Okay? Cuz the intent is to counter, right? Is to run this guy into one of our shots, run this guy into a phase one. Rogan doesn’t hand all the credit to one man though. He gives Holloway plenty of respect too, noting that the way he keeps performing against top tier opponents makes him a legitimate danger. From capturing the BMF belt to trading with names like Dustin Porier, Holloway has shown over and over that he belongs among the elite.
And that depth of experience simply can’t be manufactured once the brightest lights come on. >> More more eyeballs on it. And unfortunately for the ca, you know, the people that are casuals, it has to be a name. You know, it has to like this Conor McGregor fight in July is going to be bananas. It’s going to be bananas. I mean, people are going to go crazy for the return of Conor McGregor because he’s a giant personality.
But don’t expect the same. Digging into the fight on paper, Teddy Atlas offers a few sharp thoughts, admitting he’s intrigued by McGregor’s decision to pick Holloway for his comeback. He gives Holloway full credit for his standing in the sport and his non-stop schedule against the best around, but he also flags that Holloway carries the smaller frame, something that may well have factored into how McGregor and his team shaped this choice.
Bob fight, he’s going to Max is always in insane shape, but in particularly in this fight, he’s going to be in insane shape. In his last fight, he took almost no damage. It’s almost six. I think it might be six at the time of the fight. It’s It might think it’s five right now. Taking a younger fighter and putting them against the old dog.
It It normally doesn’t end well for the old dog. >> Well, the thing is about Max Holloway is like Max Holloway is that much younger than Connor. He’s not. >> But the thing is Max has been in constant highle competition the entire time. Won the BMF fight, you know, beat Dustin. Like constant highle competition.
>> That’s right. >> It’s a different thing. And I honestly believe him at 155 is the best thing for him. You know, Max, >> but he’s not 155 in this fight. >> This is 170. But yeah, honestly, >> but the physical matchup is only one piece of a much larger picture because there’s just as much unfolding away from the cage as there is inside it.
>> Knowing this is such a high-profile fight. On that front, McGregor speaks candidly about where he stands with his contract, disclosing that two bouts remain on his current UFC agreement, one built on an unusual framework that stretches out to a scheduled slot in April 2027. Even so, he insists the paperwork isn’t what’s occupying him at the moment.
His attention sits squarely on the job in front of him, with his looming return outweighing anything waiting further down the line. He picked a great fighter, a legend, a legend, a guy who’s active, a guy who’s getting older obviously in in Holloway uh in um Max Holloway, but a guy who’s a great striker, a guy who, you know, has been active and to come out of North Poles, out of retirement, and again, not living the life of an athlete really, and to pick him at first, it’s curious.
you say, “Wow.” But then you you think of the things he’s got on his side to want to pick that one is to wait, you know, he’ll be bigger uh a lot bigger probably than Holloway who’s not a physically uh strong guy. You know, he he’s he’s tough. He’s a great striker. He’s great at every >> Another familiar name enters the discussion as Alexander Vulcganowski shares his read on the McGregor Holloway rematch.
and he refuses to write off the Irishman’s threat even after such a long absence. He underlines that McGregor remains dangerous and that Holloway will have to stay precise and disciplined to finish the job. As Vulcganowski frames it, McGregor’s punching power and sense of timing don’t simply fade during time away.
So, Holloway can’t allow himself to grow sloppy or overconfident just because he’s been the busier fighter. >> I am contracted and I have both dates. I have both dates for my fight. I have July 11th. Yeah. >> When would you think they would put me back in? When would you think they would put me back in? >> The second one? >> Yeah. >> I don’t know.
>> April 2027. >> It’s locked in. >> It’s almost a year later. >> Yeah. >> That’s ridiculous to me. I think No. >> Why is it locked in already? >> Because this is I This is the way the contract was done. I don’t I’m >> That’s never happened. I’ve never heard of a contract where there’s a date and >> I know. I know. I have my sh.
>> Beyond the hollow assignment, McGregor is already eyeing several of the marquee names in the division. A clear signal that his appetite for competing at the very top hasn’t dimmed. This isn’t a man planning a single appearance and then stepping away. There’s an obvious hunger to remain active and challenge the best the UFC can put in front of him.
Even as the twilight of his career draws nearer, the desire to chase legacy defining fights and remind the world why he’s one of the sports biggest attractions sits right at the front of his thinking. hasn’t been in the game for a long time and I think a lot of people are thinking that he’s just going to lose everything, but that’s not the case.
He’s going to be dangerous. He can He’s obviously going to still be very sharp, very explosive, still got a good eye. Is it the exact eye that he had when he was, you know, double champ and doing what he was doing? No, probably not. But still going to be very dangerous. Um, and I know Max is going to respect that. Obviously, they’re going to want to put on a show, but at the same time, you’re going to know Connor will be very dangerous early.
I think uh Max will make the right decisions to not just, you know, get in the fire straight away and then um and then start to to work him later in in rounds. Like we know that uh Connor again very dangerous, very explosive, but that he’s going to wear on you and with that big layoff, even though he’s probably training very hard.
Um we know that that’s going to eventually wear on him and you know that that sharpness that I reckon he still has, he’s probably going to deteriorate a lot quicker um because of his been out of the game for so long. At the heart of everything, Conor McGregor is gearing up for his long- aaited walk back to the Octagon on July 11th against Max Holloway.
And he’s carrying a composed, grounded frame of mind that’s been absent from him for a while. He wants it understood that the driving force this time reaches past the paycheck. It’s rooted in the competition itself, the rush of measuring himself against one of the divisions best and rekindling the fire that once made him the biggest name the sport had.
>> Champions at 55 and 70. Do you think about the belt or are you bigger than the belt? >> No, I I’m I would I’d be after the belt for sure. >> Okay. >> I think Gagey is when he’s on he’s good. He’s okay. But when he’s off, he’s atrocious. And yeah, know I I fancy him handily. I fancy teeing off on GI and Islam.
There’s history there. It’s at 170. I know he’s fighting an Irish man, my fellow Irish man who I’ve also trained with, who I also know. I am open for it for sure. I’m I am open for >> At the same time, Atlas highlights a crucial gap between the pair as they head in, noting that McGregor’s present- day form is still very much unknown.
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Whereas Holloway has remained steadily active against elite opposition. That volume of cage time, Atlas argues, could hand a genuine advantage, particularly against an opponent returning from an extended break who might need a few minutes to knock off the rust. In his view, this isn’t a question of who looks better on paper.
It comes down to who has been tested most recently and can lean on their instincts when the pressure peaks. >> You know, I I I am calm. I’m in a calm state of mind, zen, if you will, and I’m composed and I’m committed committed to this bout and to my career. So, that’s that’s pretty much where I’m at right now. >> Why are you committed? Why are you even coming back? What’s the point? What’s the motivation? >> The fun of it.
for the fun of it, for the joy, for the thrill, for the competition. And I haven’t been I I yearn for this, Ariel. I yearn for competition. So, you know, many times we’ve been speaking here like this and nothing nothing on the horizon or uncertainty. Now, we have a date and opponent. >> Shifting to the psychological layer, the talk moves to the shared past between these two men.
McGregor took a unanimous decision win over Holloway all the way back in 2013. And Teddy Atlas questions whether that old outcome hands McGregor a mental advantage heading in or whether he’s merely leaning on it as a marketing hook to help sell the rematch. Atlas also stresses that both competitors have transformed dramatically since that initial encounter, which means the original verdict might matter far less than the narrative being constructed around it now.
You know, Holloway again, he’s he’s both of them are pass way past well, McGregor’s way past his best, but we don’t even know what McGregor has anymore. Holloway, at least we know we know that he’s still good at that level, at a certain level. We we we know that. So, um but he is, you know, he’s aging, but he’s been active, so you got to give him the edge that way. God.
And it it’ll be interesting. It’ll it’ll be interesting. Again, McGregor has been a great fighter, a great champion, a great promoter, a great pioneer. He’s still the biggest freaking name in the UFC. >> Staying with the mental chess match, Holloway has a real talent for crawling under an opponent’s skin. Knowing that plenty of fighters wear the badge of honor mentality and simply can’t turn down the dare to prove it with allout aggression, he weaponizes that instinct, luring them into a firefight rather than allowing them to fight cautiously and
behind their defense. It’s a deliberate tactic that leans straight into his own strengths and has been a major reason for his run of success. >> Psychological part of it, right? You go way back and McGregor early in his career, early in both their careers, I believe that Hollywood was only like 20 years old.
You go back and McGregor knocked him out. Does Does he I mean McGregor knows the business. He knows that that hallway is not this hallway. I mean, he knows that. He’s got to know that. But is that part of why he picked him? Is that part of it? Maybe they can sell it. Maybe, you know, you talk about revenge and all that stuff.
Maybe they can sell it. >> From a technical standpoint, Dominic Cruz makes the case that the Holloway walking into the cage this July bears little resemblance to the version McGregor beat in 2013. He’s grown more seasoned, far more experienced, and has stacked new tools onto his arsenal. Most notably, his knack for switching stances and operating from either side, which Cruz thinks could scramble McGregor’s usual rhythm and force him into real-time adjustments.
>> BMF, you’re a bad because you don’t use your brain and you don’t use fight IQ and you don’t take the path of least resistance. You just make it fun to watch and you put your you get into firefights and you point down at the ground and you have those style fights. Well, Olivivera said, “I’m not doing that.
” Like, that’s that’s ignorant. I want to win my money. I want my full purse, not half my purse. And I want to not take damage and get hit in the head by Max Holloway, who’s an absolute savage on the feet. So, I’m just going to take him down and control him because I’m a nasty black belt. And all I got to do is take his back.
>> With fight night creeping closer, Holloway is buried deep in a painstaking training camp where every last detail is being studied and refined, all pointed at one unmistakable target, beating Conor McGregor. This goes beyond logging rounds. It’s about polishing the tiny elements that decide outcomes the moment the cage door clicks shut.
From footwork tweaks to timing and reaction work, the emphasis is on assembling a complete airtight performance that leaves no opening for surprises. His team is gambling on nothing, and the intensity keeps climbing as the date approaches. The stance switch for Max is going to make it harder for Connor to time over the top of his right hand.
Um, and he knows all the things that I know. So, Max is going to make these adjustments. I think the big difference also in that fight is that Max is a grown man now. When he fought Connor the first time, he was younger. He was still learning where he was in the division. He was still learning his belief in himself.
I think Max now knows that he’s championship material. He knows how good he is. He’s been told by the world and he believes what the world tells him. So, I think that um that’s going to help him in this match. So, right now with the goal being to just improve performance, recover from training. He’s doing a lot of training.
So, as I said before, we’re essentially training, refueling, eating, rehydrating, and just doing it all over again on repeat. Um, since we’re not having to cut so much weight, we can focus a lot more on performance, and that’s what we’re doing. Um, so like after training, we immediately try to address hydration. We have some juice with watermelon, coconut water, and lime.
Um, get a lot of potassium in there, a lot of sodium, get micronutrients we need. >> Deep within that camp, Holloway is grinding out the kind of work that separates champions from the pack, powering through demanding strength and conditioning blocks as his team steers him toward faster, more explosive training. With the Las Vegas Heat expected to play a role once July arrives, every session is engineered to ready him for the full intensity of fight night in body and in mind.
Holloway himself reports that he’s feeling strong and has been eating more than usual to keep up with the workload. A clear indication that this camp revolves around performance and recovery rather than simply hitting a number on the scale. >> Max had a good day today. Um yeah, he looks real good.
Uh I think I think we’re on our way. You know, it’s a it was a tough one. It was hot and uh you know, we’re transitioning right now. Um, but she looks good and he works hard and we’ll get there. >> You know, today we was working on strength and conditioning. Uh, it’s getting to that time where we’re doing more round stuff.
So, we still got to do the explosiveness, the strength. So, a little bit of everything movement, little bit of everything in this workout. And today was a hot one. So, it wasn’t fun. So, we’re getting ready for that uh that Las Vegas heat. And that wraps up today’s video on the hotly awaited rematch between Conor McGregor and Max Holloway.
All these years after their first showdown, both men have carved out legendary careers, which makes this second meeting feel even larger than the first. McGregor is chasing a statement in his return to the octagon. While Holloway has the ideal chance to even the ledger and demonstrate just how far he’s come since that opening bout.
With elite striking, a mountain of experience, and no shortage of pride at stake, everything is lined up for an unforgettable main event. Now, we’d love to hear where you stand. Who are you rolling with in this rematch? Can Conor McGregor pull off a triumphant comeback? Or will Max Holloway finally claim his revenge? And how do you see it ending? A highlight reel knockout, a slick submission, or a five round war that goes the full distance? Drop your predictions in the comments below.
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