Artem Lobov doesn’t think Conor McGregor has a comeback left in him. He thinks McGregor has bills. The former training partner took to X on Monday after McGregor announced his next fight would be his last, and he didn’t bother softening it.
“Last fight happened many years ago, now its about supporting the habit. In my humble opinion of course,” Lobov wrote.
Bloody Elbow, which first reported the post, read the comment as a pointed reference to McGregor’s past struggles with substance addiction. McGregor said last year that he was saved by God, and he described a spiritual process he went through to fight those addictions.
The timing matters. McGregor, 38, reignited comeback chatter this past weekend while commenting on Canelo Alvarez’s return against Christian Mbilli. He said his next fight will be the last one of his career and that he plans to try to sell it and see how well it does. UFC on TNT Sports posted the announcement on Nov. 1.
How two teammates ended up in court
Lobov, now 40, was one of McGregor’s most dependable training partners for the entire UFC rise that made the Irishman a double champion. That ended in 2022, when Lobov sued him for 5% of the $600 million that Proper No. Twelve sold for. Lobov’s claim was that he gave McGregor the idea for the whiskey brand and that the two had a verbal agreement dating back to 2017.
The pair settled earlier this year for an undisclosed amount. That looked like the end of the feud. A few months later, McGregor made his long-awaited return against Max Holloway at UFC 329, and it went about as badly as possible. McGregor went down injured in Round 1, the fight was stopped, and Holloway got credit for the win.
Since then McGregor has kept insisting he’ll fight again. He has a concrete reason to mean it: he still has one fight left on his UFC contract. Whether his body cooperates after the injury against Holloway is a different issue, and nobody, McGregor included, has offered much detail on that yet.
Mara’s take
Lobov has earned the right to an opinion on McGregor’s motivations. He spent years in the room with him, and very few people saw more of the camps that built the McGregor of 2015 and 2016. He also spent four years suing the man, so I’d weigh the X post accordingly. The jab about habits is a personal shot dressed up as analysis, and his “humble opinion” caveat isn’t fooling anybody.
On the fighting itself, though, he’s closer to right than McGregor’s fans want to admit. A comeback that lasted part of one round and ended with McGregor hurt on the canvas against Holloway tells you nothing about where his skills are, and that’s the problem. We haven’t seen a full fight from him in a long time. A man who says he’s going to “sell” his farewell before naming an opponent or a date is talking like a promoter. I’ll believe in the last dance when he finishes a full camp and steps on the scale on weight.
