Conor McGregor in the prime of his career was a true phenomenon and a former compatriot of 'The Notorious' thinks that version of McGregor can put out the lights of reigning UFC lightweight champion, Ilia Topuria. This was a sentiment recently expressed by Artem Lobov during an interview with Jordan Ellis for Bloody Elbow.
'The Russian Hammer' covered several subjects during that chat ahead of his return to combat sports after over four years as Lobov will finally clash with long time rival Zubaira Tukhugov at PFL Champions Series 2 on October 3rd in a catchweight contest at 165 lbs. Conor McGregor and Artem Lobov had a publically documented fall out with each other but the latter does still hold the former's fighting ability in high regard.
When touching on how a hypothetical mega fight would play out between the pair of fighters who've both held UFC gold at featherweight as well as lightweight, Lobov said,
"I'll be honest with you. I'm a massive fan of Ilia. You know, his style is incredible. You know, he's incredible striking, very ballsy, you know, he fights aggressively, you know, comes in fearless, you know, good wrestling. It's; I put him up very, very high up there. I still do think, if I'm really honest, I might be a little bit biased. But I do think that in their prime, Conor still, I think, edges it, you know."
"He was just honestly; just watching Conor like in his prime was incredible. Just untouchable, you know, and I watched him in trainings, you know. I annihilate and annihilate, you know, like five guys in a row one by one, you know. They all coming in fresh, including me and him not even breathing heavy. Like he was just a killer, you know."
Conor McGregor could have beat Topuria as well as Mayweather and Nurmagomedov
Further expressing how pedigreed of a pugilist he felt that Conor McGregor was during his prime in the UFC, Lobov continued,
"So for me, as I said, I'm probably biased, but for me, it's hard to imagine anyone doing anything to that corner, you know. I feel that Conor could have beat everyone that; that's, you know, for me. He could have beat even [Floyd] Mayweather and Khabib [Nurmagomedov], you know, that corner. But Ilia is probably a very close second to me."
"Right behind Conor, right behind top level Conor, you know. But right now Ilia is the best. There's there's no question about it. He's the number one guy now. Yeah, he's so dominant and so exciting to watch and yeah, I love watching his fights."