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Conor McGregor hits the heavy bag during a media workout at the UFC Performance Institute on August 11, 2017 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Controversial Irish fighter Conor McGregor announced his return to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) after not taking part in the sport for the last two years.
UFC 229 on October 6 in Las Vegas will be the setting for McGregor against Russian lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov, with UFC President Dana White promising over the weekend that it will be the “biggest fight in the history of the company.”
Negotiations appeared to have stalled for this grudge match, with undefeated Nurmagomedov demanding to renegotiate his UFC contract, suggesting he doesn’t need to fight McGregor, but if the company wanted it to happen, it needed to be worth it.
White is already doing his best to hype the fight, saying this meeting could provide a new pay-per-view record for UFC. “In the 2 million ballpark,” White said to Canadian Sports Network TSN when asked about potential pay-per-view sales. “We’re looking at 2 million pay-per-view buys.”
McGregor’s last Mixed Martial Arts outing in November 2016 against Eddie Alvarez on the fight card of UFC 205, drew an estimated 1.3 million PPV buys, according to MMA site Tapology.
That fight saw 30-year-old McGregor knock out Alvarez to win the lightweight title and become the first fighter to hold two UFC belts at the same time.
Since then, his only prize fight has been a lucrative boxing bout against Floyd Mayweather which he lost, but still walked away with a reported $100 million purse.
More recently, McGregor pleaded guilty in New York last month to a misdemeanour disorderly conduct charge for throwing a hand truck at a bus full of fighters, including Nurmagomedov in Brooklyn in April.
