There are many active UFC fighters who do not wish to fight the Dagestani wrecking ball that is Khabib Nurmagomedov, so you had better imagine that regular Joes off the street want absolutely nothing to do with him too.
Nurmagomedov is, if nothing else, a scary bastard if you were to encounter him out and about, and this is something he is fully aware of judging by a story he told while helping out with a seminar in Kazakhstan.
He told of a time in a coffee shop in America when a drunken idiot came in and started harassing people and cutting in line, when he got to Khabib in the queue he was informed that he should reconsider his actions.
He also made it known that where he is from, men do not have to say this to each other as they know that acting out of line will bring repercussions, but as he was on foreign soil he adhered to local customs:
I had an incident in America. When I was standing at the cash register, there is a drunken man bothering those who stood in front of him. He stood in front of me. When he came to me, I told him "Calm down, I'm a professional fighter."
In the Caucasus, we do not talk and say I am a man, leave me alone. In America, I have to say it. Because if I fought there, then I would have to answer before the law. You could put me jail. I warned him, and he abruptly sobered up. I told him ‘I am a professional fighter. I can break your face. You have to calm down.’
Incredible.
I can break your face. You have to calm down.
That quote should be printed on t-shirts. Thankfully the idiot in question had enough sense to drop it there and then. Of course, that's not always the case, while Khabib's profile and his Russian accent make it immediately plausible that he could rip your arm from your shoulder, sometimes MMA practitioners don't quite look the part.
Here's an example of current UFC fighter, and the man who defeated Artem Lobov in The Ultimate Fighter finale, Ryan Hall being forced to use jiu-jitsu to calm down a monumental asshole.
You get the feeling that Khabib wouldn't have been so forgiving.
