Dagestan fighter Khabib Nurmagomedov deliberately lost a round in a fight against Irishman Conor McGregor at the UFC 229 tournament. Promotion commentator Joe Rogan spoke about this on his podcast.
Fight of the century
The meeting of two championship legends in the octagon took place in October 2018 in the vicinity of Las Vegas and became the main event of the tournament. Khabib won the fight: he used a choke hold, forcing his opponent to surrender in the fourth round.
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Nurmagomedov later called this victory the main one in his career. At the same time, during the fight he lost one round — and Joe Rogan considers this not the weakness of the Russian athlete, but his cunning. “It looked like Khabib deliberately took a break for one round so that he could put a lot of pressure on Conor.”, noted the commentator. According to him, in this way Nurmagomedov forced the Irishman to slow down, and then performed a takedown “and beat the crap out of him.”
The fight of the night at UFC 229 brought in a whopping $86.4 million in revenue for the promotion. This figure remains a record for the championship.
The meeting between McGregor and Khabib was the only one in their careers. She made Nurmagomedov the UFC lightweight champion, and two years later the Dagestani fought his last fight. After winning the fight with American Justin Gaethje, he announced his retirement from professional sports, saying that he promised his mother not to fight without his father, who died in the summer of 2020.
Where are Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor now?
Now Khabib Nurmagomedov is focusing on family affairs and coaching — the famous MMA coach Javier Mendez, who was previously the Dagestani’s mentor, spoke about this in the summer of 2023. He stated that, despite the end of his career as a professional fighter, Khabib did not give up the sport and continues to train.
In addition, he himself works with athletes. “He continues to train, he just doesn’t go to foreign training camps and doesn’t become his guys’ second.”“,” Mendez noted.
Conor McGregor, in turn, has not appeared in the Octagon for a long time. His return to the UFC was announced at the beginning of 2023, but so far it has not taken place. But the athlete regularly becomes the hero of scandalous publications. The latter were associated with his criticism of the Irish authorities: the fighter called for “changes” after the riots in Dublin, which took place due to an attack by a migrant on a woman with children.