Former two-division UFC champion Conor McGregor has been on a year-long break from MMA, but he promises to return next year.
McGregor invests in various business ventures, but one of his most prominent is his part-time ownership of BKFC. The fighter has occasionally teased about competing in the promotion, but now it seems he is serious about his passion for BKFC. The Irishman promised to take up his gloves and fight in BKFC after his current contract with UFC expires.
BKFC president and founder David Feldman is quite thrilled with McGregor’s statement.
“Unless he’s the best salesman in the world, the talks that we’ve had it’s like ‘I’m fighting here,’” Feldman told MMA Fighting. “I’m like, yeah, OK. He [said], ‘I’m fighting here.’
“I go, ‘Why wouldn’t you fight here?’ Because you have equity in the company and if you fight here, you’ll probably make more money than anywhere else in the world because of what it’s going to do for the company. So I truly believe what you said — I think 100 percent he fights here.”
McGregor has been slated to fight Michael Chandler, but the Irishman has been away from the ring for a long time due to injuries. “Iron,” who has spent two years waiting for McGregor, has finally decided to fight Charles Oliveira. The news came as a shock to McGregor, and he has suggested a co-promotion with BKFC. However, Feldman doubts this collaboration will ever happen.
“The UFC doesn’t need us,” Feldman said. “They don’t need us. We need to [co-promote] with them. They don’t need to [co-promote] with us, which would be phenomenal — they’re not going to do it. If they do Conor McGregor with anything, he doesn’t need to [co-promote] with us.”
McGregor has been quite committed to BKFC, a positive shareholder, and has constantly promoted BKFC. The BKFC president was pretty surprised with McGregor’s commitment, as he expected him to be a behind-the-scenes investor.
“He’s been unbelievable,” Feldman said about McGregor. “He’s really been a partner so far. Blew away my expectations. Doing the interviews, he did the post-fight press conference, he’s meeting the guys. He’s going over and hugging the fighters and telling them, ‘Come on let’s do this!’ He’s sitting there ringside, cheering for them. He’s posting all the time about it. And he’s all in.
“We had a great talk this weekend. It was just me and him talking and I said to him ‘I don’t know if you really believe me, but this is going to be the biggest thing in the world in a few years, there’s nothing that’s going to be bigger than this, trust me.’ He goes, ‘It’s going to be two years.’”
Feldman is quite pleased with BKFC’s growth over the years. He knows it may take some time before BKFC goes toe-to-toe with UFC, but he believes that with McGregor as an addition, the promotion has the capability to grow even more prominent and gain more ground.
“[Conor] sees the vision,” Feldman said. “Are we ever going to be the biggest combat sport in the world? Probably not, honestly, but we’re definitely going to be one of the biggest. Absolutely. The numbers just keep going up.”
