Former UFC champion Daniel Cormier believes there’s a chance Charles Oliveira could lure Khabib Nurmagomedov out of retirement.

While Charles Oliveira may not be the UFC lightweight champion as it stands, he’s still widely recognised as the best active 155-pounder on the planet. His dominant wins over Tony Ferguson, Kevin Lee, Michael Chandler, Dustin Poirier and Justin Gaethje have shot him straight to the top of the division - and he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Khabib Nurmagomedov, meanwhile, is enjoying retirement after riding into the sunset following his own win over Gaethje in late 2020.

It’s unlikely that he’ll break the promise he made to his mother about walking away but as per his close friend Daniel Cormier, there’s a feasible scenario in which we could see this superfight go down.

“Man, it’ll be nice to see him [Oliveira] fight Khabib, right?,” Cormier said. “Many people have said that, ‘It’ll be nice to know, it’ll be nice to know.’ What better way to try to draw him back in than by having Oliveira beat his friend, training partner and long time – it’s another way to try to draw him in because obviously the money, Dana’s throwing so much money at Khabib to try to get him back, that hasn’t been enough. But what if defending his friend’s honor is enough, if Islam doesn’t get the job done?”

“So I think it’s fast forward Islam Makhachev to the championship and make him versus Charles Oliveira, 11 wins in a row, 10 wins in a row and a tremendous matchup too because Islam is not going to be afraid to engage with Charles Oliveira in those spots that make Charles so dangerous. He’s going to wrestle him, he’s going to grapple with Charles and no one has really lived to speak of grappling with Charles.”

What’s next for Oliveira?

It may not take long for the first part of this plan to take shape as Charles Oliveira has been heavily tipped to face Islam Makhachev for the UFC lightweight title later this year. Of course, the fact that he also called out Conor McGregor after UFC 274 means anything could happen, but those are the two likeliest scenarios.

For Khabib, he just has to sit back and enjoy the view.