T-Mobile Arena, the site of Conor McGregor’s Upcoming UFC Return – Source: Unsplash
Five years is a long time in any sport. In the UFC, it can feel like a geological age — titles change hands, rivalries are born and buried, legacies are cemented and questioned. On July 11 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Conor McGregor ends the wait.
UFC 329 puts “The Notorious” back in the Octagon opposite Max Holloway in a welterweight main event nearly 13 years in the making, and it represents the most compelling return the sport has staged since McGregor himself was the new name dismantling the old order. His last appearance ended in a broken leg in the first round of his trilogy with Dustin Poirier in July 2021 — the second consecutive stoppage loss to a man he once dispatched without appearing to break a sweat.
Both men are genuine all-time greats. Both men have unfinished business with the sport’s upper echelon. But should McGregor get his hand raised on fight night, the question becomes: what exactly does this victory unlock? The answer involves three names.
Islam Makhachev
Sixteen wins from seventeen fights at 155 pounds, four title defenses — more than any other lightweight in UFC history — and then the most audacious career pivot in recent memory. Makhachev vacated the lightweight strap in May 2025 before storming into Madison Square Garden six months later and dominating Jack Della Maddalena over five rounds to claim the welterweight title by unanimous decision — becoming the 11th double champion in UFC history. He hasn’t fought since, with an August 2026 return being discussed alongside a potential title defense against another Irishman, Ian Machado Garry.
Both online media sites and fans alike are under no illusion about just how good the defending champion is. In fact, the popular Ignition outlet predicted at the start of the year that Makhachev would still be the reigning welterweight king at the end of 2026, and as the calendar turns into June, the defending champ is halfway toward ensuring that the Aussie site is correct in its proclamations.
But it’s not Makhachev’s resume that makes this fight arguably the biggest the UFC can make. Is there a more loaded potential matchup in the sport right now than McGregor walking into the welterweight division and finding Makhachev waiting? Makhachev is the long-time friend, apprentice, and student of a certain Khabib Nurmagomedov. Yes, the same Khabib that submitted McGregor at UFC 229 — still the biggest event in promotion history.
The post-fight brawl saw Makhachev among those who entered the cage and attacked McGregor’s team before officials could intervene. That personal history doesn’t fade. The animosity between the Dagestani camp and McGregor’s entourage has been kept alive in the years since, a slow burn that never fully extinguished. McGregor stepping in as the man who could rewrite the Khabib chapter by defeating Khabib’s closest friend and protégé — that is a marketing campaign that writes itself.
Ilia Topuria
Three finishes. Three former world champions. Each of them stopped in brutal fashion. The run of back-to-back-to-back stoppages over Alexander Volkanovski, Max Holloway, and Charles Oliveira is arguably one of the best three-fight stretches in UFC history. It culminated at UFC 317 in June 2025 when Topuria knocked out Oliveira to claim the vacant lightweight championship, becoming the 10th multi-division champion in history — and the first to achieve that status while maintaining an undefeated record.
He enters his first lightweight title defense at UFC Freedom 250 against Justin Gaethje as a -750 favorite, with a 17-0 record and a nine-year age advantage over his opponent. But El Matador is under no illusions as to who the money fight truly is.
While Topuria’s next clash is a main event on the lawn of the White House, a McGregor challenge carries a different kind of electricity entirely. Topuria is Spanish-Georgian, undefeated, and already drawing the kind of cultural comparisons to McGregor’s own peak-era swagger that the sport can’t manufacture artificially.
The contrast in styles — McGregor’s precision movement and surgical left hand against Topuria’s explosive finishing power — and the collision of outsized personalities would guarantee enormous PPV numbers. More importantly, it is the fight that definitively answers whether McGregor’s return is a genuine title run or an extended nostalgia act.
Paddy Pimblett
At UFC 314 last April, Pimblett stopped the legendary Michael Chandler in the third round with a series of 12-to-6 elbows from mount — his most impressive UFC win to that point, improving him to 7-0 in the promotion, and the 53-9 advantage in significant strikes he’d built through the first two rounds showed he had battered Chandler into submission before the stoppage ever arrived.
The step up to UFC 324 in January 2026 brought his first defeat — a unanimous decision loss to Justin Gaethje in an interim lightweight title fight, the judges scoring it 48-47, 49-46, and 49-46 — but the manner of the loss only enhanced his reputation; he survived knockdowns, stormed back to put Gaethje in genuine danger late in the fifth, was showered with cheers heading into that final round, and even drew a tribute from Gaethje himself in what became an instant classic.
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Now he’s set to fight Benoit Saint-Denis in the co-main event of UFC 329 itself — on the same card as McGregor vs. Holloway, perfectly positioned to make a live callout if he wins.
McGregor vs. Pimblett is the biggest British Isles fight in the sport’s history. The matchup doesn’t need manufactured heat. Reports of a physical altercation between the two during UFC London fight week in 2022 ensure the bad blood is real; Ireland vs. Liverpool, two of combat sports’ most passionate fanbases, two of the sport’s most naturally gifted microphone artists. The UFC rarely stages a scenario this neatly: the callout candidate fighting on the same card, with a live Octagon, a worldwide audience, and a reason to speak.