Salaam aleikum all
With the retirement of Khabib Nurmagomedov, I want to say a few things as a fan of mixed martial arts who has been watching the sport for many years.
I know that Khabib has many fans (including many Muslim fans) who are perhaps casual observers of the sport and are not really familiar with the subtleties and finer details. I noticed there was a huge spike in interest in him among Muslims in the anglosphere, for example, after his ceremonial weigh-ins before the McGregor fight (at UFC 229). (This is when he said AL-HAM-DU-LILLAH).
And of course, I respect Khabib as a great representative of the Muslim ummah, and I respect him as a man. But I want to share with you some facts about him from purely a sporting perspective, to inshAllah offer some insight as to how big of a deal his retirement is.
1) Khabib has the third longest winning streak in UFC history (13). No. 1 is Jon Jones (17), whose career has an asterisk due to PED use. No. 2 is Anderson Silva (16). Will speak more on these two in a bit.
2) Everyone knows that Khabib is undefeated. But in fact, Khabib has never lost a round. "Officially," he has lost two rounds: rd 3 vs. McGregor (in which McGregor committed a myriad of rule violations, such as kneeing Khabib to the head while they were on the ground, grabbing onto Khabib's gloves, etc.), and rd. 1 vs. Gaethje. In combat sports, judges often don't know their head from their bottom. Otherwise, any sensible judge would have scored both these rounds for Khabib (and in both cases, one of the three judges scored it for Khabib).
3) While Khabib's reign atop the lightweight division was not very long-lived (like that of Silva, Georges St. Pierre, Jon Jones, Fedor Emilianenko, et al over their respective weight categories), with his win over Gaethje he did tie the record for most lightweight title defences (3).
4) Silva, Jones, Fedor, etc... all had wars. They were knocked down, they were cut, they were in dangerous situations, etc. Khabib, in his entire professional MMA career, was never knocked down, never cut, and never really in any real danger. If I remember correctly (and I am saying this from memory so maybe some of the details are wrong), he was taken down only once, against Abel Trujillo, and he immediately swept him and got the dominant position. In other words, none of his opponents were his equal.
5) If you read anything about how "Gleison Tibau beat Khabib"... Tibau was the only one to successfully defend Khabib's takedowns, but he didn't do anything offensive in their fight. He just was content to defend the takedowns. The two were more or less even in strikes landed, but Khabib was the aggressor, was constantly pressuring Tibau, controlling him, and attempting takedowns. Khabib beat Tibau, although I think Tibau has a case for maybe winning a round.
6) So Khabib was really good. But here's what makes all this dominance more impressive: every single one of his opponents (especially after he was established as a top lightweight in the UFC) knew exactly what Khabib's game plan was. But they still couldn't stop him.
7) Khabib was the first fighter to knock down Conor McGregor, and the first fighter to submit Justin Gaethje.
8) In terms of flawlessness of his resume, really only two other "GOAT"-tier fighters comes close, and that is Georges St. Pierre and Jon Jones. The former lost twice but avenged both losses. The latter lost one fight due to a disqualification because of an obscure rule violation.
So why is Khabib arguably better than these two great fighters? In the case of Jones, you could argue he lost his last two fights (especially his fight against Dominick Reyes, where Reyes was the consensus winner). And even before then, he has been in wars, he has won close decisions, he has been cut, he has taken serious damage, etc... In other words, he has actually looked human.
What about GSP? GSP, in his debut UFC fight, nearly got submitted on two occasions, vs. the "Armenian Heat" Karo Parisyan. He has been cut. He has been submitted. He has tapped out to strikes. GSP has been the consensus GOAT for many years (and in fact Khabib himself says GSP is the GOAT). But in terms of the spotless resume, not even GSP can match Khabib.
Of course there are different ways to measure dominance. But in terms of "making high level opponents look like amateurs," no one can match Khabib.
I am going to stop myself now because I have perhaps already written too much. Will just conclude with: we cannot compare Khabib to Muhammad Ali Clay. Muhammad Ali Clay's opposition to the Vietnam war (while it was still popular in the US), is perhaps the greatest moral stance an athlete has ever taken. And Khabib himself has said that people should not make this comparison. But in terms of being a banner of Islam and representing true Islamic morals and ethics (sportsmanship, humility, respect for parents, etc.), Khabib is one of the few individuals who you could at least say that their impact is in that tier.
TL;DR: imagine if Lebron James retired after leading Cleveland to an NBA championship? That's what we just witnessed in the MMA world.
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