"It Has to Be Holloway": McGregor Demands Trilogy for His Final UFC Fight

Conor McGregor had one name ready when the question came, and he did not hesitate. Asked at the post-event press conference in Glasgow on Saturday night who he wants for the final fight on his UFC contract, the Irishman gave the same answer three times over.

"It has to be Holloway," McGregor said, leaning into the microphone at the BKFC 96 presser. "It has to be. Just do the thing again. The guy didn't engage once. He is the one that called for the stoppage of the fight."

It was the clearest statement yet about how the biggest star in mixed martial arts intends to close his UFC career. McGregor has one fight left on his deal, and he wants it to be a third meeting with Max Holloway, the man who stopped him in barely a minute at UFC 329 in Las Vegas in July.

That night still gnaws at him. The rematch was supposed to be a generational occasion, thirteen years after McGregor beat Holloway on points in Boston in 2013, in only his second UFC fight. Instead it was over almost before it started. McGregor threw a jumping kick at the opening bell, tore ligaments in his right knee, and the fight was waved off after 69 seconds with Holloway declared the winner by stoppage. McGregor has disputed the ending ever since, insisting Holloway called for the referee to step in and claiming he would have beaten him on one leg.

"I won. He doesn't wanna fight. Or I would have done him on my one leg," McGregor said in Glasgow. "He wasn't coming near me. It was just so shocking and so heartbreaking to me. I'm still dealing with it. But it has to be Holloway. Come on. Just dust it off. Re-do it. I'm on my way back."

The timeline he laid out was just as specific. McGregor underwent surgery on the knee in August and is now three months into his recovery. He has been through this before, tearing his knee in the first Holloway fight in 2013 and returning within nine months, and he expects a similar road back now. "What's it now? November? Three months I am over surgery," he said. "I done this injury before and returned within nine months. So nine months is pre-summer. So I just wanna go again and again."

He had already pointed at International Fight Week in the summer of 2027 as the stage for the trilogy, posting about it in the days after UFC 329. After that final UFC fight, the path is already mapped: McGregor intends to move into bare-knuckle boxing with BKFC, the promotion he part-owns and whose Glasgow event he had flown in to support. BKFC president David Feldman has made the condition plain, telling reporters McGregor needs to look good in his last UFC outing before the bare-knuckle talks get serious.

For his part, Holloway has already said publicly he would accept a third fight, so the obstacle is not the opponent. It is the calendar, the knee, and the UFC itself, which has announced nothing. McGregor also used the long, freewheeling press conference to warn lesser fighters off his name, saying only world-calibre fighters with real accolades should be calling him out at all.

Whether the UFC gives him what he wants is the question now. McGregor is 38, coming off surgery, and still the biggest draw the sport has. A trilogy with Holloway, settled properly this time, would be the kind of farewell the promotion rarely gets to stage. McGregor, for one, has made up his mind.