Update: Will anyone pay to see Conor McGregor fight again?
UFC 329 was the ultimate hustle of fight fans. Fools and their money parted.
Article updated July 12, 2026, to include quotes from Dana White.
The old war horse got shot and sent to the glue factory at UFC 329. It only took 69 seconds.
It sucks to be one of the many paying customers who spent 4-figures for a ticket, but Ari Emanuel managed to steal a major house and Max Holloway got the easiest payday of his very hardened and weathered fighting life.
(“Stealing a house” is an old professional wrestling term for getting a big box office with a short-term gimmick.)
Conor McGregor is done. Finished. Kaput. Go home. This circus is over.
Are we really surprised that it ended in this manner?
Today’s UFC customer is paying to see a knockout or dramatic finish. Technique be damned. They got none of that. Given the heavy reliance on gambling to capture their current audience, you could see why there was such nervousness and trepidation from Joe Rogan & Daniel Cormier on the Paramount broadcast.
The MMA Draw is not soft as Charmin when it comes to raising the tough topics and hard-hitting questions.
Way too big
The first warning sign of trouble for Conor McGregor was agreeing to fight at 170 pounds against Max Holloway.
The former Featherweight champion is fighting at 170 when he should be fighting at 145 or 155. Why?
Simply put, Conor McGregor was physically too big for this fight. Given the grizzly left leg injury he suffered in his last UFC fight, there should have been motivation to fight smaller rather than bigger.
During the Paramount broadcast, UFC hinted that something may have been wrong with Conor McGregor’s right leg when he slipped out of his shoes to enter the Octagon. This deserves much more scrutiny into what UFC management knew and when.
Addendum: Here is what Conor McGregor had to say after his UFC 329 fight.
Once the fight started, McGregor’s bizarre attempts at jumping high kicks — while slipping and sliding — were alarmingly stupid. Holloway simply side-stepped and got out of the way.
McGregor planting hard on his right leg — as Dr. Brian Sutterer pointed out in the embedded YouTube video of this article — was inevitably going to cause a meniscus or ACL injury.
It looked so bad initially that I thought he may have popped his Achilles. Flashbacks to the Carlos Ulberg injury at UFC 327 in Miami. What a driven and determined athlete to finish that fight with no ACL.
Ant Evans, former UFC PR master and frequent critic of today’s product, wasted no time in pointing at a certain behavioral trait as a potential contributory culprit.
“Cocaine destroys cartilage, bone and soft tissue.”
That’s a hell of an accusation by Ant. Is it true?
First and foremost, we know that Conor McGregor admitted in court testimony for the Nikita Hand sexual assault trial that he used cocaine the night of the incident in question. In 2025, Joe Rogan discussed Conor McGregor’s cocaine usage on his show and cited it as a reason why he was skeptical of McGregor’s return to the Octagon.
What does the medical literature and research say about cocaine usage in relation to bone and cartilage health? Here’s a bibliography of recent articles:
Cocaine-induced midline destructive lesions - An autoimmune disease? (Mayo Clinic)
Cocaine: Pathophysiology and clinical toxicology (Science Direct)
You get the picture. No one can factually argue that Conor McGregor’s prior cocaine usage equals brittle bones. Certainly not as a primary cause. However, it is legally fair to question whether or not Mr. McGregor’s previous drug usage was a contributory factor to his recent injury history. That is fair game for public debate.
The larger, more demonstrably solid argument one can make is that Conor McGregor simply was fighting at too big of a weight class at a time when his limbs needed less body mass rather than more. His joints and ligaments needed less stress.
The problem with making this argument is too rational or too unemotional to make. When it comes to Conor McGregor, everyone wants to encompass his entire legal, social, and medical history in regards to analyzing his fighting performance. It’s hard not to.
The stench of scandal
UFC 329 was a very unique card for a whole host of reasons. Coming off of the political stench of the UFC White House event, the return of Conor McGregor and UFC debut of Gable Steveson certainly was a choice.
What was also a choice was watching more celebrities — including female fans — feeling that it was safer to be seen at a Conor McGregor fight than being seen with US President Donald Trump.
Given the various prior sexual assault allegations against Mr. McGregor, Mr. Steveson, Mr. Trump, and Mike Tyson, let’s just say that it didn’t seem to bother the current UFC fan all that much.
Mike Tyson is easily the biggest babyface of the four men mentioned. He was criminally convicted and served jail time.
Consider the lot of Paramount celebrities that attended UFC 329. Taylor Sheridan. Mel Gibson. Vince Vaughn. David Ellison, head honcho of Paramount.
Sophie Cunningham hyped the crowd into a frenzy and also had a cameo as a UFC ring card girl. What a worker.
But on a night of many celebrities involved in high-profile scandals, it was the UFC unwittingly outing themselves on perhaps knowing about Conor McGregor having an injury heading into the UFC 329 main event that deserves your real scorn attention.
Addendum: There is no way that UFC would engage in a fixed or rigged fight regarding Conor McGregor. The stakes are too high.
A promotion based in Las Vegas that pushes Bet365, DraftKings, and Polymarket despite Nevada recently getting an injunction to stop Polymarket activity in their state.
A promotion that pushes gimmicked juiced (e.g. +725 to +900) Bet365 parlays and non-stop betting to prop up any semblance of audience for their APEX warehouse fights is looking at you, disappointed that they made a $26.4 million gate at T-Mobile Arena while poor Conor McGregor got hurt. As if they are innocent bystanders. Whenever anything goes wrong, UFC always cosplays being the bystanders. They love to channel their inner Sgt. Schultz.
Addendum: Dana White was asked in the UFC 329 post-fight press conference about whether he had prior knowledge of Conor McGregor being injured. Here was his response.
Q: “[McGregor] had a hard time putting on his sneakers. Could he have been injured before the fight?”
DANA WHITE: “I have no idea. That I don’t know. I mean, the day of the press conference, he came running out of the back and ran right up to him and stopped abruptly and squared off with him. They were pushing foreheads.”
Q: “I just wondered if something happened in the last 24 hours. I don’t see it on the actual landing of that fight.”
DANA: “I wouldn’t know that but I didn’t see, you know, the doctors checked him out before the fight and he looked damned good at the press conference and he looked fine at the weigh-ins.”
Q: “The question of getting paid as you step in the cage.”
DANA: “Listen, if anybody saw anything that could have possibly made him look weak or injured leading up to this fight, I mean, what the fuck did the face off do, 44 million in 24 hours? More than 44 million views. Somebody would have saw something. Anybody see something? If they did, they didn’t say it. Which is impossible that nobody would do that.”
But how many of the fans who paid thousands of dollars for seats at UFC 329 are going to blame Ari Emanuel or Dana White? Maybe a handful. Maybe. All the heat will be on Conor McGregor. That works perfectly fine for UFC.
Put this old horse out of pasture. Just like the rest of them.
The end of legacy MMA fights as a marketing gimmick
The stench of Ronda Rousey smoking Gina Carano in 20 seconds with an armbar and Conor McGregor trashing his lower extremities in a minute will put an end to the 2026 love affair of washed-up legends fighting in MMA.
I thought we already were past this trend with Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz III promoted by Golden Boy in 2018. I guess not.
It’s a shame that the older legacy fighters have most of the star power, but that is the feature of Mark Shapiro’s value extraction system. UFC is the star. Who else would be able to generate a $26M gate for a Conor McGregor return?
Conor McGregor wanted to burn the last two fights on his UFC contract to perhaps find greener pastures on Netflix or another streamer. Maybe Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian could have squeezed out a mega-fight on Netflix. Not anymore. That is over.
Does Conor McGregor need the money? Who knows.
Conor McGregor spent UFC 329 fight week talking about how he drowned himself in alcohol because a bunch of inventory was in his garage. Are we supposed to feel sorry for him? As we recently discussed on The MMA Draw podcast, Conor McGregor’s fortunes seem intertwined with Floyd Mayweather’s failure to maintain his fortune. One would hope for Conor’s sake that he managed to keep his wealth, but who knows? Between a high-flying lifestyle, the Nikita Hand civil case, and other various business ventures, cash flow may be necessary. We just don’t know.
But now the biggest question is whether or not Conor McGregor can make it for one more fight. He is certainly going to try. Max Holloway was trying to placate a very angry and dejected crowd by hyping up a trilogy fight. Good luck selling that one.
Conor McGregor survived a catastrophic left leg injury and got two New York Times articles accusing him of steroid and HGH usage. He’s now suffered an embarrassing right leg injury that could permanently end his career. Is there a market left that wants to pay to watch Conor McGregor? Given the verdict in the Nikita Hand sexual assault trial, it’s highly unlikely that such an audience would be found in Europe.
Conor McGregor did receive a nice reaction from the Las Vegas crowd, but you would be hard-pressed to find many Irish fans in attendance. Mr. McGregor wrapped the flag of Ireland around himself all week long, including two gimmicked UFC title belts in his native country’s colors.
Paddy Pimblett, coming off of a brutal loss to Justin Gaethje, had a much stronger crowd reaction. Pimblett’s quick finish of Benoit St. Denis may have very well saved UFC 329 from being an average show to at least a show with a good talking point for future dream matches for Napoleon Blownapart’s favorite Scouser.
Bottom line? Between Conor’s UFC 329 debacle and a slimmed-down Gina Carano smiling after losing in 20 seconds, the modern MMA fan in 2026 has had just about enough of seeing the legends they happened to miss before their current MMA fandom started.
Bad fights can stink up the joint in combat sports, but anti-climactic finishes are real audience killers. UFC 329 was defined more by what was missing rather than what was present.
A night of missed opportunities
Zuffa Boxing just signed Shakur Stevenson, America’s best boxer, to a brand new contract. And, right on cue, the UFC production team screwed up Stevenson’s on-screen cameo. The wrong name and identifier. Spent maybe five seconds highlighting the greatest prize fighter that ZBXG has signed.
Whoever came up with ZBXG for marketing should be demoted or fired. Especially with those ridiculous Zuffa Boxing branded snuggies. And whoever is in charge of promoting the upcoming ZBXG event at The Felt Forum at MSG needs to get a fire under their ass because this is beyond lame and lackluster marketing for a show featuring Edgar Berlanga and Richardson Hitchins.
The long-rumored Ryan Garcia vs. Conor Benn fight was not announced at UFC 329. Despite these fighters appearing at UFC 329 weigh-ins, it appears that both Oscar De La Hoya (Golden Boy) and DAZN are raising potential contractual questions about Zuffa Boxing’s role in promoting this fight. Perhaps that is why Dana White was less than happy at times during UFC 329 fight week.
And then there was this cherry on top of the sloppy UFC production team work product:
There were a lot of missed opportunities at UFC 329.
Terrence McKinney absolutely should have submitted Bobby “King” Green. It was completely inexplicable that the much faster, quicker, and sharper striker lost that fight. Watching a much faster and sharper striker in Lone’er Kavanaugh lose to Brandon Royval was depressing. That was entirely a winnable fight on the ground. Robert Whittaker looked OK at Light Heavyweight, but Joe Rogan was doing his best “ooh, baby, you fat” impersonation. Whittaker had trouble with Nikita Krylov’s size at first, but Krylov displayed little defensive prowess and got his jaw smashed into oblivion.
Then there was Gable Stevenson. It was what it was. I’m still surprised he wasn’t on the main card.
As with the previous UFC on Paramount events in 2026, the pacing on the main card absolutely dragged. Ari Emanuel was everywhere on his headset. UFC is an advertising company disguised as a fight promotion.
They have lots of inventory to sell. I’m sure we will all be watching. The circus must continue. But not everyone will leave happy, especially after UFC 329. At some point, at some point, the cumulative value extraction has to add up. So far, it hasn’t.
Zach Arnold is a lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw on Substack. His archives can be read at FightOpinion.com. Contact Zach: fightopinion at protonmail dot com.