Shara ‘Bullet’ Magomedov was told he would need a new haircut in order to continue training at Khabib Nurmagomedov’s dad’s famous MMA gym.
Magomedov has been taking the UFC by storm since making his debut in 2023, and returns to the octagon in Riyadh this weekend against Michael ‘Venom’ Page. He is from Dagestan, where legends such as Khabib and Islam Makhachev were bred to become champions, but isn’t part of their team.
Instead, he focused primarily on kickboxing, and is now better known as a striker than most Dagestani fighters who are renowned grapplers. But it could have been very different if his initial meeting with Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov had gone another way.
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Shara Magomedov tells story of training at Khabib Nurmagomedov’s gym
During a pre-fight media scrum with Russian outlets, Shara Magomedov discussed meeting Khabib Nurmagomedov. He also told a story of his time with the star’s famous dad Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov earlier in his career.
“He said three things that are important for an athlete,” Magomedov said in Russian, and translated by Bloody Elbow. “This is a hairstyle, the second is not to walk at night because there is no chance at night and the third is discipline to come to training on time.
“The first one, I always had a long haircut and in my childhood, youth, school time I heard about the gym. The problem was that to sign up there you had to have the haircut. There was one time I went there when Khabib was young and he actually wasn’t training that day so I trained.
“I left and the problem was that Abdulmanap said ‘you need a short bald hairstyle’. Then, I didn’t understand the meaning of it – it seems that it may not interfere in principle. Yes, well if you take it from the outside why do you grow it?
“You want to look beautiful for girls, and for a fighter it shouldn’t be there. An athlete should focus on their own training and then the girls will come when you’re getting high titles at five levels and you won’t have a single hair on your head.”
Shara Magomedov met Khabib Nurmagomedov at a recent convention
In their later lives, Magomedov and Nurmagomedov ran into one another in Dubai while the UFC legend was giving a speech at a conference. They posed for a picture which went viral on the internet, with the new star explaining what he gained from listening to the speech.
“There was a big business forum in Dubai,” he told the media. “I was there in the audience and it was mostly Russian speaking but there were headphones [for instant translation] because it was in English.
“Khabib was also on this forum and when it was his day for performance I came and listened to their story. It was very interesting story about how how his father sold his cows and with the money he built the gym and equipped it.
“This is where their story began and you can see what it led to and this is a big story. Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov would sometimes say things and you’d think on the surface it’s a trifle but then you look into the depths of what it is and today we see what he taught.”
Khabib Nurmagomedov gifted Shara Magomedov an expensive watch
During their meeting, Magomedov seemed to notice Nurmagomedov beginning to get distracted, and went to leave. But the legendary lightweight champion insisted that he stay and gifted him a brand new watch, which he reckoned to be quite expensive.
“The meeting was great and Khabib was very nice,” Magomedov continued. “He was exactly what I expected and I didn’t want to take up a lot of his time. There was even a moment when I saw taht he was being distracted here and there and he had other meetings planned.
“So we had already talked and I was thinking about leaving but he said ‘wait, don’t go, sit there and we’ll talk.’ He gave me a watch. and I was very pleased with such a gift no matter what it was but in fact it was an expensive gift. It’s very nice to get that kind of attention.”
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