Conor McGregor adds demand to combat sports comeback: ‘Only in a stadium’

Conor McGregor may have teased a return to the UFC, but he’s already throwing up roadblocks to get it done.

The Irish sports star took to X (formerly Twitter) yesterday (Tues. April 22, 2025) to re-hype a long-abandoned fight against Michael Chandler. The two coached The Ultimate Fighter opposite one another way back in 2023, and were eventually scheduled to fight at UFC 303 in June 2024. Unfortunately, McGregor broke a toe and withdrew.

Since then, we’ve had a whole lot of talk from McGregor of a return but not a whiff of any actual bookings from the UFC.

Over the years, we’ve speculated on why that is. McGregor has been fit to fight since early 2023 and eligible to compete from a drug testing standpoint from April 2024. He was practically foaming at the mouth trying to secure a fight through the latter part of the year, calling on boxing power broker Turki Alalshikh to hook a brother up.

But now we’ve learned that McGregor turned down a fight with YouTube influencer KSI on Alcatraz because the money wasn’t good enough — not something we hear often when it comes to the Saudis.

Now he’s talking up a fight with Michael Chandler — who’s gotten wrecked in his past two fights since waiting years for McGregor to return — and we’re supposed to take it seriously?

Before even propositioning Chandler, McGregor threw a barrier in the way of making the fight happen.

“I’ll only come back to a stadium,” Mac declared, sharing shots of WWE WrestleMania from Allegiant Stadium in Vegas.

That sounds great and all, but the UFC simply isn’t interested in holding events in stadiums and WWE’s difficulties selling out Allegiant for WrestleMania isn’t likely to change that business strategy. The last time the promotion relied on “The Notorious” to anchor a big show he withdrew, and many still speculate on whether it was his toe or his nose which resulted in the fight getting kiboshed.

McGregor went on to call for an Influencer fight and was served that up, only to turn it down. At this point we’re starting to feel like the man is all talk and no walk. Even his Irish presidential campaign exists only through interviews with friendly media outlets and social media posts. There’s no actual campaigning or attempts to wrangle the political support he’d need to actually become nominated.

We’ve always backed McGregor’s attempts to compete in the cage or ring, and questioned why the UFC was wasting the last prime years of their biggest star’s career by pushing his expected return date further and further back. But the guy clearly isn’t serious about competing any more. And if he is, that urge rarely lasts for longer than 15 minutes.