On April 5, Conor McGregor led a large entourage of people into the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. From there, the group attacked a UFC charter bus.
“Notorious” threw a hand truck into one of the bus windows, an act of retaliation against Khabib Nurmagomedov for having previously confronted his teammate Artem Lobov. Several were injured in the attack and McGregor ultimately landed a plea deal with the New York court system that had all of his felony criminal charges dropped.
McGregor and Nurmagomedov have since faced off inside the octagon for the main event of UFC 229. Nurmagomedov defended his UFC lightweight title by submitting McGregor within the fourth round.
A fracas quickly ensued after Nurmagomedov leaped out of the octagon and attacked McGregor’s teammate Dillon Danis. The Nevada State Athletic Commission (NSAC) has since opened an investigation into the matter.
Speaking to Russian media, as seen within the video provided below, Khabib Nurmagomedov has since come forward in an in-depth interview concerning everything that has transpired between himself and the Ireland native. Speaking on the bus attack from April 5, Khabib Nurmagomedov revealed that he has suspicions that the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) may have allegedly pre-planned the bus attack. Check out a translation of Khabib Nurmagomedov’s interview responses down below.
“I had a camp consisting of 20 people with me. We had rented our own bus to get to practice and back. You know what’s interesting? UFC told me that day that I must ride alone for the media day. So I didn’t go with my team, I went with all the fighters from the red corner. I had two people with me, one of my guys and my manager. Look at this carefully, the bus is going out and all of a sudden it stops and backs up. Why? We were almost out. Now you see that the crowd is running at us. What is the bus driver doing? He is suppose to just get out of here, but he stops and goes back.
“I have many questions about that whole situation. I don’t know if UFC planned this or not. So they started attacking the bus from all sides, there were about 20 of them. And there were about 10 guards from the UFC and most of them are going after Conor. I’m about 70% certain that it was all planned by the UFC. I wanted to get out, this is confirmed by all the fighters that were on the bus. This whole incident lasted about 2 minutes.
“This incident leaves me with a lot of questions.
“I would like to point another thing out. In 2013 me and him, we texted each other. I even still have this conversation, we communicated normally. So when this all happened, if he would have wanted to find me, why didn’t he text me? He could have told me, hey you stepped over the line and we need to sort something out. Well now you flew out here, why do you come to brawl with cameras? He actually came with his own cameras. He has a whole PR team that follows him around and films him.
“Another thing is that his was at the Barclays Center, it is huge, it’s a 20 000 people arena. How could they have known where we were at that time? That’s the first question. The second question is who let them inside the arena, when 20-30 angry people walk inside the arena The UFC staff should have stopped them, since Conor didn’t have any business being at that Media-Day event. What are they doing here? Who are they looking for? Nobody know. UFC staff just escorts them through a bunch of corridors straight to our bus.”
