A veteran crew will be overseeing the highly anticipated showdown between Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor at UFC 229 in Las Vegas on Oct. 6.
On Tuesday, the Nevada State Athletic Commission voted unanimously to approve the referee and judges who will be working the lightweight title fight taking place at the T-Mobile Arena.
Herb Dean will serve as the third man in the Octagon for the fight between Nurmagomedov and McGregor. Dean has been the referee in dozens of main events and title fights and he’s served as referee in past bouts for McGregor, although this will be his first time handling Nurmagomedov since he arrived in the UFC.
Meanwhile, the judges scoring cage side will be Derek Cleary, Sal D’Amato and Junichiro Kamijo.
While McGregor has only gone to decision twice during his UFC career, Cleary did serve as a judges for one of those fights. He scored McGregor winning his rematch against Nate Diaz at UFC 202 with Cleary returning a score of 48-47 in favor of the Irishman.
McGregor ultimately won the fight by majority decision.
There will be plenty of eyeballs on everybody participating in UFC 229 as the event is expected to be the biggest of 2018 if not the most successful UFC pay-per-view in history.
UFC president Dana White said last week that the pay-per-view is currently trending towards 2.5 million buys, which would shatter the previous record held by McGregor’s rematch against Diaz in 2016 that reportedly pulled in around 1.6 million buys in 2016.
McGregor holds numerous UFC records already when it comes to his drawing power both on pay-per-view and at the box office for ticket sales so it’s likely his latest showdown with Nurmagomedov will be no different.
