Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov are battling it out again… online.
On Wednesday, McGregor addressed a recent marketing push by Nurmagomedov, who has been selling NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) on messaging app Telegram of late.
In particular, Nurmagomedov was selling digital Papakhas (that’s the white fluffy hat made famous by Khabib during his UFC run), with an announcement made via his verified Twitter/X account, @TeamKhabib. Nurmagomedov, or whoever is running the account these days, has made multiple crypto and investment related posts in recent weeks, with little fighting related content.
Nurmagomedov’s original post about the Papakha sale (which is presumably in conjunction with a crypto company, though which isn’t clear) was subsequently deleted, and a new one announcing that the auction had ended was posted to his account on Wednesday. Though not before McGregor took notice.
“There is just no way good guy Khabib used his late fathers name, as well as Dagestan’s culture, to scam his fans and fire sell a bunch of digital NFT’s online and then delete all of the content after they were sold, leaving his fans robbed of their money?” McGregor wrote in a post addressing the sale. “There is just no way good guy do this.”
That brought about an immediate response from Khabib, who posted that the auction had closed exactly two minutes after his reply to McGregor.
“You absolute liar. You will always try to darken my name, after you got destroyed that night, but you will never achieve that! Yes, good guys don’t do that. They don’t create exclusive digital gifts with real time value, that you can share with your friends and family. Gifts in the shape of Papakha – hat that symbolize traditions and culture of Dagestan people. Traditions and culture that slowly walking over this world, whether you like it or not! Gifts that you can find exclusively on Telegram, greatest messaging platform on the world.”
Judge for yourself whether the NFT sale is a scam or not, though after the initial craze surrounding them a few years ago, their popularity has flagged. Digital collectables remain in a steady decline, and it seems questionable as to whether they’ll retain their value long term.
