Hall of Famers weigh in on Khabib Nurmagomedov's no rounds idea for the UFC: "Separate the men from the boys"

Khabib Nurmagomedov wants to remove rounds from MMA and let fighters go bell to bell with no breaks. The undefeated former champion shared the idea of raw, uninterrupted combat over structured intervals during a recent podcast appearance.

The suggestion drew reactions from fellow Hall of Famers Daniel Cormier and Chael Sonnen. On ESPN MMA’s Good Guy/Bad Guy, both men acknowledged the logic behind Nurmagomedov’s thinking.

They pointed out that a round reset can wipe away minutes of positional control or momentum. In a continuous fight, that edge would carry through.

Sonnen recalled that the Gracie family once pushed for similar rules, back when MMA was still closer to its no-holds-barred roots. Cormier compared it to his wrestling days, where five-minute nonstop matches allowed athletes to grind opponents down without interference. Weighing in on Nurmagomedov's comments, Cormier said:

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"I would like it because when we had the most success as a country wrestling, it was a five-minute round. There was no break. You remember when we were really good as Americans in terms of freestyle wrestling, there was a five-minute round where you could just hang on them dudes and work them to death. And I love that. That was when I was younger. We get out there and just scrap."

He added:

"I don't hate it. I do agree to what you're saying. Football, there's quarters, right? Every 15 minutes, there's a stop. There's a halftime. And in every other sport, basketball, I get it. It keeps us in line. It makes the UFC look like everything else. But I don't think it's that bad an idea. I think that you separate the men from the boys. And you also say like two men go like you said only one dude gonna walk out of here. You gonna fight until that happens."

Check out the full exchange below (20:50):

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Chael Sonnen says MMA is fine without drastic rule changes suggested by Khabib Nurmagomedov

Chael Sonnen pushed back on Khabib Nurmagomedov’s idea of removing rounds, saying the sport’s structure doesn’t need fixing. He believes rounds bring fairness to the scoring process and ensure consistent "adjudication."

According to Sonnen, history wouldn’t change much even without the round system. He also argued that trying to create perfect fairness in every scenario only leads to confusion.

Speaking in the aforementioned episode of ESPN MMA’s Good Guy/Bad Guy, Sonnen said:

"When we start down this road of ridiculousness and we try to get to what's absolutely perfectly fair, we realize there is no such thing. And we realize the sport of mixed martial arts is almost a perfect sport. The government always oversees it. There's tremendous group thought. Things do change over the years, but where we've got it right now, I think it's almost perfect."

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Edited by Abhishek Nambiar