Joe Rogan Says Conor McGregor Fought Holloway to Prove He Still Could
Joe Rogan told Sean Sharaf that Conor McGregor’s return against Max Holloway looked like a fight taken to prove he could still do it. The exchange comes from JRE MMA Show #186, released October 1, with McGregor’s July loss still the last time the Irishman stepped into the Octagon.
Rogan framed the bout as a status check rather than a conversation he had held with the fighter. “Conor, for instance, like Conor’s last fight, like, it seemed like Conor was doing it to show that he could still do it,” Rogan said. “Seemed, and I don’t know, you know, I didn’t talk to him, I haven’t had a conversation with him as a person, but it seemed like he wanted to be on top again.”
He then named the opponent McGregor had chosen for that return. “He wanted to show that he could go out there and still beat a world-class fighter like Max Holloway and just show that he could do it,” Rogan said. That fight was the UFC 329 main event on July 11 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, McGregor’s first bout in more than five years.
The result did not match the version Rogan was describing. Holloway stopped McGregor at 1:09 of the first round by TKO after a knee injury, leaving McGregor at 22-7 and Holloway at 28-9. McGregor threw a jumping kick early, landed awkwardly on his right knee, and could not continue a scheduled five-round welterweight fight. Dana White said afterward that doctors were assuming a blown ACL, and McGregor wrote that he had no injury going into the bout.
Rogan questioned whether proving a point was enough of a reason to take the fight. “And you gotta wonder, is that the best motivation for a guy that’s worth half a billion dollars and is f***ing living in the lap of luxury,” he said. The net-worth figure is Rogan’s characterization on the podcast, not a number McGregor confirmed in the clip.
Sharaf answered without the same hesitation. “No, he’s just chasing a high,” Sharaf said. “He’s chasing a high. He’s like, I just wanna go out on top, go on top, go on top.” Rogan then split the idea in two. “Is he chasing the high versus is he chasing the dream?” Rogan asked.
He used the Jose Aldo knockout as the example of the second category. “So, like, when he knocked out Jose Aldo, he was chasing the dream,” Rogan said. “He was a juggernaut. He was storming through the division, he was knocking everybody out.” That finish came at UFC 194 in December 2015, when McGregor stopped Aldo in 13 seconds and took the featherweight title.
Rogan described the McGregor of that period as a different fighter from the one who returned in July. “He looked like this guy that had this phenomenal talent and this special charisma, and he looked like a guy who was chasing this, this thing, this dream, this dream of becoming a world champion,” Rogan said. McGregor had already beaten Holloway once before any of that, a unanimous decision on August 17, 2013, at UFC Fight Night 26.
Rogan put the break after the titles, not before them.
“So then you achieve it, and then I think the big derailment was the Floyd Mayweather fight, right?” he said. “He leaves MMA, trains boxing for a while, has a great performance against Floyd Mayweather, one of the greatest boxers of all time. Does ten rounds with him, which is f***ing insane.” Mayweather stopped McGregor in the 10th round in August 2017.
The podcast does not include a reply from McGregor, and Rogan said he had not spoken to him about the Holloway motivation.
Holloway, for his part, told the referee to stop the fight once he saw McGregor hurt and later said McGregor looked old and slow. No next opponent has been named while McGregor recovers from the knee that ended the return 69 seconds after it started.
