It sucks that Khabib retired before fighting the only interesting style matchup in the division

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Gracious Warrior

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I'm not a Khabib fan but I don't hate the guy like most of you seem to do. I actually quite enjoyed his career and watched every one of his fights and usually rooted for him to win.

But I can't deny how bad it looks that he didn't stick around a little longer to fight Charles Oliveira. Say whatever you want about Charles (that he's a fake champ, a quitter, weak minded etc.) But you can't deny that he was the only guy in recent memory who had a style that was well suited to do battle with Khabib. Both guys are grapplers but of a different kind, a classic wrestling vs BJJ fight. Except the Charles knows how to finish guys, one of the few BJJ guys left in mma that has lethal finishing techniques. Of course you gotta favor Khabib, but it would have been an interesting fight. Especially if Charles survived the early Khabib onslaught which is usually 2 rounds of non stop GnP. After that Khabib would have slowed down significantly like he did in many fights that went all 5. If Charles survived he could have seriously threatened Khabib in the later rounds. I could see him jumping on a tired khabib's back and threatening with a rear naked choke.

Oh well we can only dream. But maybe if Charles can beat Islam that would be enough to coax Khabib out of retirement. I hope so...
 
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No arguments there, it would be a damn good matchup.

The general concensus would be as you said, Khabib holds him, takes him down, wears him out. But Charles would be the biggest challenge imo due to him being to finish on the feet and the ground extremely well so Khabib wouldn't be truly safe anywhere.

Hopefully one day.
 
You mentioned her, who is her ( rooted for her)? Because Khabib means my love for a guy and khabibtie means my love for a female in Arabic.Just saying
 
BowserGiga said:
Their mutual coach said Islam didn't even once win a full spar against Khabib, but to his credit, was the only one to take a few rounds.
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So you are going to base Islam's entire career on that and not actual footage seein in actual fights? k.
 
HHJ said:
So you are going to base Islam's entire career on that and not actual footage seein in actual fights? k.
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I've watched both of them fight, Khabib is better.

I like Islam though, but let's be honest, the guy closest to them who coaches both of them is not going to lie about who was better in their spars.

Javier knows.

He's also confident that Islam will beat down Olivera, which I agree with.
 
Gracious Warrior said:
Oh well we can only dream. But maybe if Charles can beat Islam that would be enough to coax Khabib out of retirement. I hope so...
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The folks in Abu Dhabi finesse the scale a lot, but "fixing" it to "balance" at 155 for Khabib again would be truly ridiculous.
 
This kind of lacks perspective. Yes it would have been nice to see Khabib stick around a little longer and have more fights, but we were always going to be stuck wondering how he would do against whoever took the reins at 155.

If Chandler had beaten Oli and Poirier people would be asking how Khabib would do against him. If Dustin came back after beating Mcgregor then people would be screaming about how much better he is now than when he fought Khabib and wondering how this new and improved version would look if they fought today.

On top of that, you have to remember how some of these matchups looked at the time. Some people really felt like Justin was going to be a big test for Khabibs style just like how they think Charles’ would be now. But then we got the actual fight and it wasn’t terribly competitive.

Oli has looked good so it’s only natural to wonder how he’d fare against the former king of lw, but it’s kind of silly to say that Khabib didn’t face interesting style matchups. A lot of them seemed very interesting before the actual fight. Which is basically where we are right now, the only difference is that Khabib isn’t going to fight again so we’re left to wonder.
 
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In khabibs defense, no matter when he retired there was always going to be "that guy" he didn't face that was supposed to be his biggest challenge. If Chandler had won the vacant belt it would have been him.
Fuck if Conor would have starched Porier there would have been people claiming he ducked him.
Yes, Charles vs khabib could have potentially been an interesting fight but to be honest Charles has shown nothing to me to think that it would have turned out any different than khabibs previous fights.
I'm not a khabib fan, but the generation that was around before him only looked worse than the current and up and coming ones because khabib put a huge gap between himself and them.
 
I'm a big fan of Do Bronx, but Khabib outgrapples him to a unanimous decision.
 
BowserGiga said:
I've watched both of them fight, Khabib is better.

I like Islam though, but let's be honest, the guy closest to them who coaches both of them is not going to lie about who was better in their spars.

Javier knows.

He's also confident that Islam will beat down Olivera, which I agree with.
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So because Khabib is better,Islam is Khabib Lite? Thats so stupid. They are two different fighters who have their own strengths.
 
Khabib likely wins but it would have been cool to see him against an elite grappler. I think Chandler would have been the hardest match-up for him.
 
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