Max Holloway, obviously. Now that that’s settled let’s move on to the upcoming fight at UFC 329 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas and the potential repercussions its results could have for the lightweight and welterweight divisions.
What If Conor Wins?
If Conor McGregor wins at UFC 329 the promotion and its biggest star will face a pivotal moment. There are rumors that McGregor has two fights left on his existing UFC contract and wishes to fight both of them in calendar year 2026, which would allow him to shop himself around the open market. Some kind of boxing endeavor makes the most financial sense and Jake Paul’s MVP / Netflix partnership is the most logical place to capitalize on McGregor’s fame.
This puts the UFC in a tight spot because the promotion absolutely hates for its fighters to leave while there’s any tread left on the tire, and it would be particularly galling were McGregor to exit the promotion while in possession of a title belt. It’s best that we assume a Conor McGregor win will result in a title fight, and the current lightweight and welterweight each present their own unique set of challenges. Let’s take a look.
First we have lightweight, and champion Justin Gaethje is probably the best head to head matchup available for Conor McGregor. In McGregor’s favor, Gaethje is 37 years old and has never been a defensive dynamo. Gaethje has absorbed a hellacious amount of punishment throughout his career in both the brawler-era first half and after his technical evolution in 2018. Gaethje never shies away from eating a punch to land one of his own and represents McGregor’s best option to win gold again if he retains his first round lethality.
Working against that outcome is the timing. Gaethje has fought nine hard rounds this year against Paddy Pimblett and Ilia Topuria. He has been vocal about taking the rest of the year off, and has a newfound stubbornness about career management in his advanced age. Sometimes the UFC finds themselves compelled to dig into their war chest of Paramount billions and actually pay their athletes like pros. This might be an opportune moment for The Highlight’s bank account and a quick turnaround could work in McGregor’s favor should Gaethje not be fully rested and recovered.
A second stumbling block for McGregor’s potential lightweight title hopes is his increased bulk. The Irishman seems to love being huge and as fighters age, cutting weight does not get easier. That leads us to his second option: the welterweight title.
Second, we have welterweight champion Islam Makhachev. Makhachev is a training partner and cornered by the one man who seems to have damaged Conor McGregor’s psyche worse than any other: Khabib Nurmagomedov. In the 13 years I’ve worked within the MMA media space no single moment in the cage has bled into my non-MMA life more than the post fight brawl between Nurmagomedov and McGregor’s corner. The in-cage dialogue caught between the two men where McGregor seems trying to placate Nurmagomedov’s fury might be more damaging to McGregor’s unflappable aura than actually losing the fight.
Makhachev represents both a chance to avenge the Khabib loss and is also extremely unlikely to be a successful venture for McGregor. We must remember that McGregor was unprepared for calf kicks in his 2021 fight against Dustin Poirier, even though the technique was experiencing a moment of widespread usage across the UFC. This is not the post-fight feedback of a man who is serious about competing at the highest level, which is what Makhachev currently represents.
Islam Makhachev represents the pinnacle of what MMA has to offer in 2026. The man has had a strange career path, littered with late replacements in four of his last eight fights. Nevertheless his performance in each of these bouts leave no doubt that whether he has been preparing for months or is just given 48 hours notice, his ability to execute is impeccable. Makhachev is the polar opposite of McGregor, possessing a kind of anti-charisma that sucks the air out of every interview and refuses even the charming knockoff English malapropisms that his teammate Khabib would gift the MMA community. That, my friends, is number one bullshit.
The Contract
If Conor McGregor does win his fight against Max Holloway at UFC 329, and McGregor insists on fighting out his contract without signing an extension, then Islam Makhachev might be the UFC’s saving grace. The promotion is loath to let fighters challenge for a title without locking them into a contract extension. The idea that they would let McGregor do so is ludicrous, unless they’re willing to take a serious gamble. What if the UFC lets Conor McGregor fight Islam Makhachev for the welterweight title on the last fight of his contract in the hopes that the Dagestani champion dispatches the Irishman, retains the title, and eliminates any chance of McGregor having leverage renegotiating his contract?
A potential fight between McGregor and Makhachev is not unlike Francis Ngannou’s last bout with the promotion against Ciryl Gane. While the fight itself was hardly a thriller, I was nevertheless on the edge of my seat given the seismic repercussions of the outcome. That still stands as one of the biggest L’s in the promotion’s history. Might we see it happen again?
A little wager like that would certainly make the fight more exciting.
What If Max Holloway Wins?
Max Holloway has a much simpler set of variables in front of him. I cannot see Max sticking around at welterweight. He’s fighting at this weight to accommodate a major event, and get one back from a longtime rival. But Holloway has only been a lightweight for two years and he got manhandled by Charles Oliveira. Welterweights ranked throughout the top ten would give him fits just by size alone.
The Blessed One seems to be perpetually in the good graces of both the fans and the UFC. So much so that I believe that with a win over McGregor we could see Max leapfrog the man who beat him just four months previous, Charles Oliveira, and secure a title fight with current lightweight champion Justin Gaethje.
What? Why? How?
We’re in a new era, and it’s Paramount that you understand that there are no rules anymore. In the early days of the UFC we wanted to know what styles were best. When the UFC was trying to establish itself as the preeminent promotion in MMA their branding was “Where the best fight the best!” As years went by and television rights partners started to matter more than fan satisfaction we saw the matchmakers take a “who’s available for this date where we need a title fight?” perspective rather than curating a story for us to anticipate.
Now that the money is guaranteed, and star power is no longer needed to sell PPV’s I can’t help but feel like the UFC lacks a certain identity. We like to watch fights and they’ve got most of the best fighters, so it makes sense to watch… but fans today have to curate their own experience.
Fortunately UFC 329 is an easy one. I rewatched McGregor vs Holloway 1 this evening and these two men look like absolute children. They’re barely tattooed compared to their decorated selves today. McGregor is a kicking machine before tearing his ACL, while Holloway has yet to find his cagecraft. He spends so much of the fight backpedaling and getting picked apart by the much more confident McGregor. It’s truly an exciting moment to see these two fighters reconnect after having two illustrious and action packed careers.
I’ll see you back here for the recap.
Chris