LAS VEGAS — Before UFC 329, it seemed as if the final image of Conor McGregor in a UFC octagon would be of him in befuddled pain after he broke his left leg in 2021. After Saturday night, the enduring image will be something seemingly more painful — a first-minute loss after a leg injury that appeared to be accidental.
McGregor slipped twice in 40 seconds against Max Holloway and limped heavily until the fight was called off because it was clear he could not continue, just 69 seconds in. He left the cage before Holloway’s hand was even raised, and boos rained down from the confused T-Mobile Arena crowd.
It was not clear if McGregor came into the fight with an injury, but he opened the bout with two sloppy, jumping kicks that ended with awkward landings.
“Five years off in this sport is rough,” UFC CEO Dana White told reporters afterward, before adding that he did not know the specifics of McGregor’s injury.
“We’re assuming blown ACL,” he said, adding that the company’s doctors think the same but that McGregor had not yet been examined. “We’ll find out when he gets an MRI.”
White said he believed McGregor was not injured before the bout. “If there was a preexisting injury somebody would have noticed,” he said.
Five years and one day since his last UFC bout, Conor McGregor lasted 69 seconds against Max Holloway. (Mark J. Rebilas / Imagn Images)
McGregor left the arena without speaking to reporters, and the UFC confirmed he would not do so Saturday night. He was shown walking on the concrete outside the arena barefoot and shirtless, limping toward a parking lot.
Disappointment has been the overriding theme of McGregor’s public life since his championship heyday, which ended with an emphatic, caustic loss in 2018 to Khabib Nurmagomedov that preluded a melee outside the octagon because of distaste between the fighters that went beyond any normal bounds in the sport.
Even with that, much of McGregor’s downfall since has revolved around legal controversies and letdowns about potential fights that never materialized.
He broke his left leg in a 2021 loss to Dustin Poirier, a moment that turned ugly because McGregor shouted profanely toward Poirier about his wife, which turned into an online skirmish of its own.
Like Saturday night, just another entry in the evolving saga of McGregor’s fame stunting his professional drive, with a plethora of controversies tarnishing his reputation. Since he became the UFC’s biggest star, McGregor has faced repeated questions about his conduct with women.
Most prominently, he lost a civil case in 2024 and was ordered to pay more than $250,000 to a woman who said he raped her in a hotel room, which McGregor denied. McGregor has maintained his innocence, and he was not prosecuted criminally, with prosecutors in Ireland determining they could not win a criminal case based on the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
McGregor wanted his return Saturday to reorient attention back to his in-ring spectacles rather than his outside-the-cage troubles.
Saturday’s fight actually happened. Somehow, it became his most disappointing moment yet in the cage.
How the bout might have progressed without the leg injury will now just be something for fans to speculate about. But Holloway exiting the victor was hardly a surprise. He rightly entered as a moderate favorite and had none of the ring rust McGregor carried (if only for the short duration of the bout).
Paramount+, the promotion’s official broadcast partner, shared a slowed image on social media of McGregor awkwardly balancing as he took off his sandals after his ring walk.
Holloway, as he entered, stoically shadowboxed in the pyrotechnic fog, bouncing with a focused coolness as McGregor played to the crowd.
Nobody expected Holloway within the first moments of the fight to drop his hands and tell referee Mike Beltran that it was clear McGregor couldn’t continue, sending the Las Vegas crowd fleeing for the doors at the time they expected to be cheering.
Conor McGregor, right, attempted jumping kicks early in the bout against Max Holloway. (Mark J. Rebilas / Imagn Images)
“I just hope he’s good, you know,” Holloway said, later adding that McGregor’s demeanor seemed off from the moment he entered the cage: “It just didn’t seem like the same Conor.”
This wasn’t a career highlight for Holloway, one of the UFC’s most well-known champions. There was not even a proper exchange or a takedown. Just an abrupt end that left fans largely feeling they had wasted their time.
“That was horrible,” one fan said aloud toward the octagon, to nobody in particular, while shuffling to the exits.
The only thing the debacle added was more evidence of the luster McGregor has lost.
McGregor, 37, was fighting at 170 pounds for the second time in his career. He came nowhere close to resembling the 145-pound champion from his 20s.
He projected confidence about his healed left leg, but even that recovery came with controversy. The New York Times reported in June that Dr. Neal ElAttrache, who performed surgery on McGregor’s leg, supported the fighter’s application for a special exemption to allow him to use performance-enhancing drugs. The Times reported that McGregor took banned substances, citing two people with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Outside the arena, a hush of bewilderment lingered over the exiting crowd. The typically boisterous UFC fans carried expressions of annoyance, and even T-shirt vendors lazily swung their attire, knowing no fan was in the mood to commemorate one of the most disappointing nights in the history of the UFC.
“What can I say, I make them weak in the knees, I guess,” Holloway said to a crowd — much of which spent thousands of dollars to attend the prizefight — that hardly seemed in the mood to laugh.
Seven days before their main event, a rematch from 2013, Holloway said he would offer McGregor a rematch in December to settle their trilogy. On Thursday, McGregor called that “disrespectful, shows he is here for the economics of it.”
But now, McGregor’s future has far more unknowns than follow-up solutions. Years of waiting for his return were answered with disappointing emptiness, a frustration that could be permanent if McGregor never steps foot in another octagon.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions right now,” White said about McGregor’s future.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen.”