Leading up to his big comeback fight against Max Holloway at UFC 329, Conor McGregor is being open and honest about his struggles over the past several years. That’s something Holloway has a lot of respect for even as the two prepare to fight on July 11th.
When McGregor arrived in New York City to start a whirlwind media tour, it was uncertain which Mac might show up. Would he be brash, funny, or aggressive? He was a little of all those, but the surprising thing was how reflective he seemed about his years at the top and subsequent fall from grace.
“God knows my heart and the things that I’ve gone through,” McGregor said on the Ariel Helwani Show. “I’m a young man, I came into all this, I forgive myself for disgracing the position that God put me in, which I’ve done many times. And I won’t do it again.”
McGregor admitted that he still struggled with his demons to this day.
“It’s akin to being on a tightrope, and the tightrope is going across this office to the next office with a very high fall,” he said. “The stakes are very high. So you better stay balanced, because sometimes when you’re down in a place, you don’t feel anything else. You have no emotion. You’re just reckless, you’re going. You don’t pay no attention to nothing.”
“Eventually, most people, they must put that work in on themselves and get themselves back into a steady state of living. That is the time where the rope is even thinner, you get me? The balance, you need to be even more balanced. Because the fall is even higher, then. If you fall when you’re in this position, you don’t give a f–k. You might even do it just to do it. So I’m in the state now where I’m keeping my balance and making my way to life, and God is helping me with that. That’s it.”
In a new interview with ESPN, Max Holloway applauded Conor McGregor for opening up on his situation.
“Nothing but respect for him,” Holloway said. “It takes a real man to come out and say [his] feelings, period. Especially in this day and time, right? Like, everybody’s like ’A man got to be a man’s man. You gotta suck it up.’ Don’t be … whatever they say nowadays. I can’t say what I’m usually told because I’d get cancelled.”
“But yeah, they’re like, ‘Don’t do that. Don’t do this. You got to be a man. Suck it up and go get it done.’ So with him, especially with the power he has and him bringing it up, I think it’s going to encourage more people to talk about it, more guys to maybe go get a mental check or self-check. And shout out to him for doing that cuz there’s a lot of people that deal with this that don’t know, and people that probably look up to him [will] be like, ‘What? Conor’s going through this? Then that means I can come and try to tell somebody about it.’”
“So nothing but claps for him for doing that,” Holloway concluded. “Cuz that takes a real man to come and talk about one’s feelings.”
Despite all those positive feelings, we expect fireworks between Holloway and McGregor once they begin media week in Las Vegas and face off for their July 11th scrap at the T-Mobile Arena for UFC 329.
