A grotesque contest, yet one watched by 108 million viewers, generating more than $18 million in ticket revenue from the 72,000 spectators in the stands. Those figures surpass the numbers achieved by many official world championship boxing bouts. Bringing former greats back into the ring is, after all, becoming commonplace in combat sports—there are plenty of examples beyond boxing—but the trend extends beyond this arena and even beyond sport itself. As we shall see, nostalgia takes root wherever emotion is involved.

In October 2023, banners depicting a white Cerberus against a black background appear in parts of Milan: an unforgettable emblem for many rap fans, representing Club Dogo, the Milanese trio formed by rappers Guè and Jake la Furia alongside producer Don Joe. The group’s last album dated back to 2014; an entire generation that had grown up with Dogo’s rhymes in their headphones had been longing for their return. The anticipation proves tangible: the group announce three shows at the Forum in Assago, and tickets sell out within hours. In the end, they will play ten sold-out shows at the Forum, followed by a major concert at San Siro, and release an album, Club Dogo, which will achieve double-platinum certification, surpassing 100,000 units and 215 million streams on Spotify. A comeback that exceeded even the artists’ most optimistic expectations, as they have acknowledged on several occasions.

In August 2024, Oasis announce a spectacular reunion almost fifteen years after their split, with a 41-date, sold-out world tour in 2025 generating more than $400 million in ticket revenue, followed by another 42 shows in 2027—again, all sold out.

So far, we have been talking about live comebacks, when someone who made history returns to the stage, but the phenomenon goes further. In cinema, legacy sequels naturally come to mind: returns to films that left their mark, in the hope that they still hold a grip on fans. Examples include Top Gun: Maverick, with Tom Cruise reprising his lead role after thirty-six years; Blade Runner 2049, released thirty-five years after Ridley Scott’s film; and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, with Harrison Ford playing Indy forty-two years after first taking on the role, among many others. Their box-office fortunes have varied, but the industry has kept faith in the formula. Even on social media, the nostalgic trend 2026 is the new 2016 was everywhere at the beginning of the year—remember?

At the heart of nostalgia lies a contradiction: every reunion, revival or comeback promises to give us back something that time has made irretrievable, yet can only do so by transforming it, sometimes for the worse. The return does not erase the loss; instead, it briefly makes it a visible, shared experience. Much of their appeal lies in this tension between the desire to rediscover who we once were and the knowledge that we can no longer be those people.

Thinking about it, I am reminded of Seven Easy Pieces, the project Marina Abramović presented at New York’s Guggenheim in November 2005. Over seven evenings, the artist restages six historic performances, her own and those of other artists, and presents a new one. At its heart is a reflection on the ephemeral nature of performance, in any form: it exists here and now, and ends in the very act of happening. To preserve it, documentation alone is not enough; it must happen again. The same principle seems to run through sport, music and beyond today. This is why watching Mike Tyson step into the ring at almost sixty can offer something no compilation of his greatest fights can convey. We see him move before our eyes, here and now, and even a faded performance is always preferable to the memory of his prime, now buried in the past. The difference here is that the returning body is the same one, only older, and it is precisely that gap that makes the experience so ambiguous.

Yet an album or a film does not end the moment it happens. We can listen to it or watch it again whenever we like, and still we keep longing for a new chapter. This is where a psychological mechanism known as rosy retrospection comes into play: the tendency to remember the past more positively than we experienced it, because memory is selective, softening disappointments and preserving the most intense emotions. Added to this is the fact that our strongest, most deeply rooted and identity-defining memories, particularly musical ones, tend to be associated with adolescence and early adulthood. This is why an entire generation spent years waiting for Club Dogo or Oasis. They rediscovered not only artists, songs and stories, but also the version of themselves that existed when they first discovered them, as though time had never really passed.

The question remains: why do familiar names command such widespread enthusiasm, in sport and elsewhere? One thing is certain: for someone to become a true legend, comparable to or greater than those who came before, time must pass. It is essential for reputations to take root, collective memory to form and new generations of enduring figures to establish themselves. Lionel Messi will be remembered as one of the greatest footballers of all time, yet Maradona retains an unparalleled aura for countless people who never saw him play, precisely because his legend has been passed down through stories, images and footage that have sustained his greatness far beyond first-hand experience.