​Ahead of his return battle with Max Holloway at UFC 329 this Saturday, Conor McGregor remains under the shadow of the Nikita Hand sexual assault case verdict. In late 2024, McGregor, now 37, was found liable in a high-profile Irish civil trial in which Hand alleged that the Irish MMA icon raped her at a Dublin hotel in 2018. While McGregor has maintained that any physical contact between them was consensual, he later lost two appeals related to the ruling in 2025, and the case climbed as high as the Irish Supreme Court.
McGregor kicked off his fight-week media schedule for UFC 329 with a media day appearance in Las Vegas on Wednesday, where reporters pressed him about whether people might be justified in not wanting to see him return after the case. In a defiant response, McGregor declared, “I’m an innocent man, and I’ll stand for my innocence until the day I go out. That is still a situation where I fight. There’s a reason why it didn’t go where it went and went to a civil trial. It is what it is. It stings deep. I continue to fight. I know the truth, and I know that lying lips are an abomination to the Lord. And I know that anything in the darkness will soon come to light, and I trust in God that it’s coming. You best believe that it’s coming. I look very, very forward to the day.”
Saturday’s anticipated rematch against Holloway represents McGregor’s first professional contest in any arena since his brutal defeat to Dustin Poirier in July 2021. The Irish star broke his leg in that matchup, an injury that contributed to a prolonged, painful hiatus from competition. Reflecting on the difficult period since reaching the pinnacle of MMA stardom, McGregor acknowledged Wednesday that he ultimately fell into what he called the “trap” of fame and fortune.
He traced the arc from his 2017 achievements—capturing two weight-class titles and reaching the peak of his boxing spectacle with a high-profile bout against Floyd Mayweather—to the subsequent business ventures and personal decisions that changed his lifestyle. McGregor noted that he launched Proper No. Twelve Irish whiskey and, in a candid moment, described how his drive to expand his personal brand contributed to a period of excess. He recalled an instance in which he found himself with “thousands upon thousands of bottles in my garage,” cheekily acknowledged as a moment of overindulgence, and admitted that he left his property with “two bottles under my arm,” a vivid image he used to illustrate how quickly his life can accelerate beyond control.
The Irish fighter attributed his trials to a combination of fame, fortune, and the temptations that accompany major success. He asserted that God had delivered lessons through those experiences, insisting that he was “trapped and caught” and that those trials were a necessary part of his journey. He expressed unwavering faith in himself, in the truth, and in a higher plan, stating that if the world stands against the truth, then he will stand against the world. This sentiment culminated in a reaffirmation of his trust in God and in his own path forward, underscoring his readiness to face whatever the future holds with resilience and resolve.
As the fight day approaches, fans and observers will watch to see how McGregor channels the turbulence surrounding the legal case into focused performance inside the octagon. The clash with Holloway promises to be a litmus test for McGregor’s ability to reclaim his earlier form and rewrite the narrative around both his career and the ongoing legal saga that has followed him.