UFC Featherweight Champion Max Holloway and UFC Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor have clashed before, with McGregor getting the win at UFC Fight Night 26 in 2013.
If the two were to ever meet in the Octagon again, the UFC Featherweight Champion is promising to end the Irish fighter’s fairytale run.
“There’s this fairytale,” said Holloway on MMA Tonight. “Everybody’s talking about him as the champion and this and that but his last four fights he’s 2-2 , one of them being questionable. He could have been 1-3 right now if we’re being totally honest. At the end of the day, there’s this fairytale to him and this fairytale breaks if he fights someone like me and I beat him.”
Holloway hasn’t suffered a defeat since that loss to McGregor and he was also the first fighter to take the UFC Lightweight Champion the distance in the UFC.
The Hawaiian champion says the one thing he doesn’t like about McGregor is the way that he constantly runs his mouth.
“He runs his mouth, he talks the talk, and he’s been walking the walk, so touché to him. At the end of the day, when I talk I’m not saying stuff to try and hurt your feelings. When I speak, I speak facts and if you’re getting mad, it’s because you know it’s the truth. That guy tries to push it off a little bit more in a WWE way and that’s him, that’s fair play to him. He can do it, I can’t do that. I’m pretty sure that if a lot of people could do it, we’d be doing it. You can’t and you’ve got to respect someone like that. He does it his way, I’m doing it my way. When I start running my mouth I start running facts, I start giving guys numbers, I start giving guys ideas of where I come from and where I work. He just kind of wants to get under your skin but you can’t be mad at the guy, that’s his personality. I’m not a hater. I respect him. He’s on his grind and he’s using it and he’s getting his, so fair play to him," says Holloway.
Neither fighter has a bout booked at the moment yet, with McGregor last competing at The Money Fight and Holloway last competing at UFC 212.
