Conor McGregor's Nine-Year Decline: From $100M to UFC 329 Return

Conor McGregor is scheduled to return against Max Holloway at UFC 329 on July 11 in Las Vegas, capping what ESPN calls a nine-year descent from the peak he reached after banking over $100 million to fight Floyd Mayweather in 2017.

The retrospective, updated by ESPN's Andreas Hale this month, tracks McGregor's path from the Mayweather spectacle through a string of losses, legal trouble, and long stretches away from competition. Since pocketing that boxing purse — a sum that dwarfed his previous UFC high of $6.8 million — McGregor has registered one MMA victory, suffered knockout and leg-break defeats to Dustin Poirier, and faced arrests and sexual assault allegations that have kept him out of the cage for extended periods.

Mayweather Night Changed Everything

Photographer Esther Lin, who shot the August 2017 bout for posterity, told ESPN that McGregor grasped his own star power during the pre-fight world tour. "Conor was realizing that he was just as popular as Mayweather and he could have his audience," Lin said. "He certainly embraced it during the tour and knew exactly how to ride that to the top." The fight itself drew 4.3 million pay-per-view buys and a $55.5 million live gate, second-largest in boxing history. Mayweather stopped McGregor in the 10th round, but the Irishman walked away richer than he had ever imagined.

UFC president Dana White saw the writing on the wall immediately. At a November 2017 media event, White told reporters McGregor might never compete again, noting that fighters who bank nine figures rarely find motivation to take punches. "Money changes everything," White said, per ESPN. The prediction proved half right. McGregor did fight again — he lost to Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC 229 in October 2018 after hurling a metal dolly through a bus window in Brooklyn six months earlier, an attack that injured three fighters and led to assault charges.

McGregor beat Donald Cerrone in January 2020, his lone win since the Alvarez title fight in 2016. Six months later Poirier knocked him out at UFC 257, then broke his leg in their trilogy at UFC 264 in July 2021. Multiple sexual assault investigations followed in the years after, along with robbery and assault allegations that kept McGregor in courtrooms as much as training camps. The Holloway rematch will be his first appearance since the leg injury nearly five years ago.

Source: espn.com