Following his ninth straight victory by way of a very impressive unanimous decision over former UFC light champion Rafael dos Anjos, Tony Ferguson is now taking aim at number one ranked Khabib Nurmagomedov.
‘El Cucuy’ and Khabib were due to fight earlier this year before an unfortunate injury caused the Dagestani fighter to pull out. So Ferguson is now spitting fire at Nurmagomedov for believing he should get the next crack at Conor McGregor’s lightweight title.
“All bulls**t aside, the guy is a whiny b**ch,” Ferguson told the MMA hour podcast. “He can whine as much as he wants to. Instead of people saying, ‘Hey, you need to go for the belt,’ or, ‘you need to do this, you need to do that’ – me, I’m waving my little finger in the air and I f**king keep moving forward.
“I’m going to keep doing what I’m doing, which is taking care of my family and training my ass off. And that translates into winning and getting ‘Performance of the Night’ bonuses. Right now I got, what, eight finishes out of 12? I’m on a nine-fight win streak. I’m what, 22-3? S**t, where’s my title shot, man? I’m not complaining, I’m not saying nothing, because I know it’s going to come to me.”
Ferguson believes Nurmagomedov has no choice but to fight him and is eyeing the possibility of throwing down with him in the spring. “Like I said before, I’m not going to rob [Nurmagomedov] of an ass-whooping. He does deserve one from my hands,” Ferguson said.
“Who else is he going to fight? He wants to fight for a belt. (Eddie) Alvarez ain’t going to fight him. Come on, dude. That dude’s been running from me for a long time. He hasn’t wanted nothing to do with me.
“His pops was like the first one to say, ‘Yeah, my son will fight you,’ and Khabib’s running the other way. He’s calling Conor a chicken and Khabib is running from me. I’m calling him a chicken. So it’s a trickle effect, man. I’m telling you, everybody is scared of the Bogeyman at the end.”
Last week Nurmagomedov told media in Russia he was interested in an interim 155lb title fight with Ferguson while McGregor takes some time away from the sport. Ferguson alluded to the fact the fight or one equally as big was almost made for UFC 208 which is currently scheduled to take place in Anaheim, California on January 21st.
Ferguson revealed: “Man, I was excited. I was stoked about it. I was like, who’s the opponent? And I can’t really get too much into detail, but the person who was supposed to sign on the dotted line was a little too injured from his last bout, I guess, and had to wait a couple more months. I’m not going to say names, but all I’m going to say is you’re going to have an interesting fight coming up pretty soon.”
If that opponent is indeed Nurmagomedov, and he just requires a few more months to get cleared to fight, then we could be looking at the possibility of a March-April time frame, although for the time being, Ferguson is being kept in the dark.
“I’m not sure what they have planned, lined up, trying to get me or somebody. But we’ll keep our fingers crossed and we’ll see what’s up.”
