VIDEO | Khabib Nurmagomedov and Artem Lobov have heated confrontation in Brooklyn

With Khabib Nurmagomedov fighting on the same card as Artem Lobov, a long time friend and training partner of Conor McGregor, one had to assume they’d have some kind of run-in during the UFC 223 fight week.

On Tuesday evening, it happened.

Somewhere in the halls of the UFC 223 fighter hotel in Brooklyn, Nurmagomedov and Lobov crossed paths, and the result was a fiery confrontation with all of the yelling, bravado, and swarming onlookers we’ve come to expect from a typical UFC fight week confrontation. See the video, which was capture by the folks at MMANytt, at the top of this post. Regrettably, most of the trash-talking is done in Russian, so viewers in North America are probably likely to miss some of the nuances of their conversation.

Now that Tony Ferguson has withdrawn from the UFC 223 main event with a leg injury, Nurmagomedov will battle UFC featherweight champ Max Holloway for the lightweight strap in the card’s headliner.

Lobov, meanwhile, is set to battle Alex Caceres on the UFC 223 undercard.

Interestingly, Lobov actually said he hopes Nurmagomedov will win the UFC 223 main event, as he’s probably the most compelling opponent for his friend McGregor.

“As for the fans, I feel that the fans probably would prefer Khabib matchup,” he said on a recent episode of BJ Penn Radio. “They feel that’s a better fight. And to be honest, I would really like to see that fight also. And especially if that fight was to take place in Russia, that would be crazy. That would be a raucous style matchup. That would be just incredible. So I would love to see that, of course.”

Do you expect Khabib Nurmagomedov and Artem Lobov to win their battles at UFC 223 in Brooklyn?

This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 4/3/2018.