UFC 329 was a hotly anticipated event as Conor McGregor's return from a five-year absence undoubtedly drove interest in the International Fight Week card. Unfortunately, it was mere seconds into McGregor's main event fight with Max Holloway when the event came to a halt due to yet another McGregor injury.
In the main event of UFC 329 from Las Vegas' T-Mobile Arena, McGregor attempted to come out with an aggressive approach, throwing a leaping kick just moments after the opening bell sounded. However, upon landing, McGregor suffered Dana White said doctors are suspecting is a torn ACL in his right knee.
McGregor collapsed to the canvas several times while trying to strike with Holloway, ultimately leading to the fight being stopped just 69 seconds after it began.
The result may have been deflating for the International Fight Week crowd; however, it was only one of 14 fights at UFC 329, and there is plenty to take away from the entire card.
This should be a wrap on Conor McGregor's career
McGregor suffered a broken left leg against Dustin Poirier in his prior fight at UFC 264 -- one day shy of five years ago -- coming into Saturday night. He tried to open the Holloway fight with a flying kick, which signaled the beginning of the end. After McGregor landed, his right knee was clearly compromised. The broadcast suggested McGregor's leg may have been weakened before the fight -- unclear footage showed him possibly favoring it at the end of his walkout -- but it quickly became apparent that his leg was too compromised to continue after that initial strike, bringing the fight to a quick end.
McGregor has suffered multiple injuries in recent years, which, combined with what is now a 1-4 run in his five most recent trips to the Octagon, should mark the end of his career. There's no denying that McGregor was a megastar at his peak, but it feels like he is a shell of his once-great self, and his body has no intention of cooperating with him to get back to even a slight degree of what he was when he became UFC's first simultaneous two-division champion.
In the fight's aftermath, Holloway called for another rematch with McGregor, which is certainly a "big money fight," but it's hard to pretend there's much drama in how it would play out, and there's no telling whether McGregor's body can physically handle the strain of fighting a legitimate fighter.
Paddy Pimblett has found his redemption
Pimblett suffered a brutal loss to Justin Gaethje in an interim lightweight championship bout to kick off the "Paramount Era" for the UFC. After Gaethje defeated Ilia Topuria on the South Lawn of the White House, the Pimblett loss didn't seem so bad. On Saturday, Pimblett faced a red-hot Benoit Saint Denis and wasted little time in securing the choke to finish the fight and get the biggest win of his career.
Pimblett predicted precisely how the fight would transpire when speaking to CBS Sports' Brian Campbell earlier this week: "I can't see how he beats me. He's going to try and take me down and get choked, or he's going to try to stand with me and get knocked out. Justin Gaethje is a completely different animal from him, and that's just a fact."
Saint Denis tried to take Pimblett down, and he got choked out. Forget the Gaethje loss, Pimblett is truly a player in the lightweight division, which was made clear when he snapped Saint Denis' impressive four-fight winning streak.
Former champions are trending in opposite directions
Two former UFC champions competed on the UFC 329 prelims with the results trending in divergent paths. Cody Garbrandt was starched by Adrian Yañez in the first round. The knockout loss represented Garbrandt's sixth stoppage loss (five by KO or TKO) since winning the bantamweight championship from Dominick Cruz in 2016. Grabrandt has only mixed four victories in with eight losses from that point. It's hard to see what the path forward is for Garbrandt after yet another loss. He just turned 35, and a move up in weight isn't going to happen, especially when bantamweights are melting him, but a move down in weight seems unrealistic as well, so it's hard to see a way for Garbrandt to move forward in the Octagon.
On the flip side, former middleweight champion Robert Whittaker made his light heavyweight debut and looked impressive in a third-round stoppage of longtime UFC staple Nikita Krylov. Whittaker brought his trademark speed and boxing to the 205-pound division, and even when looking a bit winded, he was consistently beating Krylov to the punch until landing a crushing right hand that caused Krylov to quit in the final round, apparently the result of a jaw injury. While Garbrandt's time appears to have come to an end, Whittaker may have found new life as a light heavyweight.
Gable Steveson is far from a true contender
Steveson, the 2020 Olympic gold medalist and two-time NCAA champion heavyweight wrestler, made his UFC debut on Saturday, scoring a first-round stoppage of Elisha Ellison. It's easy to get excited about Steveson as a contender. Beyond his pedigree, he has appeared explosive in the cage as a professional mixed martial artist. But Steveson had some rough moments against Ellison, a fighter who is barely at the UFC level.
We've seen some blue-chip prospects with elite wrestling backgrounds stumble in their MMA careers, most notably Aaron Pico, and even Kevin Jackson back in the day. Steveson has elite-level skills and seems to have adapted well to striking, but rushing him into fights with competent UFC-level heavyweights would be a bad idea based on what we saw on Saturday.
Steveson might be able to dominate if he embraces his wrestling, but he seemed to want to be a striker first against Ellison, and falling into that trap -- or wrestling without thinking about the threat of submissions -- poses a big threat to his rise as a UFC heavyweight. Still, he showed some promise in his first UFC fight, certainly more than he did in WWE and the NFL.
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