UFC Executive responds after Khabib Nurmagomedov criticizes St. Petersburg event

UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov was not happy with the lack of promotion for Saturday’s UFC event in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The undefeated Russian, Khabib, said he would like to see the promotion adapt a new policy, one which would pay attention to his countries fighters.

“I think the UFC should have a different policy, Nurmagomedov explained. “UFC need to pay attention to our fighters.”

“The Eagle” is currently serving a suspension which was handed down from the NSAC for his participated in the now infamous post-fight brawl at UFC 229.

Khabib Nurmagomedov recently revealed that he will likely be returning in September for a title unification bout with Dustin Poirier.

Following Khabib’s criticism of the UFC’s lack of promotion for Saturday’s St. Petersburg event, Dan Shaw, a UFC executive, has responded (via MMAJunkie).

“I think I would probably respectfully disagree with Khabib on that one,” Shaw said at the UFC on ESPN+ 7 post-fight news conference. “If you look at what we’ve done, look back, we opened up the office in Moscow … 10 months ago. And in even 10 months we’ve held an event with 23,000 people at Olimpiysky Stadium in Moscow and now here at Yubileyny (Sports Palace), we’re averaging about 15,000 people.”

Shaw continued:

“Throughout those times, we’ve had a considerable amount on the card that has been occupied by Russian and CIS athletes there was tonight at least one fighter in every fight, I think we might have had out of 22, maybe we had 11 fighters, 12 fighters of Russian, CIS descent,” Shaw said.

“The amount of marketing and promotion that went in, the thoughtfulness that went into creating the card in that we don’t just want to have Russian fighters. We had Dagestani fighters. We had Shevchenko on the card as well, right. We’re trying to get a good representation of the whole area.”

Do you think the UFC did a good job of promoting Saturday’s St. Petersburg event? Sound off in the comments section PENN Nation!