnering millions of views.
“I don’t know, he didn’t say nothing to me, I didn’t hear nothing,” Mendez told Submission Radio before claiming that the incident had happened a week ago. “They didn’t say anything to me, they’re very quiet about it so I’d imagine Khabib didn’t think much of it.
“But the whole world is thinking a lot of it because they racially profiled him one million per cent. There’s no way you can tell me you can’t look at that video, see what they’re saying, he was asking the correct questions!
“They ask if he speaks English he says yeah, they ask if he can help he says yeah, then he asks ‘what is the problem who is complaining about me?’ Then it’s the stewardess don’t feel comfortable with you and I saw the video and said ‘ah, this is what they’re doing’.
“They racially profiled him because he was wearing a hoodie and they were uncomfortable with him wearing the hoodie. But you know why he was wearing it, because he’s a super famous athlete in the world and he doesn’t want to be recognized.
“So in my opinion they should have asked him ‘sir can you please remove your hoodie?’ Then okay, no problem. But to come out and do what they did, no way. I know him and he’s not going to do nothing about it but I think people that love him and love justice are going to be up in arms about this.
“They should be held accountable and I feel that they should donate money to victims of the LA fire as a generosity of goodwill. Khabib is not going to be too bothered by it because he is a man of God and he’s just going to look at it as something he takes in his stride.
“I doubt he’ll even talk about it but it’s not a matter of Khabib talking about it, it’s a matter of us talking about the racial injustice that goes on in this world. I mean, he was being polite! He said ‘yes, I can do this, yes I can help’.
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