"I do hate him," Morales told Alvaro Colemenoro. "We don't have a very good vibe. But at the end of the day, he's still a fighter. I'm not gonna get overconfident if I had to prepare myself to fight him... That fight is gonna be intense if it happens... I think that if I were to fight him, it would be the first time that I would fight in a very aggressive way."
"About the decision, about the fight, nobody stay happy. I think the only people who stay happy about the decision is my opponent and his team. The president is making the right choice with that, that's protecting the image of the company and not tainting their legacy and the sport."
Two of those four fights were against Sean O'Malley. One time, he basically mauled him, and the other time he choked him out with one arm. So does it count as four? I think that he didn't even prepare for Sean O'Malley, honestly. He just knew he was gonna wrestle him out.
While Nurmagomedov has downplayed it, there is no doubt that this fight is slightly more personal for him and his team. Davis won the 2025 World Tournament and did so by besting the defending champion and fellow member of the Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov school: Gadzhi Rabadanov. While Nurmagomedov has downplayed how much extra incentive he feels to avenge his teammate, there's no question the two have a natural friction going into the fight.
"I don't know if it was ring rust, but I definitely think I underperformed that fight, and I never got to show Amir Albazi, the real Amir Albazi, The original Amir Albazi. So I'm happy to be here to finally be able to show people that this is the real Amir Albazi, this is the problem in the division. I can't wait to show you guys on Saturday."