The wave of backlash isn’t slowing down for Khabib Nurmagomedov. The former lightweight champion threw himself into a whirlwind of trouble after promoting his ‘Papakha’ NFT project. According to a report from KuCoin, Khabib reportedly pulled in 350 million Russian rubles, roughly $4.5 million, after 29,000 NFTs were sold for $150 each. Now, with ‘The Eagle’ cashing in through a Telegram-based blockchain currency and claiming in a since-deleted X post that he’s simply sharing what his father passed down to him, the criticism has only grown louder. And to make things even harder for him, his longtime rival Conor McGregor has now jumped into the mix as well.

Addressing the whole controversy, ‘The Notorious’ posted on X, “There is just no way good guy Khabib used his late father’s 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? There is just no way good guy do this.” 

Although it’s still not clear whether this whole thing is a legit scam or not, McGregor didn’t hold back when it came to calling out his bitter rival. However, this isn’t the first time the Irishman has dragged the Dagestani’s late father into a heated reply. Back in 2021, ‘The Notorious’ even made a harsh comment about Abdulmanap’s passing due to COVID. But that’s not all. To drive his latest verbal jab even deeper, McGregor surprisingly drew a sharp distinction between Khabib and Islam.

Following that post, McGregor also fired another one, “What a shame and a stain on his father’s name. Just wow! To scam fans using his father and his country’s culture is just so low. Father’s plan has now become Father’s scam. 😔 🙏 Very sad. On the opposite side of this, it was Great to see Islam Mack honour his own father by putting the double world titles on his shoulders and saying ‘there is not many fathers of double world champions!’ Truth”.

Here, McGregor points out how Islam Makhachev dedicated the double belt to his father after winning at UFC 322. On the other side, he claims Khabib Nurmagomedov has dragged his own father’s name through the mud by running what he calls a shady crypto scam. So it wouldn’t be a stretch to say their rivalry is fully back on. However, when it comes to cryptocurrency, the former two-division champion has had his fair share of failures, too. 

Conor McGregor’s crypto developers had to refund their investors 

Earlier this year, Conor McGregor also dipped his hands into the cryptocurrency game. In a surprising reveal, the former two-division champ announced his new venture, the “REAL” token, and launched a 28-hour presale with a minimum target of $3.6 million. But as fans immediately started questioning whether McGregor’s new project had any real shot at success, things took a hard turn.

On April 6th, the developers behind the MMA star’s token admitted they couldn’t meet the presale goals they were hoping for. In the 24-hour window, they only generated $392,315, just over 10 per cent of their minimum target. Moreover, it didn’t even clear their backup benchmark of a $1 million presale. In the end, they only managed to sell 60 million tokens out of a total supply of two billion.

After the collapse, the Real World Gaming team took to X and announced, “We need to be real. We didn’t hit our minimum raise. All bids will be refunded in full. This is not the end.”

Even though the developers insisted the project isn’t dead, it’s hard to ignore the trend: UFC fighters jumping into the crypto world haven’t had much luck. Neither Khabib nor Conor managed to build anything close to a successful online currency business. 

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That said, do you think any UFC fighter will ever pull off a legit, successful crypto venture? Let us know in the comments below.