Recently, top ranked UFC lightweight Khabib Nurmagomedov was forced out of his UFC 209 co-main event scrap with Tony Ferguson after being unable to make the lightweight title fight limit of 155 pounds. Nurmagomedov was taken to the hospital in the early hours of the morning after enduring a tremendous amount of pain.
Ultimately, after Nurmagomedov was pulled from the card for being unable to compete, Tony Ferguson was also pulled from the card. While there were initially no details regarding when Nurmagomedov would be able to return to the Octagon, his father revealed during a recent interview that ‘The Eagle’ was doing “good” health-wise, and had visited several physicians. In addition, it was revealed that ‘The Eagle’ was looking to return for a title fight in August or September, after he finished his observance of Ramadan.
Now however, UFC commentator Joe Rogan revealed that the UFC “can’t” book a fight between UFC lightweight champion Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov due to the challenger’s health concerns.
“You can’t, you can’t,” said Joe Rogan during a recent segment of his “Joe Rogan Experience” podcast via The Daily Star. “And by the way, one of the things we talked about on the fight companion podcast we did the other day, we pulled up the Luke Rockhold quote, Luke Rockhold is his training partner,” he said.
“And he was saying that he couldn’t get blood to his liver, that was something was going on. He was in deep pain because he wasn’t getting blood to his liver.” For Rogan, to try and put your body through that again will simply be too much for the 155-pound kingpin.
“I was like, ‘Are you f**king kidding me?’ And this guy is going to do that again? He’s going to lose that weight again, after that? And apparently he said that he had the same problem in the Michael Johnson fight,” added Joe.
“The Michael Johnson fight, he wound up getting down to 155 but he was having the same issue, where he wasn’t getting blood to his liver. Like, what the fuck man?”
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 3/31/2017.