With McGregor obviously having suffered another injury,<\/a> referee Mike Beltran called the fight off a little over a minute into Round 1.<\/p>\nIn his post-fight interview, Holloway praised McGregor for wanting the fight to continue and he elaborated on the conversation speaking to reporters after the event.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had the man weak in the knees, I guess,\u201d Holloway said. \u201cAll jokes aside, I just hope he\u2019s good. I know Conor\u2019s been battling some stuff. Looked like he\u2019d really been changing. He found God, he had his kids in there, so during the fight you could obviously tell his demeanor changed. Shout out to the ref, I was trying to tell the ref sooner.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis guy\u2019s kids are front row, I don\u2019t to see him take unnecessary damage, try and stop the fight, but this is how crazy Conor is: The first time he\u2019s on the ground, I was punching him and he\u2019s like, \u2018Fight! Fight!\u2019 I was like, \u2018OK.\u2019 That\u2019s why I backed up, I said, \u2018Stand up then, let\u2019s fight.\u2019 He fell back down and then the fight was called.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the lead-up to the fight, McGregor did dozens of interviews, claiming he was a changed man who had dedicated himself to religion and rededicated himself to training, following years of questionable public behavior, including numerous legal issues.<\/p>\n
Holloway appreciates McGregor approaching their matchup with a more positive approach to fight promotion, but admitted something felt off with the former two-division champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven with him walking into the octagon, it just didn\u2019t seem like the same Conor,\u201d Holloway said. \u201cHe was still there to fight, but I thought he would be a little bit more rowdy, a little bit more crazy. He looked, like, really, really calm, like super calm, so I was just kind of like, \u2018Oh wow, let\u2019s see how this goes.\u2019 Of course, I knew he was going to attack me with something and it was that kick, so it sucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
Holloway also used his post-fight microphone time to suggest he and McGregor meet in a trilogy, though when such a bout would take place is unclear with the severity of McGregor\u2019s injury unknown.<\/p>\n
One thing Holloway is confident about is that he\u2019s unlikely to compete again in 2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was talking about this \u2018170 domain,\u2019\u201d Holloway said, referring their fight taking place at welterweight. \u201cI put in this 170 work. We worked our assess off here, especially after turning around so fast after that March fight and to come back. I want to feel this domain that he\u2019s talking about, this 170 Conor that he\u2019s talking about, this different world. That\u2019s what I want.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to see what his injury is and, as for me, I\u2019m down to come back 2027. With that March fight and this fight, I know I came out unscathed, but I owe my family some time. I owe my wife and my son some time, some family time, so that\u2019s what I\u2019m focused on. You guys are going to see \u2018Blessed\u2019 return back in 2027.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Holloway didn\u2019t get to exchange too many strikes with Conor McGregor at UFC 329, but they did…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":796150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-796149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796149","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=796149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/796150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=796149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=796149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=796149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}