‘The Eagle’ recently revealed a major change that he would make if he stepped into Dana White’s shoes.
Despite regular offers, Khabib Nurmagomedov has no plans on returning to competition following his retirement in 2020.
The former UFC lightweight champion left the sport while he was still on top, vacating his belt with a perfect record of 29-0.
That doesn’t mean that he isn’t still involved in the sport as a prominent figure, having recently revealed that he still speaks with Dana White regularly.
In a recent interview, Nurmagomedov said that he’d remove rounds from MMA if he was given the opportunity to have that kind of power.
Chael Sonnen argues against Khabib Nurmagomedov’s recent pitch for no rounds in MMA
Khabib Nurmagomedov said during an appearance on the Hustle Show that in his opinion, for sporting purposes alone, MMA would be better if you completely removed rounds.
He still believes that there should be clear rules but the former lightweight champion revealed that he’s always questioned why we have rounds, aside from there being regular breaks in the action for advertisements.
‘The Eagle’ isn’t the first person to suggest this change, with Joe Rogan previously mentioning something similar alongside some other major updates to the UFC.
Two fellow UFC Hall of Famers recently discussed Nurmagomedov’s comments during Daniel Cormier and Chael Sonnen’s ‘Good Guy / Bad Guy’ show on ESPN MMA.
Sonnen spoke out against this idea fairly strongly, arguing that it wouldn’t make that much difference and that the rounds help the judges to correctly score fights.
He also believes that trying to make tweaks to the current ruleset will only complicate things further by looking for fixes where they aren’t needed.
“When we start down this road of ridiculousness and we try to get to what’s absolutely perfectly fair, we realize there is no such thing. And we realize the sport of mixed martial arts is almost a perfect sport.
“The government always oversees it. There’s tremendous group thought. Things do change over the years, but where we’ve got it right now, I think it’s almost perfect.”
Daniel Cormier was more receptive to Khabib Nurmagomedov’s idea
Speaking during ESPN MMA’s ‘Good Guy / Bad Guy’, Daniel Cormier was able to see the positives and negatives of Khabib Nurmagomedov’s pitch for the removal of rounds.
When going against what ‘The Eagle’ had to say, Cormier stated that having rounds in MMA makes it feel more like other mainstream sports where you get regular breaks in the action.
However, ‘DC’ also believes that it would have some benefit from a competition standpoint, specifically for fighters like himself who would be able to pressure and wrestle opponents without them getting a reset every five minutes.
“I don’t think it’s that bad an idea. I think that you separate the men from the boys. And you also say like, two men go, like you said, only one dude gonna walk out of here. You gonna fight until that happens.”
