I know, I know. The first time I get to do something creative in basically two and a half weeks and I resort to writing about Conor McGegor. I've actually never made a full post on McGregor, so you know I had to at some point. If I'm being completely honest, I haven't really thought much about Conor the fighter in awhile, but when he had a back and forth with Max Holloway in the lead up to his main event against Yair Rodriguez this past Saturday, I started thinking about Conor as an actual competitor. I wanted to try to dive into what we actually know about Conor versus what we speculate about him in terms of whatever the future of his career looks like. I'll take a few sentences now to address his personal life because that's not really something I enjoy doing, but in his case, it can't be ignored. Conor has had his fair share of issues outside of the cage and at some point, now or later, it will catch up to him if he keeps it up. I don't really understand why he feels certain behaviors are necessary. Two division champion Conor McGregor should be above trying to attack Machine Gun Kelly at an awards show while on crutches with a broken leg, yet here we are. I hope that Conor can find comfort in his legacy, his fame and wealth, and his family life in the future and can realize that he doesn't need to resort to these types of actions to stay relevant and generally be respected and successful in his post fighting career. He should honestly look at how Khabib has handled his retirement. Khabib is rarely seen or heard from other than when he is cornering a teammate and I feel like he's still always in the news cycle almost weekly. Conor McGregor is a legend of the sport and I wish he would act like it more often, but I am not going to pile onto someone when I don't know exactly what he's going through. All I'll say is that I hope he can get better control of things and live a happy post fight life, whenever that time comes.
The next thing that comes up with Conor's return is, of course, his health. You likely already know that Conor suffered a break in his lower leg against Dustin Poirier in their July trilogy fight. With an injury of that severity, I didn't think a return was just a foregone conclusion. We've seen fighters come back from broken bones before such as Tim Sylvia and Anderson Silva. Chris Weidman is in the process of his own comeback from a broken leg as well. We've seen athletes such as Dak Prescott and Alex Smith return to NFL football after suffering horrible leg and ankle injuries. While I'm not a medical expert, it seems at least possible for Conor to return at some point, but that leads into the motivation question. While medically it does not seem that this was a career ending injury for Conor, that does not mean that it won't be an incredible amount of work for him to get back and as has been the conversation with McGregor for awhile now, people question why or how much Conor really wants to fight. To the normal person, it would seem as if there's no reason for Conor to come back. He's done everything someone can do in this sport. He's been the champion, he's been the double champion, he's headlined numerous pay per views at this point and has made more money than anyone in the sport. He's parlayed that success into plenty of other endeavors that would provide him with a stream of revenue for the foreseeable future. So when you see Conor on his instagram working out and seeming to be in great physical condition, the only reason I can think of for why he would want to come back is that he still has a competitive fire that needs to be fed. Conor doesn't need to fight again and hasn't needed to fight again for quite awhile for any external reason. He is financially secure and his legacy is secure within the history of the sport. Whether I think Conor can get back to a title or not is a different issue, but obviously, he thinks he can because there's no other reason for him to have fought at all really since he boxed Floyd Mayweather or maybe after the Khabib fight. I am pretty confident that we will see Conor fight again and I think it's likely that he has multiple fights left in his career assuming that his health allows him to continue.
I feel like when it comes to Conor, you have to bring up his personal life, health, and motivation, but I don't actually think it's that interesting to talk about. What I am personally interested in and what the motivation for this post was in discussing what level he is actually at as a fighter because I actually think it's not completely clear. Since 2017, we have seen Conor McGregor fight 5 times. He lost to all time great boxer Floyd Mayweather, lightweight GOAT Khabib Nurmagomedov, and number one contender and title challenger Dustin Poirier twice. His only win came against a legend, but aging veteran Donald Cowboy Cerrone. Now, those who are really passionate about McGregor on either side will be quick to dismiss all of those fights to strengthen their argument. However, I'm not on a side, so I'm just going to look at them for what they are. McGregor lost to the greatest boxer of my generation and one of the best MMA fighters of all time and the consensus lightweight GOAT. I don't see any shame in losing to those guys because literally no one has ever beaten either of them. As for Poirier, most fans consider him the unofficial lightweight champion and will be quick to say that Poirier is going to run through Oliveira and claim the title that is rightfully his. If that's the case, Conor will have lost to the best lightweight in the world. All that you can really conclude from that is Conor is no longer the best 155 lbs fighter in the UFC, which I don't think anyone really believed that he was anyways. What's really hard to do is to place him after that. We know he's not as good as Poirier, but he's better than Cowboy. With all due respect to the legend that is Donald Cerrone, that's sort of a wide gap to put someone into. Just to start with some basis, I am going to use the ranking MMA full rankings since the UFC only does a top 15. Unfortunately, they only list Cowboy as a welterweight, but we're just going to go with it for a minute. They currently have Cerrone as the 33rd best welterweight in the UFC, let's just assume for the sake of argument that he would also be approximately the 33rd lightweight. If this was the case, he would one spot behind Joe Solecki and one spot ahead of Jim Miller, which I don't think is completely unreasonable as a reference point. For the point of this exercise, that must mean then that Conor is somewhere between 2 and 32, so where exactly does he land on that spectrum?
I think what makes this so hard is that MMA is such a young sport and it evolves quickly. Conor being away for so long saw the sport really change in his absence and as we saw in the second Poirier fight, there was a learning curve that he needed to adjust to the leg kicks that no one was using during the post active part of his career. The next thing I want to mention is a theory and opinion I have on all sports and not just MMA, is that the best fighters would be competitive with the best fighters from any other era. However, as time goes, I believe the average athlete has improved significantly and that's where the difference is for me. All of the divisions are deeper with more highly trained, talented, and well rounded fighters. I believe Conor has been inactive enough that the sport has caught up with him to some degree. I don't think Conor can just walk into the cage, land a couple combinations, and knock out the 11th ranked fighter or 8th ranked fighter like he could have at his best. I believe he has to really get into the gym, work, and improve. What the biggest detriment to Conor is at this point is that there are very few specialists left in MMA, which was a lot more common in his peak years. We've seen Conor get taken advantage of on the ground before by Khabib (because of course) and he was taken down in both fights against Dustin Poirier, who I don't think anyone considers to be a really high level wrestler. I would say Poirier has perfectly fine wrestling. He can use it well enough to allow the fight to go the way he wants it to, but it's not really a weapon for him, but he controlled and landed heavy ground and pound, especially in the trilogy fight. That could really be a problem for him in fights against some lesser known fighters. Conor still has the power in his left hand to knock guys out, I don't doubt that for a second, but he never really had the best gas tank. This makes Conor's methods of victories even more limited. Given the improvement of the sport as a whole, Conor would be in a tough fight against anyone if he can't put them away earlier, which he almost always did in his younger days. I started writing this with the idea in my head the Conor is better than people are saying and that he's not washed up, but I'm almost talking myself out of it. I don't believe Conor is washed up. I believe he has very reasonable, usable, and dangerous skills on the feet, particularly in his left hand. However, if he someone takes his best shot, I'm not sure he can out last them. I'm almost talking about Conor McGregor as if he's Derrick Lewis and a few years ago that would have seemed ridiculous, but that feels almost where we're at with him. He can win almost any fight, but it would be hard to favor him over any really top guys. I think the key will be to see how Conor's power plays against someone who's not Khabib or Poirier who have had very reliable chins for their entire lightweight careers (removing Poirier's featherweight knockouts). Can Conor knockout someone like Tony Ferguson who seemed virtually indestructible prior to his fight with Justin Gaethje? Can Conor knockout Brad Riddell, Rafael Fiziev, or Bobby Green before he tires? The place I definitely feel comfortable placing him would be in front of Al Iaquinta, who we just saw lose to Bobby Green. Right in front of Iaquinta would place at Conor 23rd. I would have no doubt that Conor could beat guys ranked higher than that, but I wouldn't be confident enough to say he definitely wins with no doubt. We just saw Max Holloway take massive shots right on the chin from a 29 year old Yair Rodriguez, I don't see why he couldn't take those shots from Conor. If he can, that fight isn't even close because Max would overwhelm Conor in the same way that Nate Diaz did.
I don't even know where to take this at this point because I really didn't come to the conclusion that I thought I would. Something I always resort to is "what's next?". I would really like to see Conor fight either Tony Ferguson or Nate Diaz next. I think those fights sell the way both Conor and the UFC want, while being an appropriate test of McGregor's skills to determine where he's at in his career. I don't want to see Conor retire early. Even if he's not a title contender, he's still a lot of fun and his fights are always exciting. Nate Diaz hasn't been anywhere near title contention in years and everyone begs him to come back immediately after his previous fight and I think we should have the same opinion of Conor. The sport will just be different once he's officially gone and regardless of his skill level at that time, the sport will be worse off without him. Just appreciate him while he's here because there will never be another quite like him.
What do you guys think? Does Conor have the skills to get back into a title fight? A title eliminator? Is Conor just another guy at this point? What do you think of Conor at this point? What's your favorite McGregor moment?
This is originally where I had this post end and it was ready to be sent out, but I just listened to Michael Chandler on The MMA Hour (not in real time, listening at close to 1 AM eastern time) and I feel like I need to address it. I really don't want to come across as if I think Conor is trash and Conor is just like a contender series guy because I don't believe that for a second. I want to put it as simply as possible. I think Conor is still a very talented fighter who could beat most lightweights on the roster on a given night. However, I think Conor's ways to win a fight are limited and when you combine that with him aging and the totality of the UFC roster improving, he would have a tough time beating some guys that the more casual fan would be surprised about. Conor at his peak was a fighter with limited ways to win, but he was so dominant in those ways that he was able to ride it all the way to the champ champ status. That was a different time and Conor was a younger man then. I would be surprised if all of the sudden we saw Conor in his early to mid 30s all of the sudden have significantly improved wrestling and cardio. If he was going to make drastic changes in those areas, he probably would have done them by now in my eyes. Of course he could recommit himself to the sport and we saw Charles Oliveira evolve and win a title after everyone assumed the knew who he was after years of competition. We just saw Glover Teixeira come out and win a championship at 42 years old after two plus decades in the sport. It is more than possible, especially for someone with the talent of Conor McGregor. You would be a fool to rule him out, but I think really banking on it or assuming he could just easily get back to that spot is wishful thinking. To get back to a title fight, Conor will likely have to go through at least two, potentially three or four of the following fighters: Rafael Dos Anjos, Tony Ferguson, Dan Hooker, Justin Gaethje, Michael Chandler, Dustin Poirier, Charles Oliveira, Beneil Dariush, Islam Makhachev, and hell, I'll even throw in Paul Felder. How many of those fights would Conor be favored in? Even the ones he would be, how confident are you that he would win? That's all I'm really trying to say. I don't think its obvious anymore that Conor is a cut above the rest, while he has regressed some, everyone else below him has also improved a lot. The lower half of the rankings and some of the guys who are just on the outside looking in are also really good and would present tough and unique challenges. Brad Riddell and Rafael Fiziev would be tough outs for him. I love Conor and will watch him fight no matter how many times he continues to fight and I hope he can turn his career around. Nothing is bigger or better than Conor in a title fight or even a title eliminator. Alright, that's officially it now. Thanks for reading and have a good one.
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