Kevin Lee fought Tony Ferguson for the vacant UFC Interim Lightweight Title at UFC 216, but he was submitted in the third round of the bout.
Khabib Nurmagomedov was one of many people who checked out the fight and he doesn’t like the way Lee fought that night.
“I think [Ferguson] won because Kevin Lee was fighting with him like chicken. That’s why he won,” Nurmagomedov said on The MMA Hour. “[Lee] talked too much. He was not focused on the fight; he was focused on, I think, promoting the fight. When the fight was beginning, first round, [Lee] beat [Ferguson], and second round, [Lee] stayed with him in his distance, he ate a lot of jabs, and third round, he gave up, because he doesn’t have conditioning. That’s why.”
Lee did have issues with the weight cut heading into the fight and there was a visible sign of a staph infection on the fighter’s body as he competed that night.
Nurmagomedov hasn’t competed since UFC 205 and he promises that when he does return to action, the fighter will come back stronger than ever.
“All the time when I come back, I come back stronger than ever,” Nurmagomedov said. “This is what I want to show people around the world, how I improved myself. And maybe people think I don’t train — I feel 100 percent. When I watched how Kevin Lee beat Tony Ferguson in the first round, I think [I became] confident, 100 percent, I can finish this guy in the second or third round.”
Although no fight has been announced at this time, Brazilian fighter Edson Barboza has stated that he has agreed to fight Nurmagomedov.
