Conor McGregor has a lot on his plate these days, but he’s allegedly looking to add even more after re-joining the UFC’s anti-doping program with plans to make his return to the octagon.
It’s been over four years since McGregor last competed, and after a broken toe sidelined him from facing Michael Chandler in 2024, he once again fell off the radar as far as his fighting career. In the meantime, McGregor has become a co-owner in BKFC, he’s launched his own beer brand, his own cigars and a record label not to mention his plans to run to become President of Ireland.
But UFC legend Matt Brown has never bought into McGregor’s miraculous return, and he’s not convinced getting drug tested again is the real sign that the Irish superstar is going to compete again. If anything, Brown questions if McGregor is just struggling with the harsh reality that his fighting days are already behind him.
“We don’t know him as a person,” Brown said about McGregor on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “We don’t know him personally. We don’t know what’s going on in his life. If we judge solely by his social media, which you can only judge so much by social media. It’s not factual all the time. But if I judge him just by social media, I would question his mental health.”
Part of the reason Brown can’t help but question where McGregor’s head is at these days comes down to the struggles most fighters face when their careers are coming to an end.
It was something he had to deal with personally as he neared retirement, and Brown had to recognize that he couldn’t allow his fight career to be the sole way he defined himself. He’s a father, a business owner, and so much more, but Brown most identified with being a fighter, and he knows that’s the same with most athletes in the UFC — including McGregor.
“Every fighter knows it becomes your identity,” Brown said. “When you’re a fighter, it becomes who you are. We talk about it all the time with sports psychologists and other fighters, you can’t let this be your identity. You’re more than that. It becomes your identity. I don’t give a f*ck what everybody tells you or what you try to believe in your own head.
“When you step out of the cage one day, you’ll realize that’s who you were and that was all of who you were. I think Conor’s having a hard time with that, seemingly.”
Add to that, McGregor was considered one of the top pound-for-pound fighters in the sport when he became the first simultaneous two-division champions after capturing both the lightweight and featherweight titles. That almost feels like a lifetime ago with McGregor’s last championship win coming in 2016.
In his past four UFC fights, which dates all the way back to 2018, McGregor holds a 1-3 record after being submitted by Khabib Nurmagomedov, knocked out by Dustin Poirier and then suffering a gruesome broken leg in his third fight against Poirier.
“Now his identity kind of got ripped apart by Dustin Poirier,” Brown explained. “Dustin took his soul. Khabib [Nurmagomedov] probably first, but Dustin kind of put the nail in the coffin on that.
“Now he’s not a winner with that identity. Now he’s not even competing anymore. That’s a lot to deal with for anyone. So you’ve got to have a little bit of sympathy on that side. It is a lot to deal with.”
Because he was so successful at the peak of his career combined with a boxing match against Floyd Mayweather, and the sale of his whiskey company that yielded him hundreds of millions of dollars, McGregor is also in a financial situation where he no longer needs to fight.
But as much as Brown subscribes to the idea that having that much money can potentially lure anyone away from the fight business, he personally believes there may be another underlying factor where somebody like McGregor is concerned.
“He’s probably in a situation where he retired where he’s like ‘I’ve got all this money, what the f*ck do I do now?’” Brown said. “I’ve never had that much money — like I have to say that out loud just in case you were wondering, I haven’t had that much money yet — but I know very, very wealthy people that talk about that. Like once you make a certain amount of money, your purpose in life becomes a little bit more difficult to find.
“Like you better have good friends and family. Because you don’t know what to do with yourself now. You made it. You have everything you need. You can buy whatever you want. You can go wherever you want. There’s nothing left.”
That all adds up to a lot of potential issues that McGregor is facing while also just turning 37 years old in a sport where age is the ultimate enemy.
“We can only look from social media, that’s all we know about him,” Brown said. “We’re not hanging out with him. But on that side, it does not appear that he’s handling it properly or well.”
