For every jab Conor McGregor has had recently, the UFC featherweight champion Max Holloway has had a counter. This has been going on for months and seems to have no stopping point in sight. Giving his savvy Twitter fingers a rest, Holloway recently spoke at length about the social media feud and compares Conor McGregor to Uncle Rico from early 2000’s cult hit ‘Napoleon Dynamite’. That is, he’s living in the past.
“[Conor McGregor]’s been throwing the little jabs here and there. It’s like I said, retired fighters like talking about the past. They’re like your uncle when you’re at the barbecue and your uncle’s like, ‘Come here, boy, remember back in my day I could throw this pigskin over the mountain.’ That’s what they do. They talk about the past. They ain’t got nothing to look forward [to], so they talk about their past. That’s what the man’s doing. They can talk about the past all they want.”
You went from King of Ireland to King of “chicken”? Looking forward to the two strips meal coming April 7.
PS Shout out to the real fighting Irish. The ones who value whats in heart before whats on waist. Hawaii respects you and welcomes you with open arms https://t.co/kqyiAw3PDY— Max Holloway (@BlessedMMA) March 5, 2018
“They know who the toughest fight is. They know who the best is. The best is ‘Blessed,’ and when [McGregor]’s ready to put his big boy pants back on, come to a ‘real fight’ in his phrase, then we’ll be here. There’s a lot of match-ups for him and it looks like a lot of people want to see Holloway vs. [McGregor] 2. I’m right here. I told you guys before, if the fight never happens, it’s never on our end. You guys know I’m down and willing to fight anyone. I’m the only guy talking about wanting to fight Khabib [Nurmagomedov] and I’m not even in the man’s weight class. We’ll see what happens.” — Max Holloway speaking FloCombat.
Conor McGregor’s big resurgence in the media came from his willingness to step in to fight Frankie Edgar at UFC 222 allegedly for a new 165-pound title. But when the injury was on the other foot per se, Holloway was vocal about fighting any of the top lightweights in order to stay on the UFC 218 card. While we may never see McGregor rematch Max Holloway, at least this back-and-forth is pretty fun.
This article first appeared on BJPenn.com on 3/7/2018.