Khabib Nurmagomedov looks back at the most emphatic win of his UFC career

UFC lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov recently took a trip down the memory lane and relived his absolutely emphatic and dominant victory over Abel Trujillo which came seven years ago on today's date at UFC 160.

The undefeated Dagestani fighter decimated Trujillo in the fight, landing an unbelievable and record-breaking 21 of 28 attempted takedowns en-route to a lopsided unanimous decision victory. While reflecting on the fight against Trujillo, Khabib Nurmagomedov revealed that he stepped inside the Octagon for the fight with an injury that forced him to adopt a strictly grappling based strategy for the bout.

Here's what Nurmagomedov had to say about the fight in retrospect.

“At this fight, which happened 7 years ago, I placed a record in #UFC 21 takedowns in single fight. Month before the fight I injured my knee and wasn’t able to take opponents back. Decision to make was very simple: just grab and throw your opponent for 15 minutes straight. If there is a desire, there will always be a solution.”

Khabib Nurmagomedov ran through the entire lightweight division following the win against Trujillo

Since his win over Trujillo, Khabib Nurmagomedov never looked back and ran through the whole lightweight division in the UFC, notching up eight more dominating victories in the process. Nurmagomedov became the lightweight champion by beating Al Iaquinta at UFC 223 back in 2018; in a fight for the title vacated by then inactive champion Conor McGregor.

Khabib was expected to return to the Octagon to defend his title against Tony Ferguson in the main event of the recently concluded UFC 249 but had to pull out at the last moment due to travel restrictions in his native country, Russia in an attempt to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Now that Justin Gaethje beat Ferguson at UFC 249 and captured the interim title, Nurmagomedov is set to face "The Highlight" in a title unification bout in September this year.