Conor McGregor may be at a crossroads in his career after losing to Dustin Poirier in the UFC 257 main event.
While he was a big favorite at night, the former two-division UFC champion struggled to deal with Poirier’s brutal kicks to the legs, which then opened him up to a series of powerful beats that eventually battled in the second round ended. After that, McGregor was upset about his actions when he fell for the first time in his mixed martial arts career with a knockout blow.
According to UFC President Dana White, McGregor now has only two choices to make for his career after falling in a first fightback to Poirier.
“I think it will make him hungry,” White said at the UFC 257 press conference after the fight over McGregor. ‘There are two ways it goes – hungrier or I’m done. He has the money. I mean if you think about it, I’m a big Rocky fan. It’s like Rocky 3. When you get off a 310 foot yacht, do you know what I mean? You live so well of a life. It’s hard to be cruel when you live the way he lives and has the money he has.
‘On the way up he was a young hungry child. He had no money and he wanted nice things. He wanted nice suits, nice cars, nice houses. He has everything he ever wanted. So I do not know. It’s going this way or so. ”
In Rocky 3, Sylvester Stallone’s coach, played by the late Burgess Meredith, warns him before a fight against a ferocious emerging man.
“Three years ago you were supernatural,” said Meredith’s character ‘Mick.’ “You were hard and you were nasty and you had this cast iron jaw, but then the worst thing that happened to you, that could happen to any fighter: you became civilized.”
Is it possible that McGregor became civilized after living in the luxury lap?
It’s hard to deny that McGregor’s life has changed dramatically over the past few years after he became one of the highest paid athletes in all sports. He took home a nine-figure payday for a boxing match against Floyd Mayweather in 2017, and since then McGregor has only been 1-2 in the UFC with one-sided losses to Poirier and current lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.
White questioned whether McGregor would not even want to fight again after earning so much money in his career. But the Irish superstar rarely faltered in his desire to compete outside of the battle to reach an agreement with the UFC over specific opponents.
The loss Saturday night is certainly a setback, but that does not mean it’s the end of the road for McGregor, especially not with the possibility of another fight against Poirier, as they split a few in the octagon.
“We’ll see,” White said. ‘I’m sure in a few hours he’s going to blow me up and tell me a million things he wants to do. We’ll see from here what he wants to do.
“There’s always a trilogy if you’re 1-1.”