Conor McGregor's extreme willingness to fight Khabib revealed by coach
CONOR MCGREGOR is willing to enter the lion's den to fight Khabib Nurmagomedov.
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A mega-fight between the Irishman and the new ruler of the UFC's lightweight division has been on many MMA fans' wish list for nearly two years.
The eagerness to see the pair throw down with one another intensified in early April at the UFC 223 media day when McGregor attacked a bus carrying Nurmagomedov and his fellow fighters.
A few months prior to that unsavoury incident at the Barclays Center in New York, UFC president Dana White talked up the possibility of McGregor facing the undefeated Nurmagomedov in Russia.
The prospect of fighting Nurmagomedov on enemy territory excites McGregor, who has compared it to Rocky Balboa facing Ivan Drago in Russia in Rocky IV.
“Conor’s a mad thing,” McGregor's striking coach Owen Roddy told. "Conor turned around to me just after the Mayweather fight and said, ‘There’s talk of me fighting Khabib. I might do it in Russia.’
“Then he says to me, ‘We’ll do it like Rocky. We’ll go to Siberia and we’ll train in the snow.
“‘I’ll get one of those yokes to put on my shoulders to get the lats’. I was crying with laughter.
Conor turned around to me just after the Mayweather fight and said, ‘There’s talk of me fighting Khabib. I might do it in Russia.’
"He was serious. Dead serious. Conor does mad things.
“That’s what we love him for. There’s not many people who would do that. It would be an exciting fight.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen next but I would like to see it.”
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McGregor, 29, hasn’t set foot inside the Octagon in nearly 18 months, a hiatus which led to him being stripped of the lightweight title earlier this month.
His long-awaited return to the cage will almost certainly be prolonged due to his actions at the UFC 223 media day.
The UFC brass have yet to punish the Irishman for his antics in Brooklyn but will do so after his court hearing, which is scheduled for June 14.
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“We’ll see. We’ll see what happens,” Dana White told TMZ when asked if the UFC will reprimand ‘The Notorious’.
“He’s got to be punished by the law first. Let’s see what happens in New York."
At this moment in time, White doesn’t know when we’ll see the Dubliner back in action, adding: “He’s got to go through that (court case) first.”