There was a time when Conor McGregor and Khabib Nurmagomedov were friendly. It started as these things do, on social media. Nurmagomedov replied to a McGregor tweet about a t-shirt, and possibly training together, and by the fall of 2014, they were standing, smiling, posing, each with a hand around the other’s back. At the time, McGregor had just knocked out Dustin Poirier in his first sojourn to Las Vegas. On the heels of the chills-inducing quote, “We’re not here to take part, we’re here to take over,” the Irish had invaded Vegas, and though McGregor was still three fights away from being an undisputed UFC champion, his destiny seemed sealed.
Revenge, money, geopolitics and power: Layers of Conor vs. Khabib seem endless
