The meeting between lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor has been suitably burnished with all the garlanding and trappings of a modern-day UFC title fight, but just over a month out from the 25th anniversary of the promotion’s inaugural event, there’s also a distinctly nostalgic dynamic at play. During that bygone, unregulated era, the early UFC sold its product as a platform for specialists to pit their respective disciplines against each other, so as to finally establish which martial art was supreme. And, while those bouts might seem somewhat crude in comparison to the extraordinary standard of combat of today, they were not only equally gladiatorial, but the first bloody flickering of what is now a sporting phenomenon. The respective stylings of Nurmagomedov (26-0 MMA, 10-0 UFC) and McGregor (21-3 MMA, 9-1 UFC) are no secret. All those years ago, their lightweight title bout at UFC 229 would certainly have been billed as a striker vs.
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