UFC Lightweight Champion Conor McGregor hasn’t stepped inside of the Octagon since he defeated Eddie Alvarez to win the gold at UFC 205.
The one thing that McGregor feels has helped him throughout his career is that he hasn’t taken a lot of damage.
“I’m 29 years of age and I have climbed to the very, very, very top and with…not with relative ease…I’ve put in a lot of hard work,” he said on The Late Late Show. “I’ve put in crazy amounts of hard work and most people do not see the wars upon wars in the gym just to get to the fight. I’ve gone through strenuous camp, after camp, after camp, but still – compared to other people in the fight game – I’m still relatively undamaged. I’ve never been dropped. I was wobbled once. In the Mayweather fight, it was fatigue – I wasn’t wobbled, I didn’t see stars once. The only time I was ever wobbled once in a contest was in the Diaz 1 fight. And that’s it...it’s the only heavy shot I’ve ever taken. I’ve continued to climb and I’m still very young in the game. Although I’ve climbed to the top, I’m still very young from a damage-taking standpoint, so I will continue to see where it goes.”
McGregor has never been knocked in as a professional MMA fighter, but he did lose his pro boxing debut by tenth round TKO to Floyd Mayweather.
At the moment, the UFC Lightweight Champion hasn’t determined just when he will call it a career.
“I could cut it off yesterday, you know what I mean? I don’t really have a date and a time and an age because I use it from a damage-taking standpoint. How many blows have I taken? That’s the true danger in combat sport,” says McGregor.
Even though his next bout in the UFC has yet to be announced, the longtime coach for McGregor in John Kavanagh says Tony Ferguson seems like the next logical opponent.
