{"id":47866,"date":"2025-08-06T13:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-06T13:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/47866\/"},"modified":"2025-08-06T13:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-06T13:02:10","slug":"matt-brown-believes-conor-mcgregor-in-midst-of-identity-crisis-it-kind-of-got-ripped-apart-by-dustin-poirier","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/47866\/","title":{"rendered":"Matt Brown believes Conor McGregor in midst of identity crisis: It \u2018kind of got ripped apart by Dustin Poirier\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"LAS<\/a><\/p>\n

LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – JULY 10: Conor McGregor of Ireland prepares to fight Dustin Poirier during the UFC 264 event at T-Mobile Arena on July 10, 2021 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Chris Unger\/Zuffa LLC)<\/p>\n

Conor McGregor has a lot on his plate these days, but he\u2019s allegedly looking to add even more after re-joining the UFC\u2019s anti-doping program with plans to make his return to the octagon.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been over four years since McGregor last competed, and after a broken toe sidelined him from facing Michael Chandler in 2024, he once again fell off the radar as far as his fighting career. In the meantime, McGregor has become a co-owner in BKFC, he\u2019s launched his own beer brand, his own cigars and a record label not to mention his plans to run to become President of Ireland.<\/p>\n

But UFC legend Matt Brown has never bought into McGregor\u2019s miraculous return, and he\u2019s not convinced getting drug tested again is the real sign that the Irish superstar is going to compete again. If anything, Brown questions if McGregor is just struggling with the harsh reality that his fighting days are already behind him.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t know him as a person,\u201d Brown said about McGregor on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. \u201cWe don\u2019t know him personally. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on in his life. If we judge solely by his social media, which you can only judge so much by social media. It\u2019s not factual all the time. But if I judge him just by social media, I would question his mental health.\u201d<\/p>\n

Part of the reason Brown can\u2019t help but question where McGregor\u2019s head is at these days comes down to the struggles most fighters face when their careers are coming to an end.<\/p>\n

It was something he had to deal with personally as he neared retirement, and Brown had to recognize that he couldn\u2019t allow his fight career to be the sole way he defined himself. He\u2019s a father, a business owner, and so much more, but Brown most identified with being a fighter, and he knows that\u2019s the same with most athletes in the UFC \u2014 including McGregor.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery fighter knows it becomes your identity,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWhen you\u2019re a fighter, it becomes who you are. We talk about it all the time with sports psychologists and other fighters, you can\u2019t let this be your identity. You\u2019re more than that. It becomes your identity. I don\u2019t give a f*ck what everybody tells you or what you try to believe in your own head.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you step out of the cage one day, you\u2019ll realize that\u2019s who you were and that was all of who you were. I think Conor\u2019s having a hard time with that, seemingly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Add to that, McGregor was considered one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the sport when he became the first simultaneous two-division champions after capturing both the lightweight and featherweight titles. That almost feels like a lifetime ago with McGregor\u2019s last championship win coming in 2016.<\/p>\n

In his past four UFC fights, which dates all the way back to 2018, McGregor holds a 1-3 record after being submitted by Khabib Nurmagomedov, knocked out by Dustin Poirier and then suffering a gruesome broken leg in his third fight against Poirier.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow his identity kind of got ripped apart by Dustin Poirier,\u201d Brown explained. \u201cDustin took his soul. Khabib [Nurmagomedov] probably first, but Dustin kind of put the nail in the coffin on that.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow he\u2019s not a winner with that identity. Now he\u2019s not even competing anymore. That\u2019s a lot to deal with for anyone. So you\u2019ve got to have a little bit of sympathy on that side. It is a lot to deal with.\u201d<\/p>\n

Because he was so successful at the peak of his career combined with a boxing match against Floyd Mayweather, and the sale of his whiskey company that yielded him hundreds of millions of dollars, McGregor is also in a financial situation where he no longer needs to fight.<\/p>\n

But as much as Brown subscribes to the idea that having that much money can potentially lure anyone away from the fight business, he personally believes there may be another underlying factor where somebody like McGregor is concerned.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s probably in a situation where he retired where he\u2019s like \u2018I\u2019ve got all this money, what the f*ck do I do now?\u2019\u201d Brown said. \u201cI\u2019ve never had that much money \u2014 like I have to say that out loud just in case you were wondering, I haven\u2019t had that much money yet \u2014 but I know very, very wealthy people that talk about that. Like once you make a certain amount of money, your purpose in life becomes a little bit more difficult to find.<\/p>\n

\u201cLike you better have good friends and family. Because you don\u2019t know what to do with yourself now. You made it. You have everything you need. You can buy whatever you want. You can go wherever you want. There\u2019s nothing left.\u201d<\/p>\n

That all adds up to a lot of potential issues that McGregor is facing while also just turning 37 years old in a sport where age is the ultimate enemy.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can only look from social media, that\u2019s all we know about him,\u201d Brown said. \u201cWe\u2019re not hanging out with him. But on that side, it does not appear that he\u2019s handling it properly or well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen to new episodes of The Fighter vs. The Writer every Tuesday with audio only versions of the podcast available on Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Google Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a>, and iHeartRadio<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS, NEVADA – JULY 10: Conor McGregor of Ireland prepares to fight Dustin Poirier during the UFC…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47867,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,44,1591,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-47866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47866\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}