Former two division UFC champion Conor McGregor is back in action at UFC 229, challenging UFC Lightweight Champion Khabib Nurmagomedov.
Despite all of McGregor’s success inside and outside of the UFC, one thing UFC President Dana White believes is that the Irishman is underrated as a fighter.
“It’s funny to say this because of how popular he is and what a huge star he is, but I think Conor McGregor is one of the most underrated fighters in the UFC,” White said on UFC Unfiltered. “Every time Conor McGregor comes out to fight somebody new and it’s a wrestler or it’s whatever, this is the fight that Conor is going to lose. He said that he would knock out Jose Aldo the way he did it, he said he would do it in the first round.”
McGregor has held the lightweight and featherweight straps simultaneously in both the UFC and Cage Warriors.
White looks at how many past opponents were supposed to beat McGregor and how McGregor wound up defeating them instead.
“A lot of people picked him to lose to Eddie Alvarez because of Eddie Alvarez’s style and wrestling. Look how he looked there. Leading up to the fight when he fought Chad Mendes — Chad Mendes is a wrestler, everybody believed that he would do that. Then after [Conor] won everybody said that Chad Mendes didn’t have enough time to train for it. The list goes on and on,” says White.
UFC 229 takes place on Saturday, October 6 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada with Khabib Nurmagomedov and Conor McGregor headlining. Fightful is providing live coverage of the event, with a post-show podcast to follow.
