Conor McGregor comes face-to-face with perfect match before destiny date with Nate Diaz

Jean-Baptiste Seckler is from France, a country that until September had never hosted a commissioned mixed martial arts event. The Ultimate Fighting Championship has yet to brought bring its all-swinging, all-dancing, seemingly all-conquering circus to French shores.

Yet, for almost three months in his studio in Paris, Seckler has spent hundreds of hours sculpting and painstakingly perfecting pores and wrinkles, strands of facial hair and every minute detail of a tattoo of a gorilla wearing a crown and eating a heart. The end result is a remarkable bust of a man who the visual artist considers equally remarkable.

Seckler delicately carried the work through the endless rows of slot machines and blackjack tables at the MGM Grand casino on Wednesday. He had come all the way to Las Vegas to present the sculpture to its subject - the UFC’s fighter in chief.