Islam Makhachev is training hard for his upcoming UFC 311 fight against Arman Tsarukyan on January 18th. Based on how beat up he looked in a new video posted to Instagram, he might be training a little too hard. But not according to Khabib Nurmagomedov, who chided his friend and protégé for skipping a session.
A bruised Makhachev approached Khabib and asked him to rate the latest week of fight preparation.
“We trained hard this week, you can tell by my face,” Makhachev said. “Let’s ask our coach.”
“Am I happy or not?” Khabib replied as he rode a stationary bike. “Honestly? Four out of five. Did we take a break on Wednesday evening? No of course [we weren’t allowed to]. We only rest on Sunday and Saturday evening.”
Khabib is a notoriously tough coach and expects impeccable discipline from all his fighters. He’s made it clear he doesn’t really enjoy the stress generated and family time taken to train others, so he demands nothing but the absolute best from everyone.
Thus far it’s led to impressive accomplishments, although there are limits to how hard you should be pushing an athlete before competition. We’ll see the results of Nurmagomedov’s methods on January 18th when Islam defends his lightweight title and Khabib’s cousin Umar attempts to take the bantamweight title from Merab Dvalishvili.
