​“If you can’t make it to war, you lose the war. You ain’t about this life.” — Nate Diaz, October 15, 2018
There’s a certain slice of fight fans who never moved beyond 2016. That year, Conor McGregor blasted Eddie Alvarez to claim UFC double champ status, even though he’d already been stalling atop the Featherweight division for ages to make that moment happen. It was undoubtedly the apex of McGregor’s fighting prowess. He was a devastatingly slick striker at the time, and that run earned him the life-changing Floyd Mayweather payday, which then kept him out of the Octagon for nearly two years.
This backward-looking confusion about the current timeline helps explain the surprisingly close odds for the UFC 329 main event rematch between Conor McGregor and Max Holloway. A large portion of bets—placed by people like Drake and by casual fans who forget that 2016 feels a decade ago—assume McGregor is still the dominant force who has won big fights recently. In reality, he hasn’t won a meaningful contest since before the pandemic.
Holloway, on the other hand, has spent the last several years testing himself against the best in the world. Between McGregor’s disastrous leg injury and UFC 329, Holloway has won a round against Ilia Topuria, knocked out Justin Gaethje, and defeated “The Diamond” for himself. The 34-year-old Hawaiian may no longer be at his absolute physical peak, but his body remains a finely tuned weapon, kept sharp through constant high-level competition.
McGregor, by contrast, was unraveling years ago. Even young athletes at their peak don’t shatter their bones throwing kicks, and it would be foolish to pretend that cocaine and whiskey are conducive to elite performance. The 37-year-old’s body doesn’t handle the stresses of high-level competition the way a 27-year-old’s knees do. His return against Holloway looked like a reckless miscalculation more than a strategic comeback. Holloway is indeed a genuine Top Five contender in two divisions, and McGregor’s decision to face him after a layoff felt less like a bold ascent than an act of hubris—the kind of overconfidence that ignores the current landscape and clings to past glories.
That attitude was underscored by the opening move of the fight: a jump kick that felt more like a symbol of McGregor’s misplaced bravado than a strategic measure. He limped into an arena that seemed oddly damp from the stagecraft and leaped forward as if the moment would erase all doubts. It was a display of delusion—an anachronistic spectacle that many McGregor fans embraced, even as it reflected a disconnect from present reality.
Looking ahead, the question is whether anyone in McGregor’s orbit will face the truth. If you’re McGregor, it’s easy to frame this as an unlucky moment, a rare aberration in a career destined for glory. In truth, the knee injury also erased one of the two remaining bouts on his UFC contract. Without that knee implosion, Holloway might have challenged and perhaps toppled McGregor’s aura with sharper, more decisive action. But the reality remains: the sport moves on, and Holloway has evolved into a formidable force, while McGregor’s trajectory since 2016 has not matched the height of that peak.