UFC 223: Khabib says Ferguson is ‘jealous’ of him during heated argument

Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson tried to rile each other up during a pretty chaoticUFC 223 conference call. As they traded insults and interrupted each other during the heated press event, the constant theme was Ferguson questioning Khabib’s conditioning, and the Dagestani claiming that Ferguson is jealous of him.

“You’re f*cking terrible,” Ferguson said, as transcribed by MMA Fighting. “Wait ‘til you test my conditioning, dog. I’m gonna take you in deep waters. I’m gonna leave you out there with no f*cking snorkel.”

“What happened with your conditioning when you fight Danny Castillo?” Nurmagomedov retorted.

“I was worried about jiu-jitsu,” Ferguson replied. “I was probably like, what, a blue belt? Get out of here. I’d like to test that. What about you, huh? You blew your wad the last fight. You went three rounds your last fight. You couldn’t even finish Edson Barboza. I finished him in the second round. Bullsh*tting me.”

“I no need finishes,” Nurmagomedov said. “Why I need finishes? Why? I’m fine when I go cage, like, relax, take my time, talk with Dana about future, how we gonna smash your face. It’s okay, we already have plan with Dana. That’s why he talk about Khabib time all the time and you’re jealous. You’re jealous.”

Both men agreed that the winner of their bout would be the real lightweight champion, and not the inactive Conor McGregor, but Khabib did take shots at Ferguson’s interim title.

“That’s right, tell ‘em. I’m the f—king champ,” Ferguson said after Khabib said McGregor isn’t the real champion.

“Be humble, boy. You interim champ, you not official champ. You still interim,” Khabib said. “You have fake belt. Tony, you have fake belt. Sell it. Sell it and make some money.”

“Fake belt? That s—t looks real to me. It’s shiny,” Ferguson said. “You’ve got the fake belt because everybody hands ‘em to you. All those belts that you’ve got, and people floating your boat and this Reebok sponsorships, that’s the s—t I don’t give a f—k about. And that’s one thing that you’ve got me wrong.”

After that response, Khabib again brought up how he thinks Ferguson is envious of him.

“Now you talk about Reebok, hey? Because these guys don’t give you contract and now you jealous too? I can ask Reebok to give you contract if you want,” Nurmagomedov said. “Tony, Reebok, they make very good shoe now. We can order you one. What size you have? What size you have, please? Need to know. Like nine, 10? I can order for you.

“They can make you shoes, put like ‘Interim Lightweight Champ, Tony Ferguson.’ You want this?”

“I’m in a good place right now,” Ferguson said. “And you’re putting me in a better place every time you open your mouth.”

After multiple failed bookings of the bout in the past, Ferguson and Nurmagomedov will finally face off on April 7th… hopefully.