Conor McGregor sounded off after a leg injury ended his comeback fight 69 seconds after it started.
“My head gasket is gone,’’ McGregor wrote on X after the fight. “Destroyed. I had no injury / injuries going into the fight. I was throwing kicks, planted and jumping, all throughout camp as well as backstage before the fight. This came out of nowhere. I am beyond dark here. I can only describe it as hell.’’
McGregor, who was fighting for the first time in five years, appeared to injury himself while landing after opening the fight with a leaping kick.
He fell three times before clutching his knee in pain and the referee stopped the fight at 1:09.
Paramount+, the UFC’s streaming partner, later in the broadcast showed video that raised questions of a possible preexisting injury. When McGregor took his sneakers off, he stumbled.
The moment took place before the pre-fight “pat down” designed to ensure safety and fair play.
“So hard to know if there was any sort of preexisting injury,’’ said Jon Anik, the UFC’s longtime play-by-play announcer, during the livestream.
The first UFC fighter to hold world titles in two divisions simultaneously hadn’t been the same force he was on his way to the top.
After starting his UFC career 9-1 while claiming world titles at featherweight and lightweight, McGregor saw his career take a dramatic turn after losing to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in a boxing match in 2017.
The lucrative payday from his blockbuster fight with Mayweather saw the Irishman appear less in the Octagon and more in courtrooms. Meanwhile, his MMA career had suffered in going 1-3, with all three of his losses coming by stoppage (once to Khabib Nurmagomedov and twice to Dustin Poirier).
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