Khabib Nurmagomedov and Cristiano Ronaldo are two men who have scaled the heights of their respective sports, but the UFC champ has advised his football superstar friend to know when to call time on his career.
Speaking at a media event in Russia for regional MMA promotion GFC, Khabib was asked by a member of the audience why Ronaldo "seems not to want to retire" - and whether the UFC champ had taken any fitness tips off his friend.
"Well you know, it’s hard to leave something you’ve done your whole life," Khabib said.
"But it doesn’t matter whether you want to [retire] or not, the time will come when if you don’t leave the sport, the sport will leave you...
"If you don’t leave at the right time, you’ll be left behind as there’ll be new champions, younger, hungrier, more motivated guys. You won’t same motivation and hunger you’ve had at the beginning of your career towards its end.
"Nobody will be around forever, so it’s important to leave at the right time. How old is he [Ronaldo]? 34? At 35 he won’t have the same conditioning and reaction time.
"It doesn’t matter if it’s Cristiano or Khabib, people will come and take your place.
"My advice to him, and to me as well, is to leave at the right time.
"I haven’t taken advice from him about [training and fitness] because right now I feel good, and when I start to fall behind in some areas, I’ll probably consult him.
"But for now he’s performing, I’m performing and we have no problems," Khabib said.
Whether or not Ronaldo takes Khabib's advice is another matter.
The star number 7 has previously said he wants to add to his haul of five Ballon d'Or accolades with at least two or three more titles as the world's best player.
sehajbains_02
564
CR7 doesn't take right decisions... He take decisions and make them right. . He will not leave Turin until he adds UCL title to Juve's cabin and Ballon d'or in his own personal cabin
Fiter8X
432
Very Nice advise Khabib 👏👏👏
M_B-7
359
Yes guys we’re about to face end of an era “C.Ronaldo & L.Messi’s era”. 💔 It hurts but deep down we all know that they can’t play football their whole life.😔 We Ronaldo and Messi fans criticized them time to time but that doesn’t mean we don’t like them. We criticized them just to continue rivalries of best player in the world between C.Ronaldo & L.Messi. If i put C.Ronaldo at number 1 i also put Messi on number 2. Just because in my opinion C.Ronaldo is better and no one can change that. Either i can’t change Messi’s fans opinion. But what Khabib said is truth, it might be C.Ronaldo’s last season of his career or maybe the coming season. Its gonna happen and we’ll have to accept that.😞 Thats for the Memories C.Ronaldo & L.Messi. You’ll live forever in our hearts until we die. No one can take your place. Best of luck for your future legends.👍🏻
FaithEvans
357
In future, when someone overhype a player, I'll look at my grandchildren and tell them stories about the era of the GOATs... the Sniper rifle(Messi) and the machine gun (Ronaldo)!