Perhaps one of the biggest questions looming over 2025 is whether or not Conor McGregor actually returns to fight again.
The Irish superstar, who was booked to face Michael Chandler back in July until a broken McGregor toe derailed that fight, hasn’t competed since 2021 when he suffered a gruesome leg injury in a trilogy bout against Dustin Poirier. While McGregor has consistently teased his return to action, the dates provided by UFC CEO Dana White have progressively gotten later with the most recent estimate left at some time in 2025.
Then, out of nowhere, McGregor dropped a bombshell when he claimed talks were ongoing for a potential boxing match against Logan Paul. But retired UFC welterweight Matt Brown wasn’t all that shocked by the move, especially since he’s had doubts about McGregor returning to MMA for quite some time.
“Does he fight at all? He probably gets in a street fight, I’ll call that one,” Brown said on the latest episode of The Fighter vs. The Writer. “Does he fight Logan Paul? That’s a good question. I don’t know. I’m going to say I don’t know.
“Does he fight in the UFC? I think that’s a clear no. Does he fight outside the UFC? I think it’s always possible for him to fight outside the UFC, if the UFC allows it. I don’t know if the UFC is going to get behind it. I just don’t know how those deals are going to play out. But does he fight in the UFC? No, and I’m going to leave it at that. He won’t be in the UFC. I don’t think he’ll fight in the UFC ever again.”
There was a time when Brown was almost alone in his opinion about McGregor’s future but the constant delays in his planned return to fighting have led to a lot of doubts about whether or not the former two-division UFC champion would ever compete again.
Outside-the-cage issues have also continued to plague McGregor, which include the result of a civil lawsuit in his native Ireland in which a jury found him liable for sexual assault.
It’s impossible to know if legal troubles make it more or less likely that McGregor would fight again but Brown’s doubts center around him returning to MMA rather than taking another boxing match like the one he had with Floyd Mayweather back in 2017.
“I’d like to see him fight again,” Brown said. “I’d like to see him get his life together, get back in the gym and do his thing but how long ago did I originally say he’s not fighting again? I think it was at latest early 2024. I haven’t had confidence he was going to fight in the UFC for a long time. But I think it’s always possible for him to fight outside the UFC if he can work out whatever deal with the UFC. He’s still under contract. I think that’s always a possibility.
“There’s so much money to be made doing a Logan Paul fight. Of course, he would do that. He doesn’t have to come back and fight a f*cking Islam [Makhachev] or something or Dustin Poirier or [Nate] Diaz or anything. He just going and boxing a guy who is not a pro boxer.”
Brown knows the risks involved in a boxing match with a social influencer like Paul isn’t nearly as great as taking on one of the top fighters in the world in the UFC.
Add to that, he recognizes the draw for McGregor vs. Paul comes down to the promotion more than the fight itself.
“The whole interest of him fighting Logan Paul, it has nothing to do with the fight. It’s the buildup to the fight that’s fun,” Brown said. “The fight itself we already know is going to be stupid but the buildup, that’s the story. It’s not the fight.
“If he comes back and fights in the UFC, it’s not really about the buildup. There will be buildup and all that if he comes back and fights [Michael] Chandler or just somebody. Yeah, there will be buildup but it’s the fight we care about then. To be honest at this point in Conor’s career, I think I would be more interested in seeing a cool buildup to a f*cking Logan Paul thing. The situation Conor’s in, the way he lives now, the life that he has, it’s more interesting, I think.”
It’s impossible to know if the UFC would get behind McGregor taking a boxing match rather than returning to the octagon but there’s no denying the potential financial windfall from a fight against Paul.
That’s another reason why Brown has more faith in McGregor doing the boxing match with Paul in 2025 than seeing “The Notorious” back in the UFC.
“Realistically, the UFC will get their cut out of it,” Brown said. “They’ll be happy. It kind of works for everyone.”
