Conor McGregor Reflects on Loss to Khabib Nurmagomedov, Says He’s There’s for the Rematch

– During a recent appearance on the Tony Robbins Podcast, former UFC champion Conor McGregor looked at his devasting submission loss to Khabib Nurmagomedov for the lightweight title back at UFC 229 last year. Below are some highlights (per MMAWeekly). During the interview, Conor McGregor said he’s here and ready for the rematch, despite recently announcing his retirement from the fight game.

Conor McGregor on suffering an injury two weeks before his UFC 229 bout: “Two and a half weeks before my last fight, I threw a front kick at a shooting Moldovan wrestler. When he shot and I threw the front kick, I threw it at his belly and my two toes, the baby toe and the toe next to it, bent back like this and stuck in that position. My doctor had to come into the cage had to stretch it and break it back into place and my foot swelled like a balloon. I wanted to compete and I wanted to get in there. Obviously the injury — the injury itself led me to, I had to half my work. I couldn’t road run anymore. I wasn’t [fully prepared]. My weight was too high. So when you’re cutting weight, if I can’t get my weight down because of injuries or what not, I have a more intense weight cut. So I was severely dehydrated. I didn’t sleep for 48 hours before the weight cut.”

McGregor on the fight: “But these are all nonsensical excuses that I don’t give a f—k about. I don’t give a s—t,. That’s why I walked in there hands down — ‘ding, ding, ding’ — and walked forward to him and he went running away around the cage. He got lucky with that overhand right, dropped me, well he didn’t really drop me. I landed on the hand but I kept my vision. My vision was clear. Backed away, jumped up, landed shots back and then we engaged in a fist fight and he took me down again. After landing such a significant shot, let’s fight now. Instead, he was afraid and he grabs a hold of the legs.”

McGregor on his approach for the training camp: “My whole approach in that camp — the injuries, the non-commitment, even the game plan, the tactics — I attack, I am an attacker and my attack defends. In this camp, the entire focus was defend, defend,” McGregor explained. “So every round we would start in the training, I’d have my back against the fence. I’d have my back on the floor. I would always put myself in a vulnerable position and as the camp went on, we just became defensive, defensive. That’s never been what I do. It still irritates me to this day because the training partners I train with are heavy people. Like I said that Moldovan wrestler I broke my foot [against] is like a horse. He’s literally like a f—king human horse and I’ve got an American Brazilian jiu-jitsu champion who trains with me, he was like 200 pounds. They’re big, big, boys but I was always on the defensive with them.”

McGregor on what he did after the fight: “Since the fight, I’ve gone back to training with them and I went with my internal dialogue. Not the external dialogue, the dialogue of ‘I can’t grapple with this man and he’s a Russian sambo guy and he’s wrestled bears since he was a kid’ and all this bulls—t. That’s external. I let the external infiltrate my internal and it filtered into the fight. But after the bout, I went back and trained with these people and attacked and I mauled them.”

McGregor on being here for the rematch: “At the end of the day, I landed the final blow of the night, right on his brother’s eye socket. Although the match didn’t go my way, the fight went my way and trust me when I tell you, Tony, this war is not over. If this fight does not happen again, if it does not get reset, it’s on them. They’re running away. I’m here for the fight and here for the rematch. I know the errors, I know the lapses in commitment that I’ve had in that bout. I know my mindset, there was a lot of external things. So I’m just here waiting to continue to grow and see where we can get with this situation with the UFC and see can we get this fight again and let’s go again.”