Conor McGregor, a 35-year-old Irish lad, embarked on an action-packed MMA journey in March of 2008, setting the stage for a remarkable career.
McGregor became famous after the world saw his outstanding performance in the Cage Warriors fight. His face-smashing skills and inhuman tenacity were enough to impress the viewers, and in 2012, he won both the Featherweight and Lightweight titles. The rest was history.
Back in 2015, McGregor went up against Chad Mendes for the interim UFC Featherweight Championship and came out on top with a TKO victory. But this win opened another door for him: a fight with the long-reigning undisputed champ Jose Aldo. It took McGregor 13 seconds to show Jose who’s the real champion here. He shocked the world with a lightning-fast knockout and officially became the undisputed UFC Featherweight Champion.
This is where he started to get greedy and decided to move up to the lightweight division and squared off against Eddie Alvarez in November 2016. In this historic bout, Conor got an easy knockout victory, simultaneously holding the UFC Featherweight and Lightweight Championships and marking an unprecedented achievement in MMA.
But even that wasn’t enough for him, as in 2017, McGregor entered the boxing ring to fight the freaking legend – Floyd Mayweather! Despite being inexperienced in professional boxing, McGregor put up a valiant effort, but ultimately, Mayweather mopped the floor with him (but not really) and won the fight via TKO in the 10th round.
After that crushing defeat, Conor’s career was like a bad rollercoaster going up, down, and sideways, including a series of announcements about retiring and eventual comebacks, as well as personal controversies and legal issues. What definitely didn’t help him was the 2018 fight against Khabib Nurmagomedov that ended in defeat via submission and cost Conor his Lightweight belt as well as his pride. So is this it? Career over, right?
Wrong! In early 2021, McGregor returned to the UFC to face Dustin Poirier, and, oh boy, he should’ve stayed retired because this was the fight where McGregor broke his leg. He threw a powerful kick, but his tibia snapped just above the ankle as he stepped back. The match was immediately stopped, and Poirier was declared the winner by TKO due to McGregor’s injury.
It took a lot of time to recover after such a gruesome and unfortunate injury, but McGregor is back in business, and he looks jacked as hell. Recently, he’s been taunting Alexander Volkanovski, a featherweight champion from Australia, saying that he’d make quick work of Volkanovski, to which the Aussie replied: “Let’s do it at UFC 300.”
Let’s see how much more buff Conor can get in the next few months, but he certainly takes his comeback seriously.