Conor McGregor finally makes his comeback at UFC 329 on Saturday where he’s an underdog against Max Holloway in his first fight in five years.
Coming off a devastating broken leg, combined with all that time off, has a lot of fighters, fans, critics questioning if McGregor can even come close to the same person who once conquered two divisions in the UFC while becoming the biggest global superstar in combat sports. UFC welterweight knockout king Matt Brown has argued for several years now that he never believed McGregor would fight again, but just days away from his return, the narrative has now shifted to questions about what should anyone expect out of a former pound-for-pound great who is about to turn 38 years old and competing for the first time since 2021.
But Brown now argues that all the doubts and questions surrounding McGregor might actually bring the best out of him in this upcoming fight against Holloway.
“We’re not going to see the same Conor, that’s for sure,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “I don’t disagree with that at all. But there’s a couple things to take into account. For one, when we say we’re not going to see the same Conor McGregor, we know that, because he’s not going to have that same hunger he had before. But coming off a couple of losses, he’s got something to prove now. This is a very, very big fight for him personally. Every Conor McGregor fight is big publicly, but personally, this is the world to him. He might have some of that hunger back.
“He’s got to win this fight. He’s got to prove motherf*ckers wrong. Not that he didn’t necessarily feel that before, but he was on top of the world. I’m sure he more expected to win versus have to win. This is putting him on the pressure cooker. He has to win this fight. This is a terrible look if he doesn’t win this fight. It really affects a lot of things going forward.”
McGregor enters the fight with one more bout left on his UFC contract, and he’s going to continue drawing crowds whether he wins or loses, but the hype and expectation surrounding his future changes dramatically if he gets decimated by Holloway.
As crazy as it might seem, McGregor winning could potentially slot him into a title fight against new UFC lightweight champion Justin Gaethje, who has already expressed interest in that matchup.
But the complete opposite happens if McGregor loses and that’s why Brown can’t help but wonder if the Irish superstar really is pouring everything into getting ready for this matchup on Saturday.
“Does he fight again? Does he renegotiate with the UFC with one fight left on his contract after this?” Brown said. “There’s so many pieces where a win is such a massive difference here. Again, you could say that with every fight. The next fight is always the biggest fight. But this one feels a little bit different. Coming back, all the hype and he knows as well as we do, if he doesn’t win, everybody’s going to be like ‘don’t fight again, we don’t need to see this anymore.’
“So what kind of demand are we going to have? It’s Conor, we’re always going to have demand, but the demand’s not going to be the same. If he goes and wins, and he beats Max Holloway, it will be huge. I’m just saying there’s going to be a big gap in the desire to see him again. I understand we’re always going to want to watch Conor. People don’t need to explain that to me. He could fight anybody, anywhere, any time just like Floyd Mayweather does and people still watch Floyd. But if he wins, there’s a huge difference in how much people [want to see him fight]. He understands all of this.”
Much has been made about McGregor coming back and getting a top-five ranked opponent like Holloway but Brown says there might be a method to the madness in that kind of matchmaking.
With the fight happening at 170 pounds — a weight class where McGregor has competed several times and Holloway has not — Brown looks back to their first fight in 2013 and sees similar issues that could come up again in the rematch.
“He out-physicalled Max the first time,” Brown said. “He did a lot of takedowns. I know he tore his ACL during the fight, but he overall just out-physicalled him. He bullied him a little bit, pushed him around. It only makes sense to come back and do this at this bigger weight class where Conor appearingly so has adapted to that size, probably a long time ago.
“So when we put all of that into account, and he picks Max Holloway to come back against, someone that he beat once, that he bullied, I think he looks at Max’s trajectory and Max has been fighting all the top guys, but in the last few fights, he’s been knocked out. He got taken down, which would all be stuff in Conor’s game plan. Either knock him out or maybe do like he did in the first fight, bully him around, take him down, hold him down.”
As far as a prediction goes, Brown is sticking by Holloway to win at UFC 329, but he won’t discount the possibility that McGregor finds a way to get it done, especially knowing how much is riding on this particular performance.
“I could see where Conor could have some hunger,” Brown said. “I could see where he could see a clear path to victory here. Of course, it’s not going to be easy. This is Max Holloway. This is not going to be an easy fight, and when I first heard about it, I was like that’s the last dude you want to come back against.
“But the more you put the pieces together, it makes a lot more sense. Of course, Conor’s had five years to think about it so he’s put a lot of pieces together.”
