Everyone Wants to Step in to Fight Khabib Nurmagomedov, Even BJ Penn

MMA, like life, is a fickle mistress, and we have no one to blame but ourselves when she crushes our hopes. If only because it means we were foolish enough to have them in the first place.

Take the scheduled main event fight of UFC on Fox 19 on April 16 between lightweight contenders Khabib Nurmagomedov and Tony Ferguson. Did any of us believe, down in our hearts, that fight would actually take place? After all, it's been two years since Nurmagomedov last fought in the Octagon, two years plagued by injury and misery and no fewer than three cancelled fights. For all his fighting acumen and his grappling genius and his incomparable fur hats, Nurmagomedov is known best at this point as a cautionary tale and a memento mori, a reminder to the human race of its fragility and its random decline and inevitable passing. Every one of the Dagestani wrestler's long-for returns has been cut off by cruel fate, each cancellation more disheartening than the last. First hope then disappointment, and finally, despair. When he was forced to drop out of his last fight back in October with a rib injury, the usually indomitable Nurmagomedov seemed resigned to his fate, writing on Instagram, "I'm not sure if I will ever come back." The MMA gods had gone a step too far that time. Something broke. For Nurmagomedov most of all but also for MMA fans. Fool us four times, shame on us.

But the MMA gods are not merely cruel; they're also capricious. When it was announced yesterday that the Ferguson/Nurmagomedov fight was off, the shock didn't come until we learned that it was Ferguson and not Nurmagomedov whose injury had caused the cancellation. Who would have thought such a thing was possible? Even as we mourned the loss of the fight we had to marvel at the novelty. When dealing with callous MMA fates, anything different is good.

Unless, of course, Ferguson's injury is simply proof that the Nurmagomedov injury has metastasized and changed shape and spread to all those who come in contact with him. Maybe the gods have grown weary of messing with Nurmagomedov directly and decided to switch things up, to fuck with him and with us, to attack the man's opponents instead of the man himself, to knock him down by proxy. In which case it would be wise for other fighters, a notoriously superstitious bunch, to steer clear of Nurmagomedov for fear of damaging their own knees, ribs, and lungs and careers, right?

But no: Even in his absence Khabib Nurmagomedov remained a force in the lightweight division and a shadow in the back of the minds of all his potential competitors, from former champion Anthony Pettis to current champion Rafael dos Anjos. Fighters want to fight Nurmagomedov. In fact, the only person fighters seem to want to fight more in the UFC is Conor McGregor, and a fight with Nurmagomedov doesn't come with a tenth of the paycheck a fight with McGregor does. Which mean fighting him must mean something more, something deeper than money or exposure. Fighters must sense he's something they have to prove themselves against, a marker to measure themselves by, that they haven't accomplished what needed accomplishing if they never fight him. If I can beat this man who once beat a bear then I deserve to be where I am.

So out went Nurmgomedov's call for a new opponent on Twitter—" somebody, anyone and any weight"—and back came a chorus of responses. There was Donald "Cowboy" Cerrone, of course, who delights in fighting as often as he can and on as short notice as possible, and who responded to MMAFighting reporter Ariel Helwani's claim on Twitter that convincing any fighter to fight Nurmagomedov on 10 days' notice will be a "tough sell" with a Tweet of his own:

And then reigning lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos threw his name into the mix, seeking not only his first fight back since injuring himself in the lead-up to his fight last month with McGregor but also hoping to redeem his last lost, a beating at the hands of Nurmagomedov that the Dagestani has been tormenting the "fake champ" with ever since.

But since dos Anjos won't be back from injury until July and since Nurmagomedov, a devout Muslim, can't fight in July because he'll be busy recovering from the holy fasting month of Ramadan, the most we can hope for between the two men for the moment is more verbal skirmishing on social media, complete with subtle religious digs disguised as hashtags.

But if the MMA gods have been cruel to Khabib Nurmagomedov by cursing him with injury after injury in the prime of his career, they (again, like life) still save their greatest torments for the fighter far past his own, distorting his mind with dreams of comebacks beyond his abilities and redemption beyond his capacity, and haunting him with memories of more glorious days. There is nothing quite as stubborn and deflating than witnessing an old fighter still caught in a delusion and nothing more dangerous, both to that fighter and those who loved him but now want him to disappear into the past. Which is why we can only hope that Helwani's tweet late last night that longtime pound-for-pound great BJ Penn had reached out to the UFC to fill in for Ferguson was just a rumor or a passing fancy or a joke. Two years into a "sabbatical" that followed three brutal and unnecessary beatings at the hands of younger men and seven years past his prime, Penn is a man under the influence of forces that haunted and then ruined too many great fighters before him, like Muhammad Ali—forces that come to you late at night and whisper in your ear: You've still got it. You're still the best. Remember the glory days. You can get them back.

A fight between Khabib Nurmagomedov and BJ Penn would be no curse; it would be the cold, hard, inevitable facts of life and decay pounded at last into the brain and blood of a fighter too stubborn to recognize them. This time Nurmagomedov wouldn't be the recipient of that lesson, though, just its messenger. Which is something different, I guess.