Michael Johnson Happy For His Chance to Face Khabib Nurmagomedov

Michael Johnson spoke with MMAjunkie about his fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 205. The highlights are below:

On getting the fight with Nurmagomedov: “Me and Eddie [Alvarez] still keep close contact with each other. He’s a good friend of mine, so I was talking to him about his fight and I was thinking to myself, ‘If they get Conor to fight (Alvarez), Khabib’s gonna be left open for me to fight, and this is perfect.’ I think you guys heard me after my last fight – I wanted to fight in Madison Square Garden, and the timeline couldn’t be more perfect. Everything was just lined up. I’m fortunate Khabib got passed up, and I knew that he wanted to fight. I knew there was no way he was going to sit out that long and not fight. So I just took my chance, and I got it.”

On Nurmagomedov: “It’s a big fight, and it seems like they can never get anybody to fight him. And they’ve built so much hype around him and they think everybody’s scared to fight him. So I’ve just been training, taking out my opponents on my way to get to the title. I have to go through him, so let’s get this fight out of the way. I wanted to fight him earlier, and now I’m getting my chance.”