Will Conor McGregor Box Again?
Irish MMA superstar, Conor McGregor, is one of the greatest fighters UFC has ever signed. Aside from his superb skills inside the octagon, his trash-talking and flashy appearance brought him stellar success. ExpressVPN recently conducted a study on the most streamed sports, and it showed that every time McGregor headlined a fight, there was a massive spike in streaming UFC. In fact, in 2018, his fight against the Dagestani star, Khabib Nurmagomedov, at UFC 229 broke all records in pay-per-view earnings, bringing the UFC a whopping 2,4 million buys.
McGregor’s boxing debut
McGregor managed to popularize MMA swiftly and soon became more significant than the sport itself. After winning the title in the featherweight and lightweight categories and becoming the first UFC fighter to hold the title in two weight classes, McGregor started talking more frequently about starting his professional career in boxing. His decision came as no surprise since his success was mainly built upon his striking dominance.
This eventually led to his first boxing fight against Floyd Mayweather in 2017, where Mayweather won by technical knockout in the 10th round. At first, it looked like the Irishman could actually pull it off, and he won the first three rounds, but more experienced Mayweather took a more aggressive approach and wore McGregor down by the end of the fight.
The fight aftermath
After the fight with Mayweather, McGregor returned to UFC’s octagon, where he suffered three losses out of four fights. In his last fight against Dustin Poirier in 2021, he broke his left leg and is still recovering. Even though Conor’s doctors stated his recovery is going smoothly, and Dana White disclosed we’d see the Irishman in the octagon pretty soon, no official announcements have been made. Now it’s evident that we’ll probably have to wait until 2023 to see if McGregor can fix his bad UFC score.
The comeback predictions
In recent media statements, McGregor was almost entirely focused on his MMA comeback. Still, he also stated that boxing is his first love and that he’ll most certainly step into the ring again in his career. On the other hand, Mayweather recently revealed that the rematch against the Irishman is already confirmed for 2023, stating he prefers these easier fights against opponents without a boxing background because he’s suffering less damage. Even though Dana White dismissed these rumors, saying he has zero interest in seeing McGregor and Mayweather boxing again, we all know money fights like this one are impossible to say no to.
Aside from Mayweather, other big boxing names have been calling out Mcgregor and offering him a chance to touch boxing gloves with them. Interestingly, IBO’s light-middleweight champion Dennis Hogan has reached out to a fellow countryman and offered him a title shot. Even though we haven’t heard from McGregor yet, many have taken McGregor’s sparing videos on social media to indicate that the all-Irish fight may already be booked.
Although McGregor’s UFC comeback seems more realistic right now, it looks like the opportunities to step into the boxing ring are far more exciting than we initially thought. They reach out further than money fights with Mayweather.
