A former world champion has given their opinion on when Conor McGregor’s career trajectory shifted.
Even in the last couple of weeks, he’s been involved in some controversies that seem to sum up where he’s at in his career and life. The McGregor that a lot of his hardcore fans remember, in a lot of ways, simply doesn’t exist anymore in the way he once did. Even now, it’s hard to picture a world in which he actually gets back inside the Octagon.
Josh Thomson, who is a former Strikeforce world champion, recently weighed in on how it’s all played out.
Thomson’s view on McGregor
“He’s taken a shift. He’s the heel, and he’s always kind of been the heel, but people also admired him and looked up to him before.
“The Khabib fight really brought a negative out of him. I felt like he was afraid of Khabib. He knew there was a legitimate threat, and there was nothing he could do about it.
“There was nothing he thought for sure, ‘If I can catch him, I can knock him out sure’, but I think he knew that in a five-round fight, it was going to be very difficult.
“The things that came out of his mouth and the things he talked about and said about Khabib’s country, his dad, his village and his wife — unforgivable.”
Over the course of the last few years, the public perception of Conor McGregor has shifted quite dramatically. From his legal issues to some of his general actions, the Irishman doesn’t have quite as many fans as he once did. In fact, that’s probably putting it quite lightly.