Khabib Nurmagomedov has a message for anyone who thinks his best years on the mat are behind him: they have it backwards.
Speaking on the Smol Talk podcast with Fyodor Smolov, the undefeated former UFC lightweight champion made a claim that will raise eyebrows. Despite walking away from professional competition in October 2020 at the age of thirty-two, Khabib says his grappling has only gotten sharper since.
“People think that 2018, 2019, and 2020 were my prime. But I never actually reached my prime,” he told Smolov. “I retired in October, only a month after turning thirty-two.”
“That was quite early. I had barely begun. Perhaps that was only the start of my prime. My grappling is much better now. In the summer of 2026, my grappling is better than it was in 2020.”
Khabib pointed to the people around him as proof, noting that training partners who grappled with him both in 2020 and now have taken notice of the difference.
He credits the improvement to a simple but relentless habit: he never stopped. Outside of a two-month recovery period following elbow surgery, he says there has almost never been a stretch longer than two weeks where he stepped away from live grappling.
The numbers back up his dedication. In the week before the interview, he logged between 170 and 180 minutes of live grappling rounds, and over the course of a full year, he estimates he averages around 100 minutes of live grappling per week.
When Smolov asked whether there was a single sparring partner who could outwrestle him, the answer was telling.
“It’s difficult,” Khabib said. “They all complain about my weight now.”
He was careful to clarify that what has improved is not just perspective.
“I’ve physically improved my skills,” he said. “The way I take the back, move to mount, enter chokes, guillotines and triangles, defend submissions, and prevent escapes, all of that has improved physically. It isn’t only that I’ve matured mentally and can now see mistakes. My actual ex3cution is better too.”
Watching old footage of himself has given him a new angle on those championship years.
“When I rewatch my matches, I think, ‘How could I make that mistake?’ Viewers at the time watched from another angle and thought, ‘Wow, what a level.’ But in my opinion, it wasn’t such a high level.”
As for whether competitive hunger still shows up, Khabib has a straightforward answer for that too.
“Whenever I need competition, I go to the gym and find champions there,” he said.
He is not coming out of retirement. But by his own account, the version of Khabib Nurmagomedov that exists right now on the mat is the best one there has ever been.
[Editor’s Note: Quotes have been translated for clarity.]
