Controversy and High Stakes: Conor McGregor's UFC 329 Return

There's a lot to unpack following a very controversial UFC 329 in Las Vegas, is Conor McGregor's return to the octagon. If nothing else was eventful, wasn't it? And if we go back in time, I had a weird feeling about Conor McGregor's return. And quite frankly, I'm not surprised how this kind of like played out. You know, I didn't know like whatever his knee was going to buckle less than a minute into the fight, but we've seen this in the past and something just didn't feel right to me about his return. And it's crazy to say that, you know, he should have taken longer or whatnot because he's, you know, he was off for five years, right? But just like I said, the timing, the opponent, it felt rushed somehow, right? It just did. Like the White House card was like the big card of the year, right? So you had this big White House card and it was kind of an exhale in the UFC fan, you know, universe. And you've got the world cup going on that's just dominating the sports landscape. Like, yeah, Conor got pressed for a couple of days and stuff, but it wasn't like big, and you know, oh, it was the biggest gate and all that. Yeah, because you charge people like so much effing money. And put that in context, guys. Think about that. Like the UFC sold out the Skydome slash Roger Center in Toronto, where the Toronto Blue Jays play. And they had seats like on the floor too. So it was like more capacity than it was for a baseball game even. Like they literally sold like 56,000 tickets in Toronto once. You had had a bigger gate with like 19,000 people in veins. Like it goes to show how much just more money they're charging like to get in right now. And listen, when you're a fight fan, you know, you know, the fight might last two seconds. It might go like the distance. You don't really know. There's no guarantees. And you are, there's going to be times where you're let down as a fight fan when you go to a fight. Like it's just going to be anti-climatic. And this is one of those classic examples where it's anti-climatic. But tell me if it's anti-climatic and you paid 150 bucks. It's different if it's anti-climatic and you pay 2,500, right? And 2,000 and stuff like that. Like the pricing is just absolutely insane for these events now. And that just caught my eye. It was like, wow, biggest gate ever. And you're in an arena and you've done a stadium show before. So what does that tell you? But it didn't feel right. And we talked about it like leading into the fight and stuff in which it's pretty crazy that Conor fights every couple of years. And it's like this automatic, like free money to bet against him. Like he's passed his prime, right? And people buy into him like, oh, 92% of the money was on Conor. There was that big late line move, like earlier in the morning or whatnot, when it shot back up into the, you know, the three thirties and all that type of stuff when it went down to the 200 range. But it didn't make sense for him to fight Max Holloway. Like Max Holloway is, you know, not at his prime, but he's still on top of his game per se, right? Conor hadn't fought in five years. Holloway wanted revenge. It was a bad spot for Conor to begin with. It felt like a strange fight. Like why did they give him a cupcake to come back after five years? Like nothing good could come of it. Like Conor wasn't going to win the fight, right? So like the only thing that Conor could have gained out of this was, well, he looked really good after five years, right? Like that was like the only positive besides the reported $15 million that he got. Errol Helwani reported that it was 15 million or like the minimum was 15 mil plus like bonus, whatever type of thing. But so 15 mil nevertheless, so he had 15 million reasons, but Conor is rich already and $15 million isn't a ton of money to blow your knee and blow your leg out and now your reputation out. Like, listen, people will buy it again, right? Like people will buy him again. People say, oh, he's done and they're not going to, you know, no, but you can't like, it can't be a main event. You can't charge people like $2,500 for tickets and stuff like that, right? And if you're Conor, you're only 37, there's time left for this, but not so much in a UFC, right? He's got one more official deal, like fight left on his contract. And he could fight Jake Paul and Netflix. I mean, you know, look at, look at the train wreck fights that Netflix are putting together. Conor could be part of that and make a lot more money, right? And not really be in physical danger. BKFC, he'll be in physical danger, but he's a co-owner of BKFC and he'll also be able to make a lot of money and not have to share it right with the UFC as like per an employee. So Conor, Conor still has a future in fighting. I don't personally think it's like the top of the game or anything like that, but he won't want to go out like this. He'll want to go out with a couple of wins. I do believe that he will eventually fight in BKFC as well.