Conor McGregor\u2019s comeback ended in devastating fashion with the former two-division champion blowing out his knee with the first kick he threw in his fight against Max Holloway at UFC 329.<\/p>\n
It was the worst-case scenario for McGregor after spending five years on the shelf while recovering from a broken leg suffered his previous outing against Dustin Poirier in 2021. Despite all the speculation about pre-existing injuries, retired UFC welterweight Matt Brown doesn\u2019t buy that McGregor was already comprised heading into the fight but rather he just made an ill-fated move with that spinning roundhouse kick and it came back to bite him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reason that happened, I think Conor was nervous,\u201d Brown explained on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. \u201cI thought Max said it perfect \u2014 I think he was weak in the knees. He was nervous. I don\u2019t think he looked 100% himself. A lot of people have talked about that. I\u2019m not one judge to body language too much, because I\u2019ve made the mistake where you judge body language and then they perform great. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s necessarily the best way to look at it, but he\u2019s always been a man of very, very high confidence, and he lived up to that, to what he always said he was going to do, for so long.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of that confidence has been taken away from him. So you\u2019re saying all the right things, pumping himself up, feeling great walking into the fight but somewhere deep inside, he knew there\u2019s not evidence to back up all these things that he\u2019s saying. I could beat everybody, I\u2019m this, I\u2019m that, but you haven\u2019t won a fight in five years, you\u2019re on the yacht drinking and your last fight you [broke your leg] and you were losing anyway. All of these things are contradictory to what he\u2019s telling himself. That increases the nervousness, and he might have even been feeling good, but I think deep inside, he was actually nervous.\u201d<\/p>\n
On the surface, McGregor looked just like he did in so many fights in the past. He carried that same swagger into the cage that he did while conquering two division and becoming the biggest draw in UFC history.<\/p>\n
But deep down inside, Brown believes that McGregor knew he had so much riding on this comeback that he couldn\u2019t slip up and make any mistake. Sadly, McGregor only threw one kick before his dream return transformed into an utter nightmare.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t show it a ton,\u201d Brown said. \u201cHe\u2019s Conor McGregor, one of the best showmen in history, he\u2019s not going to go in looking f*cking nervous. That would be stupid of him, too. But deep inside, the motherf*cker was nervous and I\u2019ll say it again, Max said it \u2014 he was weak in the knees. I think that was exactly the case.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had the plan to come out with that kick and went for it and with all this said, all respect to Conor. He does shoot for the stars. He goes for the biggest bag he could get. He chose Max Holloway. That\u2019s a f*cking commendable thing to do. It didn\u2019t work out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brown argues that McGregor really needed a warmup fight in his return rather than facing someone like Holloway, who is still ranked as a top-five lightweight in the world currently. Of course, he also knows the UFC isn\u2019t in the business of making matchups like that so McGregor probably had no real choice but to face whoever the organization threw at him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is exactly why boxers do warmup fights, tune up fights,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThis is exactly why you work yourself up the rankings. This is why you don\u2019t go fight Max Holloway after five years.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, Conor\u2019s a mentally strong person. He\u2019ll probably be OK, he\u2019ll be able to come back and fight. It\u2019s not a good idea to come back and fight a guy at a world championship level. You\u2019ve got to get a tune up fight. That\u2019s exactly why they do this stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
For the better part of the past five years, the biggest question surrounding McGregor was whether or not he\u2019s actually ever fight again. Considering the nature of the broken leg suffered back in 2021 combined with his vast fortune, McGregor didn\u2019t need to compete but he remained steadfast that he would eventually return.<\/p>\n
The result at UFC 329 might bring those same questions up again but McGregor wasted no time addressing his future when he posted on Monday that he was planning on having surgery, recovering and then getting back to training before returning for \u201cthe final fight of the contract\u201d with the UFC.<\/p>\n
Judging by that remark, McGregor is anxious to fight out his current UFC deal and then enter free agency where he could potentially earn a massive payday competing in BKFC, boxing or maybe just setting up his own MMA fights against names like Nate Diaz, Jake Paul or Mike Perry.<\/p>\n
But if McGregor is resolved to leave the UFC, the promotion could potentially look to bury the Irish superstar rather than giving him a matchup that sends him out on a win.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking back, that\u2019s probably why he didn\u2019t end up fighting Michael Chandler,\u201d Brown said. \u201cThat\u2019s a very winnable fight for him. That\u2019s probably one of the better matchups for him. What a situation the UFC\u2019s got to deal with now? Because they kind of need him to lose, I guess right? If he\u2019s not going to re-sign, they\u2019re like well go out on a loss, we\u2019re going to put you in with a lion. But at the same time, they need to make it a proper matchup.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s obvious if they give him Islam [Makhachev], which they wouldn\u2019t, or Carlos Prates. It kind of brings out the obvious \u2014 we want you to lose so that you are devalued on your way out. I don\u2019t think that\u2019s a good look for the UFC. Do they care whether it\u2019s a good look? I don\u2019t know. Is that really a good look just putting it out there like that? To be fair, this is the UFC. You\u2019re supposed to be fighting the f*cking lions.\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>, Spotify<\/a>, and iHeartRadio<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Conor McGregor\u2019s comeback ended in devastating fashion with the former two-division champion blowing out his knee with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":799868,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,45518,1591,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-799867","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-mmaf-podcast-network","tag-podcasts","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799867","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=799867"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/799867\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/799868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=799867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=799867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=799867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}