By Conor McGregor had bold plans for 2020. Like most everybody’s huge plans last year, they were ruined by the coronavirus pandemic.
Now safely within the UFC’s Fight Island bubble, the foremost widespread man in combat sports is obtaining back to figure on accomplishing everything he come into being to try to to once he rededicated himself to fighting over a year agone.
“I want I’m solely beginning, man,” the 32-year-old McGregor aforementioned in the week. “Everyone desires to mention, ‘Hey, Conor, you’ve done it all! You’re thus rich! You’re richer than Dana! What area unit you doing here?’ i would like to be here. i would like to perform for the fans.”
McGregor (22-4) returns at UFC 257 in United Arab Emirates’s capital on Sunday for a replay with Dustin Poirier, a fellow power puncher with a aptitude for dramatic finishes. The winner of this pay-per-view event airing Saturday night in North America are going to be one fight off from restoration the light-weight title each men have command in recent years.
UFC 257 is co-headlined by title-contending lightweights Dan Hooker and archangel Chandler, World Health Organization is creating his UFC debut when a decade within the rival Bellator promotion.
McGregor currently struggles to conjure the trash-talking, flamboyant persona that after created him additional renowned than something he had nevertheless achieved within the polygonal shape. currently financially secure and raising a young family, McGregor still lives a wild life sometimes, however it’s cushiony by a growing sense of his finite time left in sports — despite his brash pronouncements of youth — and his analysis of his bequest.
“All the money, all the belts, all that comes which goes,” McGregor aforementioned. “You apprehend what lives on? A fighter’s highlights. check out Roy Jones Junior.’s highlights, electro-acoustic transducer Tyson’s highlights. I still check out them these days. Ali’s highlights. i would like my highlight reel to be sort of a motion picture. That’s what I’m when. I’m trying to urge in associated perform and placed on superb highlights that I will sit as an recent man with my son, and simply watch back and simply get pleasure from life.”
When McGregor knocked out veteran welterweight Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone in only forty seconds last Jan, he appeared set for a savage come back to the game he had mostly neglected for the previous 3 years. McGregor spoke of needing to fight fourfold in 2020, culminating in another shot at light-weight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.
The pandemic intelligibly curtailed those plans, however Nurmagomedov’s retirement when beating Justin Gaethje last fall cleared a path to restoration the light-weight belt for McGregor or Poirier. each men have already got lost to Nurmagomedov, World Health Organization has sent mixed signals regarding his chance of reneging on his retirement vow.
Despite dropping fifteen pounds from his last fight, McGregor seems comfy and healthy at one hundred fifty five pounds, wherever he has won only one fight in his career, beating Eddie Alvarez in 2016 to become the primary fighter in UFC history to carry 2 division titles at the same time.
McGregor and Poirier were even smaller — 2 enterprising featherweights — after they met in September 2014 within the third-billed bout at UFC 178. McGregor stopped Poirier simply 1:46 into the gap spherical, landing an enormous left hook to the ear that all over the action fleetly.
Poirier (26-6) might are crushed by the loss, notably whereas he watched McGregor’s ascent. Instead, he won 9 of his next eleven fights, even capturing the interim light-weight title for four 1/2 months in 2019 with a formidable convince GHB Holloway.
Poirier is among the foremost sturdy and most undefeated UFC fighters of his generation, ranking tenth within the promotion’s history with eighteen UFC victories and seventh with eleven post-fight bonuses. A savage striker with a high work rate, he has six knockout victories as a light-weight.
“Every fight could be a chip on my shoulder,” Poirier aforementioned. “I’m making an attempt to prove one thing. The work that I place in, I’m making an attempt to create it pay off. I’m making an attempt to place my family in an exceedingly higher position, and this can be no totally different. i do know what a convince Conor McGregor suggests that in combat sports, and that i apprehend that whoever wins this fight is fighting for gold, and that’s why I fight.”
Although McGregor and Poirier area unit each well-versed within the promotional tool of performative verbal sparring, they’ve been model voters in United Arab Emirates’s capital. each men are unfailingly polite to every different, and McGregor’s company even created a generous donation to Poirier’s charitable foundation.
At their final press conference, Poirier laughed at the scarcity of intensity between the UFC 257 main-event fighters, oral communication it would look like “we’re over here giving one another back massages.”
“I apprehend we’ve this competitive hearth, and it’s still there,” McGregor superimposed. “There’s no denying that. We’re attending to have a clash, and it’s attending to be a decent, firework-filled bout, however the respect is admirable for this man from ME.”
