LOS ANGELES.- the star Conor McGregor lost to Max Holloway on Saturday after only 69 seconds of combat due to a right knee injury, upon his return to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) after five years of absence.
The referee Mike Beltran stopped the mixed martial arts welterweight main event of the UFC 329 in vegas, USAafter the 37-year-old Irishman fell to the canvas three times in the first minute.
Holloway, a 34-year-old American, improved to 28-9 thanks to the TKO over McGregor, who left him with a record of 22-7.
The European star jumped up and launched a roundhouse kick at Holloway in the opening seconds of the bout, but injured his right knee while landing his leg for the kick.
“I’ve run out of steam. I’m destroyed. I didn’t have any injuries or injuries going into the fight. I was kicking and jumping (…) even backstage before the fight. This has come from nowhere. I’m in a very dark moment. I can only describe it as hell,” McGregor wrote on the social network X after the fight.
He collapsed twice more and put his hand on his injured knee, prompting Beltrán to stop the fight.
“What can I say? I guess I left him weak at the knees,” said Holloway, who stated that they needed to face each other again. “So much hype… We have to do it again. For it to end like this sucks.”
McGregor left the octagon without making a statement. The Irishman had described his comeback as “the comeback of all comebacks in the history of sport.”
The bout was a rematch of a 2013 featherweight fight in Boston, in which McGregor defeated Holloway by unanimous decision.
McGregor had not fought since his two losses in 2021 against the American Dustin Poirierin the second of which he suffered a fracture in his left leg.
Holloway, who had fought ten times since the European last entered the octagon, was coming off a unanimous decision loss to the Brazilian. Charles Oliveira in March.
A sports icon
McGregor was the UFC’s biggest commercial star before his injury. In 2016 he became the organization’s first fighter to hold two titles simultaneously.
He lost a high-profile box-office cross-combat fight against the boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2017, but earned more than $100 million, according to reports.
His last victory in the UFC before the inactivity was a 40-second victory over the American Donald Cerrone in January 2020.
Also on the billboard, English Paddy Pimblett subdued the French Benoit Saint-Denis after just 52 seconds of the first round in a lightweight bout.
