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Ismail Naurdiev’s last fight was a scary experience for the Austrian fighter. He was challenging Jarrah Al-Silawi for the Super Welterweight title at Brave CF 50 and was having a good fight.
The first round went his way and Naurdiev was feeling good. The second round is where things took a turn for the worst. Al-Silawi landing a calf kick and things started to go wrong.
“I don’t know [what happened.] The low kicks weren’t anything special or hard,” Naurdiev told Clutch Points. “It was nothing I hadn’t seen before. It was just regular low kicks. I didn’t feel any pain or anything. After the last one, I was moving and then at some point, it started to burn under my shin. I was like ‘oh my gosh what is this?’ I have never felt that before. Ok, I’m just going to switch my stance. I tried to switch the stance and then I felt my leg is so weak. I couldn’t stay on it. It was the first time it happened to me. In my head I was so shocked, I got a little paranoid. I was like ‘oh shit what happened to me right now?’ So I thought ‘let’s wrestle.’ I started to wrestle, I went for a single leg and then I lost full control of my leg and then I fell down by myself. It was weird. I couldn’t move it for thirty minutes. I didn’t feel anything. The doctors were touching it and I felt nothing. I was scared. I thought maybe I lost my leg or something. It was crazy.”
Conor McGregor had a very similar leg injury in his second fight with Dustin Poirier. His leg gave out and he wasn’t able to stand.
A mind is an interesting tool in moments like that. If you can’t stay focused then the fight is pretty much over.
Ismail Naurdiev wasn’t really worried about the pain. He was scared that he would lose his leg.
“If it was only the pain then I would continue the fight,” Naurdiev said. “I have had many fights where I was injured and I broke some things and I kept fighting. At this moment I didn’t feel anything in my leg. I couldn’t control it. That’s why I couldn’t continue even if I wanted to do. That was the problem. That shit? That got me. I was scared. To be honest. After 30 minutes I started to move it, I felt everything and then I was [good.] Health is number one. Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win. It’s not the last fight. Health is number one. As long as I’m healthy, I’m happy. I’m so young I can have a lot of fights. It was a little bit sad I lost that way. I was dominating the fight in the first round. I felt good, everything was good, my preparation was good. It was so annoying.”
Conor McGregor came back from his fight with a game plan centered around calf kicks and defending them. He became obsessed with the technique.
Don’t expect Ismail Naurdiev to do the same. Calf kicks have been around forever and he isn’t going to let them change his training too much.
“Business as usual because every fight is different,” Naurdiev said. “Just because I lost the fight by leg kick doesn’t mean I will lose the next fight like this. I’m not the only one who’s lost like this. Calf kicks are so dangerous. Everyone does it now. Of course, I worked a little bit on it because sometimes you have to work on your mistakes. It wasn’t 100% focused on the leg kicks. When you’re scared of something too much, you can’t fight. You think too much about these things.”