AJ McKee explains why Khabib Nurmagomedov's MMA revolution makes sense

Even in retirement, Khabib Nurmagomedov is still one of the most influential fighters on the planet.

Wanting to see the sport evolve, Khabib proposed a rule change. Instead of the traditional standard of a 15-minute fight being broken into three rounds, ‘The Eagle’ would like zero breaks: one continuous 15-minute round. The MMA icon questioned the purpose of rounds, believing they don’t allow fights to flow naturally.

Now, as he prepares for his blockbuster cross-promotional title vs. title superfight against the undefeated Razhabali Shaydullaev, AJ McKee reminisced about RIZIN’s old format of one 10-minute round.

“They used to do first round 10 minutes, one [5-minute round] after. I like that sh*t. One 10-minute round is like, we thuggin’.”

Agreeing with Khabib’s evolution proposal, McKee shared an interest in each fight being one 15-minute round, while also pointing out some negatives that the idea may bring.

“I think a fight should be 15-minutes straight, anyway. Yeah, I agree [with Khabib]. There should be no break. Yeah, it definitely can change the pace of a fight. But yeah, I’d like to see 15 minutes all the way through. But the reason why they do it, from an entertainment aspect, is the threshold of the body can only take so much.”

“You’d see a lot more finishes, but it’s not going to be the finishes of knockouts, you know what I mean? And crazy stuff. You’re going to start to see a lot of people going into that survival state of, okay, I need to wrestle. I need to take somebody down.”

“I know if I get tired, I’mma shoot a takedown. Take this motherf***er down and hold him for a little bit. Then we get back to the feet; we can duke it out again… You can pace it. In a 15-minute fight straight all the way through, you have to do that. You have to have the mix of all arts.”