“Is he just chasing that high or is he chasing that dream?”
That’s Joe Rogan on Conor McGregor, per Operation Sports, and it’s the most honest thing anyone attached to the UFC has said about the Irishman in a long time. Rogan didn’t pick a side in that headline. I will. It’s the high. It has been the high for a while, and the failed comeback at UFC 329 is the receipt.
Five Years for This
ClutchPoints and Yahoo Sports both framed this as McGregor’s five-year-long comeback. Sit with that number for a second. Five years is long enough for a prospect to go from regional shows to a title shot. It’s long enough for whole divisions to turn over. McGregor spent that stretch in and out of comeback mode, and when the return finally happened on July 12 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, he walked into a fight with Max Holloway that Bloody Elbow summed up in one word: failed.
Here’s what stings. The UFC 329 card was an absolute banger. Yahoo Sports noted it was one of only three events before UFC 332 to produce seven first-round knockouts. Paddy Pimblett submitted Benoit Saint Denis on that card and climbed right back into the lightweight mix. The night delivered. The guy whose name sold it didn’t.
NDTV Sports described Rogan as revisiting McGregor’s biggest career shift, and that’s the frame I keep coming back to. At some point the job changed. The guy who used to show up to win belts now shows up for the walk.
What the Dream Actually Looks Like
If McGregor were chasing the dream, what would that even be? He’s a former two-division champion. He already has the 13-second knockout of Jose Aldo that won him the featherweight title, a finish so iconic that Pimblett is still using it as a measuring stick for his own rivalry. Pimblett told Kolos MMA that a TUF season against Ilia Topuria would let him get in Topuria’s head, adding, “I’d beat him just as fast as Conor McGregor beat Jose Aldo.”
That’s the McGregor I miss. The guy who called his shot, named the round and cashed it. That version of him was chasing things you could actually measure, like belts and a place in history, with the bonus of proving a whole lot of people wrong along the way.
The high is a different animal. The high is the press conference, the hotel lobby crowds, the walkout music hitting while 20,000 people lose their minds. You can get every ounce of that without winning. You just need a date on the calendar. That’s why five years of near-misses and a failed comeback haven’t produced a retirement announcement. The dream punishes you for losing. The high pays you for showing up.
Think Randy the Ram in The Wrestler. The man couldn’t stay away, and the reason had nothing to do with titles.
The Contagion Is Real
This stops being only McGregor’s problem because of how much gravity he still pulls. Daniel Cormier said he’d read that lightweight champion Justin Gaethje claimed he would vacate his belt to fight Conor. Cormier, to his credit, shut that down fast.
“It would harm his legacy to give away the belt & put value in the money fight over being the champ,” Cormier said, before conceding it “probably was just talking” and pointing out that Gaethje has options like Arman Tsarukyan and Topuria.
I’ll be the first to say I love a big-money crossover fight. I’m not here to wag a finger at anybody cashing a McGregor check. But when the guy holding the lightweight strap is even floating the idea of handing it back for a fighter coming off a failed comeback, that tells you McGregor’s real product these days is the event around him. The fighting is the part we have to sit through.
The Sport Moved On Without Him
Check out what happened the night before Rogan’s comments made the rounds. UFC 332 in Salt Lake City got trashed as one of the weakest numbered cards in recent memory, lost Valentina Shevchenko to injury, and then went out and set a UFC record with 11 knockouts, nine of them in Round 1, plus 16 knockdowns, according to Yahoo Sports. Payton Talbott dropped Deiveson Figueiredo at 2:09 of Round 1 in the co-main. Damian Pinas got called the single biggest power puncher in UFC history by Cormier.
None of those people needed five years to get ready. None of them needed a fight week to justify their existence. They showed up and punched holes in people.
That’s the contrast Rogan was getting at, whether he meant to or not. The roster is stacked with guys chasing the dream. McGregor is the one guy who can afford to chase the high, and the promotion has spent half a decade letting him.
The lightweight title has a real plan now. Gaethje is expected to defend against Tsarukyan early next year, with Topuria and Pimblett circling. If Conor wants the dream, that’s the line he gets in. If he wants the high, he can have it from a cageside seat like the rest of us.
