Conor McGregor has opened up about his career and troubles outside the cage ahead of his return at UFC 329 next month.
McGregor (22-6) won the UFC’s featherweight crown in 2015 and claimed lightweight gold the following year, in between splitting a pair of fights with Nate Diaz at welterweight. He’d then go on to take a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather, launch Proper 12 Whiskey (he’d later sell his stake in the brand, earning a lucrative payday), and relinquish his titles only to return to the fight game sporadically.
The Irish star hasn’t competed since 2021, in the rubber match of his trilogy with Dustin Poirier, which ended when McGregor snapped his leg in a horrific scene. Since then, he’s endured any number of scandals, including multiple sexual assault allegations, and though he’s never been convicted in criminal court, a civil court did hold him liable in 2024 in a complaint lodged by Nikita Hand. That complaint stemmed from a 2018 encounter at a Dublin hotel that McGregor has steadfastly insisted was consensual.
In a new interview with Paramount, MMA’s biggest star covered both the pitfalls of fame, and admitted that after becoming the sport’s first simultaneous double-champ, he got “lost in it.”
“You know, fame has its pitfalls. You better move carefully in this world, for sure, probably even more so now. I’ve taken a lot of lessons in my life, and it’s just about self-discovery. Studying yourself. Learning yourself. Learning triggers,” McGregor stated, just weeks out from his rematch with Max Holloway at UFC 329 — his first fight in five years. “I find myself even now still in a fight with an old version of me or old ways that don’t serve me and new ways and a new version of me, the new me. So I still find myself in this balance. Right now. As a fighter, more a man. More a man, more as a human.”
If McGregor sounds like a man who’s been through some therapy, that’s perhaps because he has. “I went through some treatment, I’ve done a lot of self-reflective work on myself. Some internal work,” he admitted. “And it was outside of this bubble that we find ourselves in now when I return to the fight game. So on my immediate return to this game and these cameras and even this now, I found myself reverting to an old version of me and I had to kind of remind myself, I said ‘hold on.’ I had to kind of just reflect again and say I’m different now. I’m a different person. I’ve put in work.”
The trappings of fame are still present, however, as McGregor continued by saying that “it’s easy to fall into old habits. You have to be careful. You have to practice with people, places, things; protect people, places, things. Don’t find yourself in similar places that you would have been. I’m still in that fight. Competition for me and activity and work helps that for sure. I still have work to do.”
“The rent is due everyday, they say. You’ve got to put the work in,” he’d later add.
After defeating Jose Aldo and Eddie Alvarez to hold both featherweight and lightweight gold in the UFC, a feat never before accomplished, McGregor also admitted that he “got lost” in his success.
“At 27 years of age, I had the game conquered. Two-weight world champion, I had the Floyd [Mayweather] bout, boxed off, I was only 27 years of age. I had the game wrapped up in a blink. What more was I to do?” questioned McGregor. “I got lost. I got lost in it. And made some mistakes off of that and that’s it. But you’ll always come home. If you truly love something, you’ll always come home.”
That homecoming arrives in Las Vegas on July 11, 2026, when Conor McGregor faces Max Holloway for the second time. The card comes during something of a renaissance for MMA, following the Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano card on Netflix, and the UFC Freedom 250 event at the White House.
