It was marketing ploy: Marcus Almeida exposes Khabib Nurmagomedov

Former UFC champion Khabib Nurmagomedov is known to be an ambassador of Combat Sambo. The Russian is a former World Champion in Sambo. He made headlines in the past when he wore a T-Shirt which read ‘If Sambo was easy, it would be called Jiu-Jitsu’.

The T-Shirt had earned a lot of heat for Khabib during that time. And now, ONE Championship star and BJJ icon Marcus Almeida has exposed Khabib’s claims.

As per the Brazilian, the T-Shirt was just a marketing ploy.

“I think Khabib said that as a form of promotion. At the time he wore this shirt, he was going to face a Jiu-Jitsu black belt, Thiago Tavares. It’s been a long time, and he wore the shirt just to get attention. And it worked. A lot of people talked about it,” Almeida said (h/t Essentiallysports).

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Almeida went on to add that Khabib is someone that trains a lot of Jiu-Jitsu and even picked out the details from Khabib’s game which attributes to Jiu-Jitsu.

“It was a marketing ploy because Khabib trains that half-guard control a lot by playing on top, crushing the opponent’s legs. And that was the result of a lot of Jiu-Jitsu training. I followed him training with Leandro Vieira, who was the American Kickboxing Academy jiu-jitsu coach at the time. I saw him teaching Khabib a lot of jiu-jitsu. Leandro is the brother of my master Leonardo Vieira, so I followed Khabib’s jiu-jitsu training very closely. Like I said, it was just a marketing ploy and it worked at the time. But the truth is that Khabib trains a lot of jiu-jitsu and used jiu-jitsu a lot in his fights,” Almeida said.

When concluding, Almeida noted that Jiu-Jitsu is indeed more efficient when compared to Sambo.

“I think Jiu-Jitsu is more efficient than sambo. Not only is it more efficient than sambo, Jiu-Jitsu is more efficient than any other martial art. Sambo has a lot of focus on leg locks and jiu-jitsu covers everything, chokes, arm locks, leg locks, back control, mounts,” he concluded.

What do you think of the claims from Almeida? Let us know In the comment section below.

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