Abu Dhabi — The timeline for Umar Nurmagomedov to get back to a bantamweight title shot following UFC 321 could get very interesting.
Nurmagomedov earned a hard-fought decision victory over Mario Bautista on Saturday, returning to the win column after the first loss of his professional career, against Merab Dvalishvili earlier this year. The cousin of Khabib Nurmagomedov remains a top contender at 135lbs, but Petr Yan is up next for the champ, with the pair headlining UFC 323 this December.
Despite working at an intense pace and entering his fourth title defense this calendar year, Dvalishvili will likely need some time off after that. Nurmagomedov, however, is hoping to fight before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which in 2026 runs from the 18th of February to the 19th of March. Nurmagomedov is hoping to fight again before then.
Should Merab be willing and able to compete by then, “of course I will be happy. I will be even thankful,” Nurmagomedov (19-1) said following his win over Bautista, speaking with media outlets including Cageside Press. “We’ll see what’s gonna [happen] next. If it’s not going to happen before Ramadan, if they will give me another fight — maybe with [Deiveson] Figueiredo, or Aiemann Zahabi, with anybody else — I’ll be happy to fight.”
Staying active is at least in part about growing as a fighter, it seems. Nurmagomedov continued by saying that “today, I became a little better [in the] cage. Grow experience. You need to spend a lot of time in the cage to become feeling there like it’s home. Feel confidence, feel arena, feel fans. I don’t have anything else. I just have sleep, eat, train, repeat.”
There were tough spots in the fight for Nurmagomedov, who admits he may have underestimated Mario Bautista. Still, a dangerous looking heel hook he was caught in early was not as bad as many thought, he suggested. “It was not even close. Doing some submission in MMA, it’s very hard, because you can punch a man.”
“In jiu-jitsu, I understand, like you’re taking [the limb] and you try to break [it], he can’t punch you. In MMA, it’s very hard. And I always, in the training, I always move, like a snake with legs. I have good strength, and I don’t even care about it.”
The knee he ate was another story, with Umar Nurmagomedov admitting that his tendency to duck down is something he needs to work on. “I will work a lot, I have this big mistake. I always go down, I do it a lot of times. Even in the gym, coach Khabib all the time tells me ‘don’t do this, you have to fix this, you have to fix this.’”
“Today I paid for it. We’re not perfect, right? But we will try to become [perfect].”
Watch the full UFC 321 post-fight press conference with Umar Nurmagomedov above.
