Islam Makhachev, UFC lightweight champion, named his main sparring partner ahead of his fight with Dustin Porier.
"Usman Nurmagomedov always gives me hard rounds. He was sick, but as soon as he got better, he immediately joined the training camp to help me. His striking is better than Dustin's and I have a hard time with him. He hits with his hands, his feet - he's actually very good in the standup. When you spar with fighters of this level, it's called a scythe on a stone, but now we are working carefully, controlling the situation to avoid injuries. In the last month I don't like to work with new sparring partners, because they can injure you, do something you don't expect. With Usman and the rest of the guys on the team, we spar for life. I have five sparring partners in total and they are all very high level fighters."
