UFC veteran Rafael dos Anjos has weighed in on who he thinks is the better fighter out of Kamaru Usman and Khabib Nurmagomedov.

Dos Anjos, who has fought and went the distance with both Khabib and Usman in 2014 and 2018 respectively, believes his most recent foe was the better adversary.

“Oh, definitely Usman,” he said. “I can tell you that because 12 weeks before my fight with Khabib, I was training in the cage and my ear got stuck in the cage. I split my ear. It took 14 stitches to close it and I almost lost my ear. So I pretty much didn’t train any wrestling for that fight. I had no scrambles no grappling, none of that. It was more feet and knees and sparring and stuff like that.”

The now-37-year-old Brazilian fought Khabib in April 19, 2014 during the UFC on Fox: Werdum vs Browne preliminary card, losing by unanimous decision.

This would take Dos Anjos’ record to 20-7 at the time, with all three judges scoring the fight 30-27 in favour of The Eagle and taking Khabib’s professional record to 22-0 at the time.

“For Usman, I actually trained a lot of wrestling and he still took me down. He still controlled me. It was a five-round fight and I feel like Usman brought tougher competition for me.”

Usman and Dos Anjos would go to battle on the finale of Ultimate Fighter: Heavy Hitters (otherwise known as Ultimate Fighter 28) in the main event, with The Nigerian Nightmare winning by unanimous decision.

The judges ruled 50-43, 49-45 and 49-48 in favour of Usman, subsequently taking Dos Anjos’ record to 28-11 at the time.

Dos Anjos is finally set to fight Rafael Fiziev in the main event of UFC Fight Night this Saturday following cancellations of the previous two possible encounters due to visa issues and a positive COVID-19 result by Fiziev in the past.