"The most important thing is to win. If you can beat him, you must beat him. But you must not think from the beginning: "I want to beat him". You have to come out with a plan for the fight. There are athletes who take a long time to warm up, they have to not miss a punch, to move, to feel the octagon. The slow ones need to warm up, so that they go out as if for the second round. There are athletes who go straight into the fight - they need to be restrained.
"What will have to do with Magomed? We'll see in the course of the fight. We have a lot of plans, I will not tell you about everything," Ismailov said.
The first fight between Ismailov and Mineyev took place in October 2018 and ended in a draw.