The retired UFC fighter was concerned in a seating dispute with Frontier Airways workers and was later escorted off the plane in Las Vegas within the US.
Russian combined martial arts fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov says that he was faraway from a flight in the USA following a seating dispute with airline workers on the Harry Reid Worldwide Airport in Las Vegas.
In a put up on X on Monday, the Final Combating Championship (UFC) legend clarified that the incident occurred on a Frontier Airways flight and questioned if he had been the sufferer of racial discrimination.
Footage of the incident was broadly shared on-line, with preliminary stories saying it happened on an Alaskan Airways flight.
The dispute centred round whether or not Nurmagomedov, who was sitting within the aircraft’s exit row, was ready, or ready, to assist different passengers within the occasion of an emergency.
The 36-year-old UFC champion, writing on X, mentioned a flight attendant who spoke to him “was very impolite from the very starting”.
And though he speaks “very respectable English and might perceive all the things and agreed to help, she nonetheless insists on eradicating me from my seat”, he mentioned.
“What was the bottom for that, racial, nationwide or different one, I’m unsure,” he added.
Initially, I must make clear that it was @FlyFrontier not AlaskaAir.
Girl who involves me with questions was very impolite from the very starting, though I communicate very respectable English and might perceive all the things and agreed to help, she nonetheless insists on eradicating me from my…— khabib nurmagomedov (@TeamKhabib) January 12, 2025
He didn’t say when the incident occurred, and Frontier Airways has but to remark.
Within the video of the dispute, recorded by one other passenger, a flight attendant is heard telling Nurmagomedov, “We can not let you sit within the exit row… I’m not going to do that forwards and backwards. I’ll go name a supervisor. You’ll be able to both take a distinct seat or we are able to go forward and escort you off the aircraft.”
The retired UFC fighter responded to the flight attendant by saying, “It’s not honest.”
He’s additionally heard to say that he had totally complied with the flight crew in the course of the onboarding course of, and added: “Once I was in check-in, they requested me, do I do know English… and I say sure. Then why you guys do that?”
The flight attendant’s supervisor, not happy with the response from Nurmamegedov, was heard on the video repeatedly providing him one other seat on the aircraft, in addition to the choice to take one other flight.
Nurmagomedov mentioned the attendant known as safety after two minutes of dialog and that he was “deplaned” from the plane.
“After 1.5 hour [sic], I boarded one other airline… and left [for] my vacation spot,” he wrote on X.
It’s believed that Nurmagomedov was flying to California to assist his teammates forward of the UFC 311 occasion on January 18 in Los Angeles, Nevada within the US.
Nurmagomedov, a Muslim, was unbeaten (29-0) in his UFC profession and is taken into account by many to be one of many biggest MMA fighters of all time.