"Went from playing to being the poster boy" - Footage of a young Khabib Nurmagomedov playing UFC game wins MMA fans over

Khabib Nurmagomedov is one of the greatest fighters of all time. The unbeaten lightweight legend retired from MMA three years ago at UFC 254. In doing so, he walked away from the sport with an undefeated record, and as both the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world and the undisputed 155-pound champion.

His career highlights include defending his lightweight crown against three former titleholders in former interim champions Dustin Poirier and Justin Gaethje, and former undisputed king Conor McGregor, with whom 'The Eagle' headlined the most successful pay-per-view in MMA history, with 2.4 million PPV buys.

While most fans now know of Khabib Nurmagomedov as a no-nonsense legend of the sport and one of its biggest stars, an Instagram post with a picture that is over a decade old shows a much younger Nurmagomedov playing the UFC Undisputed 3 video game.

Several comments expressed their astonishment over how the passage of time can change things, as 'The Eagle' went from a fan of the video game to one of the most played characters in any UFC video game.

One fan said the exact same, writing:

"From playing UFC GAMES 5o becoming one of the most playable characters. Life truly has a lot of surprises. Work hard and have faith."

Another fan described him as the poster boy:

"He went from playing to being the poster boy. Nice."

Even a commenter who described himself as being far from a fan of the fighter's, admitted that the video was a powerful one:

"Far from a Khabib fan. But this so awesome lol"

Meanwhile, one fan asked if Khabib Nurmagomedov was playing as George St-Pierre, who fans may know was Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov's favorite fighter:

"He was playing with gsp?"

A collage of fan reactions can be seen below:

Fan reactions

---

Has Khabib Nurmagomedov ever been the cover star of a UFC video game?

While he ranks among the greatest stars in MMA history, 'The Eagle' was never the cover star of any of the UFC games. Under THQ's production, the cover stars for the three UFC video games it developed were Forres Griffin, Brock Lesnar and Anderson Silva, respectively.

Meanwhile, the cover stars for the UFC video games under the EA Sports era have been Jon Jones, Alexander Gustafsson, Ronda Rousey, Conor McGregor (2x), Jorge Masvidal, Israel Adesanya (2x), Valentina Shevchenko, and Alexander Volkanovski for UFC 5.