Ask around what it’s like to roll with Khabib Nurmagomedov and the same reaction tends to keep popping up at every turn, followed by the type of admission you don’t often hear from the best fighters in the world.

“He was being nice,” said former UFC champion Frankie Edgar, chuckling. “He was being nice — and I could tell he was being nice.”

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Edgar first rolled with the UFC’s lightweight king several years ago, back when Nurmagomedov was in the midst of rehabilitating an injury, yet the Dagestani champion still left an imprint. That’s probably not surprising to anyone who has watched him compete. In a sport flush with ascendant talents, Nurmagomedov is perhaps the most transcendent of all.

To date, the undefeated 32-year-old stands atop the mountain as the single most dominant athlete in UFC history. While other all-time greats such as Jon Jones and Amanda Nunes have at least experienced some modicum of in-cage adversity, Nurmagomedov has been both flawless and peerless in his success, not just outclassing the sport’s most talent-rich division, but rarely losing a single round.

Nurmagomedov’s championship will be up for grabs again this Saturday, when he meets interim UFC lightweight titleholder Justin Gaethje in the main event of UFC 254. The unification bout represents one of Nurmagomedov’s staunchest challenges to date. So ahead of the big night, we wanted to know: What exactly is Gaethje up against? What does it feel like to roll against the most dominant MMA grappler the sport has ever seen? Why exactly has Nurmagomedov’s unique blend of mat wizardry broken so many of the generation’s most skilled fighters?

Fortunately, as it turns out, when you train with the champ, it tends to be a memorable experience.

‘Like he’s not even trying’ 

Right away, one particular aspect to Nurmagomedov’s game emphatically jumped out and lapped the field, receiving far more unprompted mentions than even the second-leading candidate.

“Khabib is a monster, man. He’s very good, very strong — and that (strength), it’s something that I’ve never seen before,” said UFC bantamweight contender Marlon Moraes. “It’s different, you know? It’s so different. So much power. Like, consistently. It never ends, the power. It’s not like a pinch of power. It’s just a consistent power. With everything, man.”

Nurmagomedov competes at 155 pounds, so it’s not as if he’s a massive, musclebound heavyweight with forearms the size of heavy bags. Yet, without fail, his seemingly baffling levels of strength were mentioned by every single respondent who spoke to The Athletic for this story. Fighters as large as middleweights marveled at the power of the lightweight champion.

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For many, it was unexpected. Nurmagomedov isn’t winning any physique competitions, after all. Yet virtually every fighter who fell into the champ’s clutches said his ability to exert his strength was both inimitable and overwhelming.

“I don’t know to explain to you this, because it’s not like the power of a bodybuilder,” said undefeated UFC prospect Ottman Azaitar. “It’s something you don’t get away from. It’s just always there, like a mosquito, or any man who sits on you and you try to get him up and can’t. I don’t know, maybe he knows how to use his weight to balance his weight on his opponent, but also with a lot of power. For example, if he grabs your hand for a kimura or for a rear-naked choke, or for any attack, any choke, you feel a different kind of power.”

“He was a lot stronger for a ’55er than I’d (ever felt),” said UFC welterweight Belal Muhammad. “And I’m looking at him like, dang. And when I rolled with him, he was like mid-camp for the (Conor) McGregor fight, so he was training and he was lighter. So I was like, ‘dang, man — he’s really strong’.”

“I haven’t ever felt anything like that, because it was different,” echoed fellow undefeated UFC prospect Punahele Soriano. “Normally, when people have strong grips, you can feel the resistance, you know? But it just kind of felt like his hands were there, and it just — the grip was soft but it wasn’t budging for some reason. It was weird. They were just locked in.

“I’d try, try as hard as I could, and just for some reason I just could not break his grip. Ridiculously strong.”

American Kickboxing Academy head coach Javier Mendez can’t help but laugh when he hears these types of responses. Mendez has been in the room hundreds of times over the years to witness unwitting newcomers get their first taste of Dagestani power, and he’s quite familiar with how the scene tends to play out.

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“They’re all rolling with him, and then they’re stuck,” Mendez said, grinning. “They don’t know what the hell to do. He’s so many steps ahead of them and they’re realizing that he’s only playing with them. That’s why I always tell everybody — they go, ‘Well, is Khabib going to do more standup?’ I go, ‘No, why should he?’ I want him to do what he does best. There’s nobody who can beat him on the ground. Until we find that somebody, then we’ll do something else.”

Here, Mendez touched on a unique aspect of the Nurmagomedov experience, one that arose over and over again for this story — and one that may either be the funniest or most frustrating part, depending on whether you’re the man drowning underneath the champ. Because there isn’t a sense of mind-boggling speed that accompanies Nurmagomedov’s game. Rather, it’s the direct opposite — Nurmagomedov approaches his craft with a slowness and calmness about him that often makes him appear to be a disinterested party.

And that disinterest can throw off even the world’s best.

“Honestly, I think he was going pretty easy on me,” said Soriano, laughing. “I’d look at his face as we were going through exchanges or whatever, we’re grappling, and he looked totally calm, totally like — I don’t know, like he’s not even trying. And I’m trying as hard as I could.”

“That heaviness, that strength — he slows you down,” said Edgar. “It’s systematic. Methodical. He lets you tire yourself out. You’re moving, you’re doing a lot of moving, but you ain’t going nowhere.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” explained Ali Abdelaziz, Nurmagomedov’s manager who has trained with his fighter for years. “You can ask him — he took (former UFC heavyweight and light heavyweight champion) Daniel Cormier down. He took ‘DC’ down and he can out-grapple (former UFC middleweight champion) Luke Rockhold. I see things like that with my own eyes. And they’ve said it before. He’s just different. He’s a different animal.

“It makes you feel like you don’t belong in the sport when you train with him. That’s the honest to God truth.”

‘Like a floating ship in the sea’

Power and strength are important, sure, but ultimately useless at the highest levels of the game if a fighter doesn’t understand how to wield them. Nurmagomedov, however, grew up in the grappling arts, reared since childhood by the influence of his late father Abdulmanap, who tragically passed away this summer after contracting COVID-19.

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That wealth of experience allows the champion to translate his prodigious strength into perhaps the most nightmarish aspect of his skill set — according to several fighters who’ve felt it, once Nurmagomedov gets you down onto the canvas, the pressure he gradually applies can be both suffocating and panic-inducing.

“I remember the one camp when I rolled with Khabib the first time,” Azaitar said. “(Former UFC heavyweight champion) Cain Velasquez was also with him, I rolled even with him. He has like 30 or 40 kilos on Khabib. And it was, for me, easier to get up when Cain Velasquez was on top than Khabib. If Khabib lays one time on you, it’s like a jacket you wear or a stone or a rock on you.

“The first time I rolled with him, I felt it,” he continued. “Some people have a talent for something, they get it from God. And I believe very strongly in this, that Khabib got something from God, what no one else has in this game. And what I’m telling you right now, you see in the fights. When he gets someone down, he lets them sweat. He lets them suffer. Just him being on you, you don’t know how this pressure feels like. Just being on you, letting you — the whole time — struggle to get up, you become tired. He breaks you. And after the second or third round, he plays your game and he beats you even with your strengths.”

That slow creep of unremitting pressure is a hallmark of virtually any Nurmagomedov bout. From Conor McGregor to Dustin Poirier, from Edson Barboza to Rafael dos Anjos, countless lightweights with reputations as battle-hardened men have succumbed to the champion’s pulverizing embrace.

At times, Nurmagomedov’s gradual takeover of a foe’s body can almost seem sloth-like, but as if that sloth weighed 10,000 pounds and ate a diet composed strictly of protein bars and Compound V from Amazon Prime series “The Boys.” Because between his innate sense of balance and a ceaseless gas tank, training partners say Nurmagomedov is more than happy to wait you out — and when the champ doesn’t want to be moved, he’s probably not going to be moved.

“You really do underestimate it a little bit,” said Muhammad. ”Literally, I’m so used to when you’re rolling with somebody for the first time, you sit there and play around with them. It’s your first time rolling with them, you know? But you could tell that he doesn’t want to lose a round, so he’s not giving up a single position. If you want to go for a submission, he’ll just stay there and you’re like, ‘Aw crap.’ You’re moving around and then it’s like, ‘Wait…the clock went off like five times already?!’ And they’re just going through the clock.”

“He loves this. He does this in a very, very slow, sneaky way,” explained Azaitar. “Somehow he gets on top of you, he gets where he wants to get to, and you don’t get him anywhere or away. You saw how he did with Barboza. You saw all of that once he takes someone down. I don’t believe Barboza had any fun at all in that fight. McGregor also. Michael Johnson. They just want to give up, or, ‘Shit! Holy shit!’ Like, let this guy just please come down from (being on top of) me.”

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“You can’t really see it. The pressure he puts on you in training, without hurting you — it’s like he makes you panic,” added Abdelaziz. “He makes you panic. He positions his body on you differently. He controls your breathing. He’s like a floating ship on a sea. He always has the balance, but he’s always on top. You understand? It makes you panic. You wouldn’t understand it if you don’t feel it. That’s why when you talk to Dustin Poirier, he understands it. When you talk to Conor, if he’s honest, he will understand it.”

When all is said and done, if Nurmagomedov is in the training room, he’s there to work. That much is clear. And for some, that first peek at how the champ approaches his craft can be eye-opening.

“We were literally rolling for like 30 minutes, non-stop 30 minutes straight, and I was like, ‘OK, I’m getting this’,” Muhammad said. “Then all of a sudden, he got mount. Then all of a sudden, he got off me — he calls one of his other boys to come.

“’Let’s go.’

“He went right back to rolling right away. And after rolling with him, it changed my mindset about training. Because these guys, they don’t want to give up an inch. Just the way they train, you could tell it’s not a game. They don’t want to lose an inch. And that’s the way he fights — he doesn’t want to lose an inch. So it made me change my training technique where it shouldn’t be fun. It can be fun with your teammates and stuff, but still, you want to have that pressure.”

‘He’s that nice of a guy’

Of course, it’s not all bad. At the very least, training partners of the champion are treated to one reprieve — as several fighters mentioned, Nurmagomedov is seemingly aware of the massive gap in skill between him and most human beings on the planet Earth. So unless you force him to flip the switch, he’s content to keep that mean streak locked away, even in the witching hours of a tough fight week.

“Everyone knows Khabib’s weight cuts aren’t the easiest things, right? One day, one fight week, I think it was when he was fighting Barboza, it was probably the Wednesday or Thursday before the weigh-in, and we get to his Airbnb where he’s staying at,” remembered Soriano. “He basically forces me and (UFC featherweight contender) Dan (Ige) to let him cook for us. He’s like, ‘Let me make you eggs. Let me make you eggs.’ We’re like, ‘no, no, we don’t want you to be around food. It’s tough for you (while you’re cutting weight). It’s a lot.’ And he’s like, ‘No, no, no.’

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“He just basically made eggs and steak in front of us and forced us to eat it in front of him. He’s that nice of a guy. He didn’t care, he was fine with it. He just was so nice, he wanted to make sure we were fed while he was starving. And he’s a great cook. I mean, it’s just eggs, but you couldn’t say no, you know? Yeah, sure, I’ll eat these eggs.”

“He’s very humble with all the people who come in, he’s not someone who (feels he has something to prove),” said Azaitar. “I’ve trained with many other champions who wanted to show me how strong they are. Some other gyms, you come in and everyone is looking very serious. But in this gym, you come in, you feel the spirit, everyone is laughing.

“We joke a lot — Khabib vs. DC, always this trash talk between them while we’re warming up — it changes the atmosphere, the situation. Everyone is laughing like this. You are happy to go to training — even when you have sparring and you know you’ll get smashed later.”

(Top photo: Jeff Bottari/Zuffa LLC/Zuffa LLC via Getty Images)