Deconstruction of the Maldacena-Nunez Compactification
  We demonstrate a classical equivalence between the large-N limit of the Higgsed N=1* SUSY U(N) Yang-Mills theory and the Maldacena-Nunez twisted compactification of a six dimensional gauge theory on a two-sphere. A direct comparison of the actions and spectra of the two theories reveals them to be identical. We also propose a gauge theory limit which should describe the corresponding spherical compactification of Little String Theory. 
R.P. Andrews and N. Dorey