Conor McGregor was asked about a potential fight with the upstart Brit.
Former UFC lightweight and featherweight champion Conor McGregor appears to be near fully healed from the catastrophic leg injury he suffered at the hands of Dustin Poirier at last year’s UFC 264.
The Irishman has been flooding our feeds with training footage and appears well enough to get into scrapes with international celebrities. Yesterday evening McGregor was prowling around Dublin’s 3Arena supporting teammates competing at Bellator 275.
With McGregor up on his feet many are wondering when he will return to action and, more importantly, who he will fight once he does.
William Hill caught up with McGregor at Bellator 275 and suggested a potential comeback fight versus popular English fighter Paddy Pimblett. Here’s McGregor’s response:
@theufcbaddy pic.twitter.com/mBgZmlnYnt
— FK (@FinnKil) February 25, 2022
“He’s a good kid, Paddy,” said McGregor (ht sportskeeda). “You’ve got to love the Scousers. You know my father was born in Liverpool. One side of my family is from there. So I’ve got a lot of love for that part of the world. And who knows? You know, I will never say no to nothing. You know, never say never, as they say.”
Pimblett seemed to approve of this message, retweeting the video with “Yes the big fella … never say never.”
It of course seems highly unlikely that these two will fight each other anytime soon. And not just because of the difference between their current standing in the fight game.
Pimblett is a featherweight, a weight McGregor has not competed at since 2015. Most recently McGregor has appeared at lightweight, though he has also fought at welterweight in the UFC.
Currently McGregor looks bigger than at any other point in his UFC career. And ‘Notorious’ has boasted that he is walking around at 190 pounds.
McGregor stormed onto the UFC back in 2013 and looked unstoppable on his way to beating Jose Aldo for the featherweight title, via a 13 second KO. In 2016 he took his first UFC loss, a submission to Nate Diaz.
That same year he beat Diaz by split decision and then went on to beat Eddie Alvarez for the UFC lightweight title.
Controversy, legal issues and high profile losses have followed McGregor ever since. After beating Alvarez he lost his pro boxing debut to Floyd Mayweather Jr. In 2018 he was submitted by Khabib Nurmagomedov after a long and bitter period of trash talk and over-the-top antics.
He wouldn’t fight again until January 2020, when he took a quick win over Donald Cerrone. His next fight, in January 2021, saw him get TKO’d by Dustin Poirier, a man he beat during his original featherweight run. That was followed by his second TKO to Poirier, due to the broken leg.