Conor McGregor has been teasing his return to combat sports for the better part of two years with potential matchups awaiting him in the UFC, or possibly boxing Logan Paul, but perhaps the most interesting wrinkle has been his sudden interest in a bare-knuckle fight.
The Irish superstar became a part owner in BKFC in 2024 and he’s been a mainstay building the promotion ever since. He shows up at events, participates in press conferences and rarely misses the chance to tout exciting fights or jaw-dropping knockouts, but McGregor has also repeated told BKFC founder David Feldman that he plans on competing there one day.
This past weekend at BKFC KnuckleMania 5, McGregor went as far as facing off with Jeremy Stephens after his win over Eddie Alvarez and once again reiterated that he wants to take off the gloves and throw down in bare-knuckle.
“I would love to see him do it,” Matt Brown said about McGregor competing in bare-knuckle on the latest episode of The Fighter vs The Writer. “I think it would be amazing. Even though it’s probably not going to happen, I would love to see it.
“Him and Jeremy Stephens, I think there would be a lot of great hype for that and I think it would be a good fight, too. I think it would be a really interesting fight, especially in a bare-knuckle style.”
The biggest roadblock isn’t McGregor’s willingness to compete in bare-knuckle but rather an exclusive contract with the UFC that still has two fights remaining on the deal. McGregor recently revealed that the UFC nixed initial talks he had for the boxing match against Paul after teasing that an ultra-wealthy family in India was interested in footing the bill for that fight.
That’s why it seems unlikely that the UFC would allow McGregor to compete in bare-knuckle, but Brown says that is by far the most interesting opportunity available to the former two-division champion at this stage of his career.
“I think that’s a no-brainer. That’s by far the most exciting Conor McGregor fight out there right now,” Brown argued. “Does that happen? I guess it’s a little bit unlikely but maybe the UFC gets behind it. He did the boxing match with Floyd Mayweather. Maybe [the UFC] gets behind it. I think Conor would love to do it primarily for the reason you don’t have to get in the same shape, right? You’ve only got to throw hands and it’s five, two-minute rounds. He would love that. The conditioning is completely different.
“Stylistically, I don’t think he has a terrible style for bare-knuckle. It would be interesting. You don’t really know until they get in there. Like I would have never thought Ben Rothwell had a great style for bare-knuckle. Jeremy Stephens obviously has a great style for bare-knuckle, but he was one of those guys I would be concerned he would break his hands. He throws for the fences every time, and I’m like dude, you are definitely going to break your hands in bare-knuckle.”
Thus far, Stephens and Ben Rothwell have combined for a perfect 7-0 record in BKFC with both winning in the main and co-main events this past weekend.
In addition to a longstanding feud with Stephens that dates back to an infamous interaction at a UFC press conference in 2016, McGregor has also shown interest in possible facing Mike Perry, who has earned the title of “King of Violence” since first arriving in BKFC.
Perry has become one of the most marketable fighters on the planet mostly due to his fights in BKFC where he’s rattled off five straight wins including finishes over former UFC champions like Alvarez and Luke Rockhold.
As much as Brown appreciates McGregor sharing the ring with Stephens in a bare-knuckle fight, he knows the buildup around a potential showdown against Perry might be the most promotable fight in all of combat sports.
“F*ck the fight, that’s the best f*cking media tour in history!” Brown said about McGregor vs. Perry. “That’s easily the best media tour you could ask for! Even if they don’t fight. If they just say they’re going to fight and do a media tour. Who cares if they fight? That’s the greatest press conference I could possibly imagine.”
Brown says it’s really not all that difficult to figure out which fight would get fans most excited if the options were McGregor facing someone like Michael Chandler in the UFC, a boxing match against Paul or throwing down in a bare-knuckle brawl with Perry.
“You know the answer to that. It’s going to be Mike Perry all day,” Brown said. “Again, if we do a media tour with all three of those, which one do you want to see the most? Logan Paul would be fun, too. It would probably just get stupid, and we’d be like that was cheesy, you made this shit up, you scripted this.
“But him and Mike Perry, they don’t need to script anything. They don’t need to come up with [anything] crazy. They’re the craziest motherf*ckers out there already.”
For all the intrigue that would surround McGregor actually fighting in BKFC, Brown admits the novelty sits near the top of the list because truth be told he’s already done everything else.
The curiosity and the potential for violence in a McGregor bare-knuckle fight just trump anything else available to him right now.
“We’ve seen him fight in MMA,” Brown said. “We’ve seen it. It’s a story that’s been written. We’ve seen the end of his career in MMA as we know it. We haven’t seen him in bare-knuckle.”