Undoubtedly the blue riband event in August’s global sporting calendar was the much-anticipated and highly charged match-up between boxing superstar Floyd Mayweather and MMA hotshoe Conor McGregor.

While Mayweather’s superior experience and ability told in the end, many observers were impressed with McGregor’s performance in what was his professional boxing debut, as he seeks to build a career outside mixed martial arts.

With McGregor’s attempt to codeswitch having captured the imaginations of millions, CGTN takes a look at five other athletes who made a name for themselves in more than one sport. 

Widely regarded as one of England’s finest batsmen, Compton is one of only 25 players to have scored 100 centuries in first-class cricket, and has a stand named in his honor at London’s famous Lord’s Cricket Ground. Yet Compton was also a dab hand on the soccer field, winning the First Division championship with Arsenal in 1948, and scooping the FA Cup two years later. Alas for Compton and many other men of his vintage, his sporting career was interrupted by the outbreak of World War II, robbing him of the chance to play a full international for England’s national soccer team.

Despite enduring an unsuccessful stint in Formula 1, Zanardi found the US-based Indycar championship much more to his liking, winning the series title in 1998 and 1999. But the jovial Italian’s driving career was halted abruptly in 2001 by a serious crash in which he lost both legs and nearly his life. After a lengthy period of rehabilitation, Zanardi was back racing in 2003, driving specially adapted cars with hand-operated controls. The inspirational Bolognese then switched to paracycling in 2007, winning a hatful of marathons before taking Paralympic gold medals in both 2012 and 2016.

England’s Romero showed sporting prowess from an early age, and won a silver medal at the 2004 Olympic Games in the quadruple sculls rowing event, before a back injury forced her to give up the sport. Undaunted, Romero switched to cycling instead, and made such rapid progress in her new event that she took gold in the individual pursuit at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, making her the first woman in the modern era to win a medal in two different sports at the summer games. A true jill-of-all-trades, Romero then made a further switch to the Ironman triathlon, taking part in the 2012 World Ironman Championship.

While other athletes have changed sports later in their careers, Jackson had been on the radar of pro baseball and NFL outfits since his college days. After graduating from college in 1986, a tug-of-war for his services resulted in Jackson agreeing to a punishing schedule whereby he would play the entire Major League Baseball season with the Kansas City Royals, before joining up with the Los Angeles Raiders in the NFL. Jackson continued to dovetail these two careers for four years, before injury saw him concentrate solely on baseball from 1991 onwards. The Alabaman’s unique achievement made him a household name, and also saw him front Nike’s “Bo Knows” ad campaign.

No compendium of multi-talented sports stars would be complete without the inclusion of Thorpe. Of Native American stock, he won gold at the 1912 Olympics in both the pentathlon and decathlon, before joining up with the New York Giants in Major League Baseball. Thorpe also played for six teams in the NFL, as well as playing professional basketball in a team comprised entirely of Native Americans. Thorpe’s athleticism and versatility saw him receive various accolades, with the Associated Press notably naming him the greatest athlete from the first half of the 20th century.