Conor McGregor's Return: More About Bank Accounts Than Glory

These days Conor McGregor resembles an ace fighter the way a movie set depicts real life. Passing similarities are obvious but anything more than a quick, squinty glance reveals they are not the same.

For the 37-year-old Irishman, the line between genius athlete and performance artist was already blurred by the time he found himself destroyed in front of Dustin Poirier five years ago, yelping foul-mouthed barbs in the painful aftermath of his fourth stoppage loss in seven fights.

Ending a prolonged hiatus from fighting this Saturday night in Las Vegas at the T-Mobile Arena, McGregor will make the walk inside the same building he was airlifted from in 2021.

Recovered from that catastrophic leg fracture (with the help of performance-enhancing drugs, according to the New York Times), McGregor’s return to mixed martial arts for a long-discussed rematch against the venerable Max Holloway at this point has more to do with boosting his bank account and TKO Group Holdings’s bottom line than fixing his depreciating standing around the world or recapturing lost glory.

“I’m not here to win anyone back,” McGregor said this week. To that end he made a pot-at-the-end-of-a-rainbow point: “I am who I say I am. I am that I am.”

For a growing segment of Ireland, however, McGregor is the problem.

The endearing, entertaining and enthralling scenes he conjured that inspired millions of fans around the world had been outweighed during his absence by accusations, allegations, convictions and denied appeals in the case of a civil jury trial where McGregor was found to have raped a woman named Nikita Hand in 2018.

Hard line political stances miming Donald Trump-tinted immigration policies as well as bellicose statements and endorsements from far-right figures including Tucker Carlson and Elon Musk further turned the Irish public against him.

Wearing a green pinstripe suit and cleanly shaven head, McGregor visited the White House for St Patrick’s Day in 2025. Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the White House “couldn’t think of a better guest to have with us”.

The Irish government disagreed and condemned comments regarding immigration that McGregor made from behind the White House’s press room podium.

“Conor McGregor’s remarks are wrong, and do not reflect the spirit of St Patrick’s Day, or the views of the people of Ireland,” Ireland prime minister Micheál Martin said on social media.

Prior to pulling out of the Irish presidential race last September, polls showed just one in 10 Irish voters considered McGregor a viable candidate for public office if he ran again. Undeterred, McGregor insisted he still would.

A decade ago, as his trajectory trended skyward before claiming to be “trapped and caught” by fame, McGregor set out to be a celebrated figure, a point of pride, the boy from Crumlin.

Thousands of followers traveled along on that journey, celebrating the Irish tri-colors as McGregor delivered on his promise and served as the A-side in 10 of the next 11 pay-per-views he appeared on, fulfilling White’s vision and unleashing the UFC fully into the mainstream.

These facts are as affixed to his legacy as his competitive high water mark, a preternatural 13-second knockout of Jose Aldo to claim the UFC featherweight championship in 2015.

Unsure how he stacks up coming off a broken tibia and fibula, McGregor was sidelined longer than it took for him to progress from his UFC debut to boxing Floyd Mayweather for a reported $130m in 2017.

In the beginning there was one obvious way to comprehend McGregor: an innovative talent capable of holding audiences with his words and deeds.

Whether or not people in large numbers remain attracted to McGregor – generally speaking fighters exist among the rare class of athlete who get away with almost anything – the UFC and its rights partner, Paramount+, have shown no compunction about moving forward together. Weigh-ins on Friday are scheduled to air on CBS. The gate is expected to break the company record of $21,892,245.

The UFC has never confused morality with marketability. McGregor is still its biggest draw because he generates the one thing no promotion can manufacture: genuine curiosity. Fans will tune in hoping for a miracle, a meltdown or merely confirmation that the magic has gone. The outcome is almost immaterial.

UFC president Dana White tells a story about McGregor prior to his signing in 2013. The prominent American promoter visited the Temple Bar in Dublin. He came face to face with a slew of Irish fight fans demanding McGregor, a fellow Dubliner, receive a contract. Despite 14 professional fights on McGregor’s ledger, White had not heard of him. The way those fans pushed, White assumed the man they called “The Notorious” was a heavyweight because lighter fighters rarely capture the imagination like that.

Following up with his matchmakers, White learned that McGregor, then a two-weight titleholder for the London based promotion Cage Warriors, was in talks to step inside the octagon as a featherweight. When the contract became official, White took McGregor to dinner in Las Vegas. The UFC boss walked away convinced that if that kid could fight even a little bit he could become the massive star they badly needed to thrive.

McGregor’s 67-second knockout debut in Stockholm, Sweden, against American Marcus Brimage, was enough to convince White that the heavy-handed southpaw was the “real deal”. A few months later, that stylish victory placed McGregor on a card set in Boston, the closest place to Ireland that the UFC could send him to at that moment.

Days before the bout against a 21-year-old Holloway in August of 2013, McGregor appeared as a guest on my old ESPN podcast. As we spoke the 25-year-old prizefighter sounded more subdued and serious – less showman than sportsman – than the way he carried himself during the intervening years.

Offering wisps of humility about where he came from, where he was, and where he meant to go, that interview, like the version of McGregor who offered it at that time, was little more than a facade on a Hollywood lot.

Maybe that was always the point. The UFC is not asking fans to believe the Conor McGregor climbing into the cage on Saturday is the same force who transformed the promotion more than a decade ago. It is asking them to believe this version is close enough. From a distance it almost is, but the illusion begins to crumble the closer you look.