Conor McGregor wants to try bare knuckle once the UFC is done with him. That’s the gist of a KarloBag.eu report this week, which carried the headline that McGregor eyes a BKFC move after his final UFC fight.
The report doesn’t come with a date or an opponent attached. It also doesn’t say how many fights are left before McGregor would be free to make the jump. What it does say is that the final UFC appearance comes first and the bare-knuckle ring comes after. If you’ve followed McGregor long enough, you know that’s the part of any plan most likely to get rearranged.
A busy week on X
The BKFC talk landed during a week when McGregor spent plenty of time defending himself online.
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On Tuesday night, Raul Rosas Jr. submitted Colby Covington in 40 seconds at a show in Rome, and he did it on short notice. That’s a short-notice guy taking the fight and ending it before most people found their seats, which is my favorite kind of chaos. Within minutes, Spinnin Backfist posted a clip claiming McGregor “was dying laughing” after the finish, and Championship Rounds shared its own version of his reaction.
McGregor didn’t let it sit. A few hours later he wrote on X that the clip was “false and fully edited.” He said he’d had a fun night at the show and admitted the footage of him laughing was real, but insisted it had been placed next to the wrong moment.
“I do not laugh at competing men and women. I respect them! Win lose draw!” he wrote, before thanking all the combatants.
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Happy Punch also circulated footage of McGregor watching a fighter go down with a bad leg injury in the first round. The post’s caption read, “That’s the face of a man who’s reliving an experience.” That one needs no explanation for anyone who watched McGregor’s own leg give out.
The softer side, briefly
Not everything was a fight. Ariel Helwani posted comments from Jean-Paul Lebosnoyani, who recalled training jiu-jitsu with McGregor as a 17-year-old for roughly two weeks before McGregor met Dillon Danis. Lebosnoyani said his dad called him right after he’d eaten the biggest meal of his life, and his first thought was, “Oh my God, I’m gonna barf all over this guy.”
He said McGregor messaged him throughout his career and sent congratulations when he signed with the UFC. He described McGregor showing up to the gym in two Rolls-Royces, then dropping the whole ego the second he stepped on the mat.
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McGregor reposted it with a short reply: “True martial artist is Jean Paul!”
The take
I’ll believe the BKFC run when I see a weigh-in. McGregor in a bare-knuckle ring is the kind of booking that sells itself, and I’d watch every second. But the plan as reported depends on a UFC exit nobody has scheduled yet, and the only fight McGregor actually took this week was against a 20-second video clip. Until someone puts a date on that last UFC fight, BKFC is a lane he’s pointing at from the parking lot.
