Max Holloway does not know what Conor McGregor is talking about.
This summer, Holloway and McGregor were supposed to fight in the main event of UFC 329, a rematch of their 2013 fight that McGregor won by decision after injuring his knee. This time around, McGregor once again injured his knee, blowing out his ACL in the first moments of the fight, resulting in a quick and anticlimactic TKO win for Holloway.
After the event, McGregor lamented the unfortunate incident and claimed he was prepared to deliver
“a generational beating” to Holloway. Holloway disagrees.
“The fight went the way it went,” Holloway said on his YouTube channel. “I feel bad for the fans. It’s just crazy for the dude to be talking about, ‘It was slippery because of the dry ice’ or whatever. I don’t know what he’s talking about because I didn’t fall. Him talking about this ‘generational beating’ — the dude is delusional. To me, he felt slow in there. He felt slow; he looked old. If there was going to be a generational beating, it wasn’t going to be on his end, I’ll tell you that much. It wasn’t going to be coming from his side.
“At the end of the day, I feel bad for the fans. It was a big event; a lot of people spent a lot of money. Shoutout to them for the support, but I had the man weak in the knees from the beginning, I guess.”
While the two could normally settle things the old-fashioned way, McGregor is out of action for nearly a year due to the knee injury, and is already targeting a trilogy fight next summer. For his part, Holloway is game, but he’s also ready to jump back into the cage if the other opportunity is right, including a possible welterweight title shot given his recent spat with Islam Makhachev.
“What’s next for me is the question that people have been asking me, and to be quite honest, I don’t know,” Holloway said. “I couldn’t tell you. I don’t know what’s next. We see Conor out there telling us, calling for me, wanting to be next year. I’m down for that, but I don’t know what the UFC wants. So, at the end of the day, I’m going to be here; I’m going to be ready. …
“If it’s Conor next year, great. If it’s a title shot in some type of weight class, great. I went to 170. The ‘70 champ or the ‘70 champ’s team is not liking what I said, which just blew my mind, because I wasn’t being disrespectful. I was just kind of caught off guard with the situation and just said what a lot of people were probably thinking, so I’m the bad guy? It is what it is.
“At the end of the day, if it’s there, I’ve got history with the 155 champ, and I know that he probably wants to get that one back. So, if it’s a title shot in either weight class, sign your boy up. If it’s the Conor McGregor fight again, I’ll sign on the dotted line.”
