Conor McGregor dropped the clearest hint yet that he has suffered an injury ahead of his expected withdrawal from UFC 303.
McGregor is due to take on Michael Chandler in Las Vegas on June 29 but the fight has been thrown into doubt with an announcement expected within days. McGregor pulled out of a Dublin press conference last week with no explanation but the Irishman is understood to have suffered an injury.
The UFC are attempting to replace either McGregor or the entire main event at just over two weeks' notice but there is a lack of suitable candidates. McGregor has remained silent on rumours of his injury but took to social media to post an old video which he quickly deleted.
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"I think the more resistance you train with, the less movement and the more injury. The less resistance you train with, the more movement and the less injury," McGregor says in the clip. "A band balances itself. You might be going a little bit lighter, but the positions you wouldn't be if everyone was tense. Everyone was trying to win every round."
The fresh doubt surrounding McGregor's first fight for three years is in contrast to an update Chandler offered at the end of last week. Asked what the situation was with the fight, Chandler said he was focused on his training camp, noting he has "got this fight coming up".
The former Bellator champion continued to play coy, before confirming "the fight’s happening. Obviously where we are there’s a lot of speculation, but yeah, the fight is on, June 29, it’s happening."
McGregor has not fought since he broke his leg at the end of the first round of his third fight with Dustin Poirier in July 2021 and now looks set to face a further spell on the sidelines. The Dubliner has not won a fight since he knocked out Donald Cerrone inside 40 seconds in 2020.
His last win before that came against Eddie Alvarez in 2016 when McGregor was crowned a two-weight world champion and the first simultaneous champion in the UFC's history.