Jan 12, 2025
Retired Muslim UFC champion Khabib Nurmagomedov in 2018. [Ethan Miller/Getty Images]
A video circulating online on Sunday shows retired Muslim UFC champion Khabib Nurmagomedov having a dispute with a Frontier Airlines staffer over sitting in the emergency exit row of the plane.
He was later escorted out before the flight took off from Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas on Jan 11.
The staffer in the video appears to be speaking to Nurmagomedov about his English, to which he says “I know the language,” and “I know how to help people.”
The staffer then tells him that he will either have to switch his seat or he will be rebooked, adding that her fellow colleagues “are not comfortable with you sitting in the emergency exit row.”
A frustrated Nurmagomedov replies “that’s not fair… why you guys do this?”
Towards the end of the video, the UFC champion is seen getting out of his seat and is escorted off the plane after another conversation with a supervisor
According to reporting from Al Jazeera, he was flying to California to attend “the UFC 311 event on January 18 in Los Angeles, Nevada in the US.”
Neither Nurmagomedov nor Frontier Airlines have commented on the incident yet, according to Al Jazeera and TMZ.
Nurmagomedov was undefeated in his UFC career (29-0) and is from Daghestan, one of seven Muslim-majority republics in Russia.