UFC CEO Dana White anticipated Conor McGregor to enter the octagon in “early 2025”, after which he shifted his prediction to “within the fall this 12 months”. Others have a special expectation for the way forward for “The Infamous” as a fighter, although.
Diego Lima, the supervisor and coach for former UFC light-weight champion Charles Oliveira, doesn’t contemplate McGregor an possibility for Oliveira’s subsequent bout within the UFC “as a result of I don’t suppose Conor fights anymore”. Talking with MMA Preventing, Lima stated he believes the Irishman has made a lot cash inside and outdoors the cage he has misplaced starvation and need to compete.
“There’s no purpose to bark up the incorrect tree, I actually don’t imagine anymore,” Lima stated. “When he achieved the whole lot he may and have become the highest-paid athlete on the earth, surpassing Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, Floyd Mayweather and each NFL and NBA participant, he bought to a degree the place nobody imagined a MMA fighter would ever get.
“You don’t prepare with the identical starvation, you don’t have the identical focus. And possibly he’s not incorrect. He’s reached one thing many thought of unreachable. Actually, I don’t imagine he fights once more. ‘Oh, however what if he does struggle once more?’ Then we’d be discussing what ifs. Would that be cool? After all it might. After all that Charles desires to struggle him. However there’s no level discussing it as a result of, in my view, he doesn’t struggle anymore. He’s not an possibility proper now.”
McGregor joined the UFC in April 2013 and fought seven occasions in two and a half years to win the undisputed featherweight title. Since then, excluding a really profitable boxing showdown with Mayweather, McGregor has solely put gloves on seven occasions in simply over six years, going 3-4 within the UFC.
For Lima, the truth that McGregor has used his fortune to construct a camp round him each time he fights, as an alternative of being a part of a group, has additionally modified his hearth as an athlete.
“In my view, a fighter with no [team] flag is a fighter with no spirit,” Lima stated. “Extra vital than the conflict itself is who’s subsequent to you in it. Individuals are promoting themselves rather a lot in MMA at present, sadly. Individuals change groups and coaches such as you change underwear. You’ll by no means know who’s in your nook. You’re there preventing and also you rent an individual to be in your nook however you don’t know what that particular person desires. Generally they need you to win simply so that you rent and pay them once more. Is that the precise particular person to have by your aspect? Somebody who simply desires your victory on your cash?
“I feel [MMA] has misplaced the essence of the martial artwork a bit bit. Though MMA is a job, the game that grows probably the most on the earth, MMA is totally totally different from soccer. You’ve got 10 different individuals to the touch the ball to in soccer, you will be substituted. MMA is probably the most group sport of the person sports activities. The cage closes and also you’re alone there with the opposite particular person. It’s your nostril, your blood, so it’s extraordinarily vital to know who’s by your aspect. I feel {that a} fighter that treats himself as an object has no essence to observe for.”
