A video contrasting Conor McGregor’s behaviour before and after his fight with Khabib Nurmagomedov resurfaced online earlier this week, prompting some UFC fans to suggest he was humbled by the defeat.
The footage shows a confident looking McGregor bouncing around the locker room, preparing for the fight with his team. But it ends with him sitting on the floor, looking dejected after losing to Nurmagomedov in four rounds.
It should have been a humbling defeat for McGregor.
After all, Nurmagomedov, the undefeated champion who was 10-0 in the UFC at that point, breezed past his adversary in a fight that failed to live up to either the ferocious build-up or it’s billing as one of the biggest UFC bouts of all time.
When, in the fourth round, Khabib towered over McGregor in a full-mount and successfully pulled off a rear-naked choke, the Irishman had little choice but to tap out, conceding the fight.
A brawl then broke out between the fighters’ teams and McGregor was taken back to the dressing room to lick his wounds.
In October 2020 however, McGregor took to Twitter, claiming that he won both the first and third rounds:
The defeat still doesn’t sit well with him and earlier this week he reopened those wounds with a since-deleted tweet that mocked the death of Khabib's father, Abdulmanap.
In it, McGregor wrote "Covid is good and father is evil?" in response to Khabib congratulating Dustin Poirier for defeating McGregor earlier this month.
The tweet prompted Daniel Cormier to reach out to Khabib after stating publicly that McGregor’s tweet ‘absolutely crossed the line’.
Speaking on ESPN, the former two-division UFC champion said:
"He (Khabib) spoke to my kids at my wrestling program the other day and said he was never happier than when he got to fight McGregor on the day. Because for so long, he wanted to get his hands on Conor and beat Conor up.
"Well, he can't do that no more cause he's not a prizefighter anymore. So now he just has to kind of swallow that. Way too far."
It also prompted UFC fans to revisit the video of the Irishman before and after the fight and as one user commented, “Khabib definitely humbled him. You can even see it now in his promos leading up to the fights, he's not as brash. Sometimes you need a dose of reality to bring you down a peg.”