The world longs for a fight between Tony Ferguson and UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.

But “El Cucuy” appears to have other ideas.

Ferguson told Ariel Helwani he doesn’t want to see Khabib emerge the victor on Saturday at UFC 242 against challenger Dustin Poirier.

Instead, Ferguson would rather see interim champion Dustin Poirier defeat Khabib and lift unified UFC gold to set up an “American battle royale” between the two.

However, the UFC lightweight division’s number one contender is still down to fight Khabib should it come down to that.

“Hopefully Dustin [Poirier] gets a piece of him, throws him on his back, and puts him away, so we can have a good ole’ f*****g American battle, battle royale,” Ferguson told Helwani. [H/T BJPenn.com]

“Like I said, if push comes to shove me and Khabib, we’ll go out there and we’ll handle this s**t, in December. So either Dustin or Khabib, title shot next December, Las Vegas, let’s make it happen UFC brass.”

The UFC has already tried to book a fight between Khabib and Ferguson on four occasions. However, the fight has fallen through every time.

Khabib was pulled from the fight twice – in 2015 and 2017 – due to injury and then a failed weight cut.

Meanwhile, the contest was cancelled in 2016 due to Ferguson suffering from a lung issue and again in 2018 after the American picked up a freak knee injury just days before the pair were set to finally throw down.