PFL's Brendan Loughnane believes Conor McGregor warrants special respect for persevering MMA, despite making millions outside the sport
Friday 6 August 2021 08:47, UK
As Manchester's featherweight contender Brendan Loughnane continues in his quest for the $1m prize on offer for The PFL's season champions, he has ruminated, with thoughts of gratitude, on the influence of Conor McGregor in bringing attention and money to the sport of MMA.
Loughnane has a semi-final showdown with Russian Movlid "Killer" Khaybulaev on August 27 and is two wins away from that life-changing payday. But he says he's already making good money after two victories this season, and believes that McGregor has changed the game for all MMA Fighters.
McGregor, a two-weight UFC Champion, topped Forbes' recent list of the highest earning athletes in the world, but has courted controversy, with unsavoury remarks to Dustin Poirier in the aftermath of their trilogy match and most recently with tweets about Khabib Nurmagomedov's late father, which McGregor would delete. But Loughnane (21-3) is unequivocal that scores of fighters, across organisations, owe their pay packets to 'Notorious'.
"He has moved the bar for us all, he really has. He's moved the needle. Say what you want about Conor McGregor, he's helped us all in loads of aspects of the sport. I doubt Donald Trump or Justin Bieber would be at these shows if McGregor had not entered the UFC, so you've got to thank him for that," Loughnane told Sky Sports.
"Whether you like him or don't like what he's doing now, he's transcended the sport and one person did that alone and that's a fact."
Loughnane had predicted McGregor would avenge his January loss to Poirier in their recent match and maintains the Irishman could have recovered from a difficult first round to get the better of Poirier were it not for the broken leg. He also believes the suggestion from McGregor that he suffered a fractured bone in training to precede the tibia break illustrates the remarkable psychology of the champ-champ.
"We've seen Conor come back from adversity and win fights. Against (Chad) Mendes, he had his back against the wall, came back and stop Mendes later in the fight. It's hard to say what would have happened, but if the claims are true and he actually did go in with a fractured leg, we're talking about a whole different type of human here," Loughnane said.
"To walk into a cage fight with one leg - if that's true - I don't understand how anyone gets through that. We're different humans as MMA fighters, the stuff that we go through to get to the cage and in the cage is very, very different to what people see on TV."
At 31, Loughnane believes he personally has two or three years in the elite echelon of MMA competition. But with the prospect of becoming a millionaire by autumn, he has been considering what the impact of material security might be on his desire to put his health and well-being on the line in the heat of battle. And with that consideration in mind, he echoes the recent comments of UFC commentator Joe Rogan who observed that McGregor warranted special respect for persevering in a brutal sport years on from having hundreds of millions in the bank.
"He (McGregor) put a saying out there a while ago, 'if half the roster had the money I had, they wouldn't be getting out of bed in the morning' or something along those lines. They certainly wouldn't be fighting and I agree with him. If I woke up, check my online banking and it said £300million, I would be like…"
"But I guess he's a warrior, born and bred, this is how he made his money. He's an Irish warrior and that's never going to go away. We are always going to be fighters no matter what, we've got something deep inside us that's burning in our stomachs and no amount of money can take that away."
