After taking a break to box, smashing up a few bus windows and dodging jail, Conor McGregor’s long awaited return to the UFC was confirmed last night.
The Notorious one will finally face UFC Lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov on October 6th at the T-Mobile Arena, Las Vegas.
It marks McGregor’s first outing in the octagon since November 2016, when he comprehensively dismissed Eddie Alvarez to win the Lightweight strap and become the UFC’s first dual weight world champion as he also held the featherweight gold at the time.
He then took time out of the sport to fight boxing’s pound-for-pound kingpin Floyd Mayweather in a losing effort in August last year.
Nurmagomedov meanwhile is undefeated at 26-0, including 10 on the spin in UFC and picked up the Lightweight title McGregor vacated in April by defeating Al Iaquinta in Brooklyn, New York.
While the hype around this fight is not quite at ‘Money’ Mayweather levels, it’s still been the most talked about potential MMA bout out there and it was finally made official with a surprise video package at a 25th anniversary press conference by UFC President Dana White last night.
THE FIGHT IS ON!@TeamKhabib vs @TheNotoriousMMA Oct. 6 in Las Vegas at #UFC229! pic.twitter.com/GHNzmj4eWY
— UFC (@ufc) August 3, 2018
Reacting to the news our odds makers have the champion Nurmagomedov as an 4/6 favourite to hand McGregor just his fourth defeat in his MMA career.
The Dubliner is not too far off in the betting though, coming in as a slight outsider at 11/10 as he looks to hand Nurmagomedov a first ever defeat in October.
The fun begins from here folks…
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