I don't know if McGregor just happens to hear the opinions of people and then responds accordingly but lately a lot of people have been quite open and public about how they don't think the Irishman has it in him to compete anymore and one of those people was me. With the amount of partying that Conor has been doing lately it just doesn't seem like the kind of behavior that is akin to someone that has to be in peak physical condition for a potential 25 minutes of fighting. Many other fighters and big names like Joe Rogan have hinted at the fact that they think that Conor doesn't actually want to come back. Hell, even Dana White has said that there is "no chance" of McGregor fighting before 2025.
But then "The Notorious One" took to Twitter to set the record straight towards all of us.
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I lost a lot of respect for Conor when he backed out of the pay per view event vs. Michael Chandler and then his team and he maintained complete radio silence for weeks before announcing that Conor had a "toe injury" that made it impossible for him to compete. A lot of people, including me, thought this was a cop out and a fake injury and that there was something a lot more major going on. I suspected doping violations but we'll never know because if that was the case, Dana White is not going to make this information public because UFC is already under a lot of scrutiny for this sort of thing on a regular basis.
Conor was having none of the world determining his schedule though and the took to social media to set the record straight in a recent Tweet.
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I often feel as though this is how Conor gets what he wants. If the fight doesn't happen now, Conor can blame UFC for the delay rather than admit to any wrongdoing on his own part. It is worth noting that the above Tweet no longer exists on Conor's profile because he deleted it.
Someone in his PR team has likely taken his phone away from him again because Conor's mouth is what made him famous, but it is also something that leads to a lot of bad happening to the guy.
Dana hasn't had a chance to respond about this but I am sure he will be asked about it at one of the press conferences that are bound to take place this weekend for UFC 305. Speaking of UFC 305, I feel as though this is a "throwaway" pay per view and this is likely why it is taking place in Australia.
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I can muster some level of enthusiasm to seeing Adesanya fight again but the rest of the card doesn't really do anything for me. As is tradition, when these events go overseas they tend to involved as much local talent as possible and I guess this is for the fans. Tai Tuivasa needs to be impressive at this because at the moment the only thing he really has going for him is that he is famous for drinking beer out of fans' shoes when he wins. Other than that, he is just some heavyweight that kind of looks out of shape.
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I'll probably catch some flak for this but I don't really have any interest in the rest of the card and when we go further and further down the list I am not afraid to say that there are a ton of names on this fight card that I am not at all familiar with. I tend to look at it as a New Zealand/Australia outreach program rather than this really being the best people they could get for the card. The deck is usually stacked in favor of the home crowd as well and nowhere is this more evident than the Tuivasa fight vs Rozenstruick. No offense to Rozenstruick but if it weren't for the near complete absence of notable heavyweights, you wouldn't have a number next to your name at all. He wins against nobodies on Fight Night cards and the last two times that he fought a name that the general public would recognize, he lost badly. This is a setup to try to get Tuivasa back into the picture because Tai is a crowd favorite anywhere that he goes.
I don't even know for sure that I am going to bother watching it. Since the shady sites where you can watch the fights for free are a pain in the ass and the buy rate is now $80, I have no choice but to go to the bars to watch the fights and this can get expensive and normally ensures that Sunday is going to come complete with a bad headache.
Also, once again the international audience gets shafted by UFC being committed to giving USA a prime time slot and therefore all of these fights will start at I think around 8-9am local time in Perth. I understand why UFC does this but it still kind of sucks for the locals.
I might just sit this event out and catch the highlights the following day. I suppose if I was going to be looking forward to anything it would be to see if "Izzy" has decided to step up his game to be more aggressive. The fans have kind of had a falling out with him as he went the path that so many champions do in that he was not fighting to win, he was usually fighting to not lose and this is boring AF.