UFC CEO Dana White believes Conor McGregor's superstardom is on the same level as some of the greatest, most recognizable athletes of all time, including former NFL quarterback Tom Brady and NBA legend Michael Jordan.
"This guy is a superstar in sports the way that Brady and Jordan and guys like that are superstars," White said Friday on CBS Sports before the UFC 329 ceremonial weigh-ins.
McGregor, the most famous fighter in mixed martial arts history, returns to the Octagon for the first time in five years Saturday in the UFC 329 main event. The 37-year-old Irishman will take on former featherweight champion Max Holloway in a welterweight bout at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
McGregor hasn't fought since breaking his leg in a loss to Dustin Poirier in July 2021. He was scheduled to return against Michael Chandler in 2024, but he broke his toe less than a month before the fight, putting his comeback on hold.
McGregor has headlined several of the biggest and most lucrative events in combat sports history, including his 2017 boxing match with Floyd Mayweather (4.3 million pay-per-view buys) and his 2018 UFC bout against Khabib Nurmagomedov (2.4 million buys).
Though McGregor has been away from the sport for half a decade, he is still MMA's biggest star. White told ESPN earlier this week that UFC 329 will break the record for biggest live gate in company history at $25 million.
White said he believes a McGregor win this weekend would mark one of the best comeback stories ever.
"If Conor McGregor can beat Max Holloway on Saturday, it's not hype that Conor's selling - it's one of the greatest comebacks ever in the history of the sport," White said. "It's a fact. And people love that stuff."
McGregor is a former UFC lightweight and featherweight champion. He became the promotion's first simultaneous two-division titleholder when he knocked out Eddie Alvarez at Madison Square Garden in New York in 2016.
