It’s been almost two years since Shavkat Rakhmonov fought and the guy is still struggling with endless knee injuries.
The Kazakh fighter was the UFC’s top welterweight contender and even managed to book a title fight against then-champion Belal Muhammad. But when Muhammad pulled out of the fight with a leg injury, Rahmonov stayed on the card to fight Ian Machado Garry. This decision was a big mistake, because “Nomad” went to fight badly injured knee and only made it worse making a decision Against Garry.
Now, 21 months later, Rahmonov is still wearing a massive knee brace in a new interview with ALF Global where he discussed his choice to fight injured.
“We definitely make a lot of mistakes,” he said. “If you really look at it, I also made a lot of different mistakes during my sports career. In fact, I shouldn’t have even fought Ian Machado Garry. I shouldn’t have fought with such injuries at all. I just took a risk.”
“This is the Kazakh way. Kazakhs are very brave. They are not afraid. If it had been another Dagestan fighter like Khabib or Islam Makhachov, they would have definitely refused.”
“I already had an injury in the Ian Garry fight,” he added. “I stepped up, I hadn’t fought for a year, I wanted to fight. Even before that I had health problems and it turned out that the Ian Garry fight was only two weeks away. This old injury was still bothering me a lot. The leg was swollen.”
“When he hit me, it was probably because I was completely out of touch. I generally didn’t feel the hit.”
It’s hard to hear Shavkat go back and forth between knowing he messed up the one leg fight and still pretending it was the brave and better choice. His knee is now completely destroyed, and he did it in such a way that UFC 310, an event no one thinks about anymore, was a half-decent co-main event. A braver act would have been to take care of your own health.