Conor McGregor is pressing forward with his recovery after a successful knee surgery, and he’s using several MMA greats as motivation for his eventual comeback.
McGregor injured his right knee off the first kick of his fight against Max Holloway at UFC 329. The bout was a disaster, and so was the eventual diagnosis: two tears in his knee, meniscus and ACL. ACLs take surgery and a year to recover. Now “The Notorious” has had the surgery and he’s in for a long and arduous rehab.
In a new video shared
on his social media accounts, he sounded mentally prepared for the challenge.
“Surgery done. Knee repaired,” McGregor wrote. “The doubters can keep talking. I didn’t run from the pain. I walked straight into it. Now the real work begins. Comeback season starts now. No shortcuts. No excuses. Just the will to rise again.”
“The Mac is back, baby,” he declared in a video. “My knee is repaired. Surgery was a success, and I am on the road to recovery. That should tell you everything you need to know about my mindset. Straight into surgery. Knee repaired. And on the road [to recovery]. Let’s go.”
“I want to give a shout out to Dominick Cruz, who returned from multiple ACLs to recapture his bantamweight crown. Georges St-Pierre, multiple ACLs. Don’t know if he returned after his second ACL, but he’s doing backflips and his movement is still stellar. Other notables in other sports. The NFL, Tom Brady’s done it, Aaron Peters done it.”
“These are my motivation here, especially the fighting boys,” McGregor concluded. “Unstoppable, baby. My mindset is unstoppable, unbreakable.”
Following the Holloway fight, McGregor now has just one more bout left on his current UFC contract. Its widely believed that he’ll test free agency and leave the promotion, because he is both the best paid fighter on the UFC roster and the most underpaid considering the money he generates. A fight on the free market would likely net him over $100 million. So he’ll have some choices to make in a year when he’s ready to return.
For now he’s got a simpler decision to sort out: what to do with the mohawk he shaved into his head before his UFC 329 fight.
“I’m gonna do something about this hair, I’m not sure what just yet,” he said.
