Conor McGregor is an Irish MMA fighter and former UFC featherweight and lightweight double champion. Right now it’s tough to predict when the former two-division UFC champion will compete again considering he’s still not enrolled in the promotion’s anti-doping program, which will require at least six months of drug testing before he’s allowed to fight.
According to former UFC lightweight Paul Felder, no matter when McGregor fights again in 2023, he will draw a massive audience, but he is not convinced that will actually happen. "I think he’ll always matter, as long as he’s at least teasing the idea of a return but that’s what worries me,” Felder explained on The Fighter vs.
The Writer, reports MMAFighting. “He’s so busy. He’s filming Road House and all that kind of stuff. I don’t know if that is over or not. It’s tough." “You’re on yachts. You’ve got mansions.
You’ve got all this stuff. You’ve got businesses that you’re working on. You’re coming back from a huge injury. You take yourself out of the USADA testing pool. You’ve got to wait to get back in it. I don’t know.
I don’t know if we’re going to see him in 2023. To be completely honest with you”.
McGregor is getting passed by
“I don’t mean this in any disrespect but I do think the division is just passing him by badly,” Felder said.
“I think it’s passing a lot of us. I’m older than him by a few years at least but this next generation of fighters, if you’re not in there mixing it up with them and on the mats with those types of dudes everyday — I know he’s training — but he’s going to have to definitely hope for fights like Michael Chandler, who’s a beast but those are the guys you can still compete with.
“Let’s say he hadn’t gone and done the [Floyd] Mayweather thing and just strictly stuck to MMA, I think he would have been a dangerous champion and done some damage for a long time,” Felder said.