White: Fight might have been saved if Nurmagomedov didn’t go ‘rogue’
“They went rogue and went out and did their own thing. Had they done this thing the right way, the fight probably could have been saved.”
UFC president Dana White spoke with Megan Olivi on Friday about Khabib Nurmagomedov being pulled from Saturday’s co-main event due to weight cutting issues. The UFC boss said he first got word there was a problem at 4:00 a.m. Vegas time. The Eagle had reportedly gotten six pounds away from his target.
At that point Nurmagomedov had already gone to the hospital. Unfortunatly, he and his team did so on their own, without going through the UFC’s process. In so doing, they may have doomed the fight, according to White.
Basically, his team had decided to take him to just some random hospital here in Las Vegas instead of picking up the phone and calling our doctor and calling Brianna [Mattison], who runs all the medicals, said White, as transcribed by MMA Fighting. They went rogue and went out and did their own thing. Had they done this thing the right way, the fight probably could have been saved.
It’s never good. If you’re doing it and things are going bad, it’s bad on your kidneys, it’s bad on your liver. It’s just bad all the way around. He’s doing better now. Obviously, he’s OK. He’s gonna be fine. But yeah. It’s never good.
The Culture of Extreme Weight Cutting has taken out the fight, but far worse will happen unless it gotten under control. The obvious solution is to have athletes fight at their natural weight. The fights will be better, and no one will have to cut. It will cause some confusion for a time, as fighters find their actual division, but it’s worth it.
The alternative is waiting for more people to die.