A lot of questions raised after McGregor’s knockout loss against Dustin Poirier. Is he still the same old Conor that knocked out Jose Aldo in 13 seconds to win the featherweight champion or is his hunger to compete diminished due to how successful his career is overall.
Another factor that McGregor thought was his ring inactivity, he lacked ring time for the past two years. His last fight ended in just 40 seconds against Cerrone and the fight was 12 months ago, which really shows that he lacked time of staying comfortable in the octagon. Some MMA experts have said that you can spar all you want but it is still different from fighting official competition. Some call it ring rust.
2 years prior to that was his loss against Khabib Nurmagomedov. So if we take into account how often he fights after the Mayweather fight it is not really that often. Although he plans to fight often last year but the pandemic broke out, hopefully this year he gets to fight more to remove ring rust.
Conor McGregor arrived in style in his fight against Poirier, it was reported that he rode in a Yacht going to the island. As Marvin Hagler would say ” It’s tough to get out of bed to do roadwork at 5am when you’ve been sleeping in silk pajamas”. Living in luxury sometimes gets in the head of top fighters.
In McGregor’s defense, he always loved to spend his money even before the big Mayweather fight. When he was just a UFC featherweight making his rise, he already bought expensive suits, watches and even lived in big mansions but he still got the job done. He went on to become a two division champion.
Dustin Poirier is also clearly one of the best lightweights in the world, he was the former interim champion who has had great big wins. His last loss was for the undisputed belt against Khabib Nurmagomedov. Maybe Poirier just had a better gameplan going in and he was just the better fighter that night.
McGregor also underestimated the leg kicks and did not change his gameplan. He went in there to knock Poirier early using his high-level boxing. It was just that Poirier was able to take the shots early and chop the legs. Once he got McGregor hurt, he went in for the kill. Unfortunately, Conor McGregor’s legs were done, so he could move away from the fence.
At the end of the day, whether McGregor decides to retire or come back stronger, he still ha a fantastic career. He made a lot of people watch MMA and the UFC Organization has had a lot of PPV record breaking events because of McGregor.