Like his cousin Khabib, Usman Nurmagomedov is undefeated so far. The latter, of course, is the Bellator lightweight champion and set to take on Irish MMA phenom Paul Hughes on January 25. To make things interesting, Hughes had called on Conor McGregor to corner him for the Usman fight in a bid to mirror the iconic ‘Ireland vs. Dagestan’ narrative to which McGrwgor had initially agreed. This was natural since Khabib would be in the other corner to support his cousin.

After all, having a replay of the biggest, most famous fight in the history of the sport, even if in the corner- would have made Hughes-Nurmagomeov an epic, must-watch affair fight that many non-Bellator fans would gladly have paid to watch. However, with McGregor’s recent legal troubles, Hughes has changed his mind and no longer wants ‘The Notorious’ in his corner. The Bellator star, however, is still confident of getting the job done.

In fact, he warned Usman that he would take him ‘to hell’ in their fight like none of the Dagestani’s opponents had ever done before. This, predictably, has not gone down well with Usman, who trashed Hughes’ warning and promised to do to him what Khabib Nurmagomedov did to McGregor. “Irish Chatterbox part two. Everyone knows what happened to the first one… The second one will face the same fate,” Usman said recently.

Khabib, of course, had absolutely demolished McGregor in their UFC 229 clash, submitting the Irishman in the fourth round after McGregor had crossed all limits in trash-talking Khabib in the lead-up to their fight. However, Hughes, for some reason came out and claimed that he had not said he would take Usman “to hell”, instead chalking it up to a mix-up. “Wrong translation. I said I’m willing to go to the depths of hell to beat him. But sure Yano yourself,” Hughes wrote in response to Usman’s warning. This, of course, raises the question- what exactly did Hughes say about Usman?

Did McGregor’s compatriot Paul Hughes promise to take Usman to hell?

Paul Hughes, in an interview with MMA Junkie, said he would take Usman to hell not once, not twice, but three times. “I’m gonna bring this man to hell, 100 percent if I need to. Now, I am very confident that I can knock him out clean… I see shots against Usman, and I know for a fact that I can put him out, but I also know that I can bring him to hell for five rounds… That’s when I do my best work, whenever I can drag people into hell because I live there,” Hughes said.

This raises the question- why did Hughes feel the need to deny saying this when he clearly and explicitly did? The short answer is we don’t know. But we can speculate. The first and most obvious reason may be that the Irish Bellator star feels he went too far and disrespected Usman.

Since Hughes is a pretty respectful guy, he may now regret those comments and is thus disowning them. Or he may be intimidated that Usman may take his comments personally, giving the Dagestani added motivation for their fight. Or, perhaps the Hughes just doesn’t remember saying those comments at all. What do you think about Usman Nurmagomedov and Paul Hughes’ back-and-forth on the ‘hell’ comments?