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Everyone who tuned in Thursday morning (Oct. 29, 2015) and learned that UFC lightweight Khabib Nurmagomedov had gone and injured himself again probably did what I did: you raised your head to the sky and began a slow and dramatic Darth Vader scream, "Nooooooooooooooo."
MMAFighting.com's Ariel Helwani first broke the story, that Khabib had sustained a rib injury while training in Dagestan, Russia.
Yesterday, his dad and coach, Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov, posted his disappointment on Facebook (via Bloody Elbow and translated by Artem Safarov):
"This injury is a very unpleasant situation," said the renowned Dagestani coach. "We tried to figure out how to train and avoid injuries, not to disappoint our fans. But we failed. Khabib stopped a takedown while working in sparring when he got injured. We couldn't force everything."
So, what went wrong? According to Daddy Dearest, too much effort was spent on Khabib's celebrity, flying around Russia to meet youth and entertaining guests in their family home.
Abdulmanap said that isn't "a proper regime" for training.
The worst part? The injury happened just one day prior to his flight to San Jose, California, where he would have finished out his 42-day training camp at his American Kickboxing Academy home.
"We planned to do 2 training camps - 21 days each. Khabib's weight was 85 kg (187 pounds) what I think was good regarding the time he had before the fight. One relief for us - is that wasn't his old injury, not his knee."
While there's no word on how long he'll be out this time, a rib injury is extremely common for mixed martial arts and generally takes between three and six weeks to heal, depending on the severity.
Khabib last competed way back at UFC on Fox: Werdum vs. Browne on April 19, 2014, defeating Rafael dos Anjos long before the Brazilian became the lightweight champion.
He has suffered a series of setbacks in his attempt to make a return to the UFC Octagon since initially tearing his ACL.