McGregor UFC return not attracting as much attention as anticipated

Maybe it's because the man got into so much trouble in the past 5 years, maybe it is because most people kind of got sick of his big mouth and those that didn't stopped believing that it meant anything, maybe it is because UFC isn't generally as exciting as it once was and fatigue has set in, but for some reason very few people are so much as even talking about "Notorious" being in the Octagon this weekend after 5 years of inactivity.

Obviously the fact that the World Cup is going on at the same time detracts from it but at the same time, almost nobody is talking about the fact that Holloway vs. McGregor is happening in the next 48 hours.

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Even though I am a long-standing UFC and MMA fan I had to be reminded by a friend that this fight was even happening this weekend. With all the World Cup stuff going on it just kind of slipped my mind along with almost everyone else's. It's understandable that the WC would be in the forefront of most of the world's mind, but here in the USA the football that doesn't involved the use of your hands is a sport that for the most part, is a niche thing that is only really talked about in Florida and maybe New York. The rest of us barely even know when MLS season is. That's not to say that soccer is stupid, I don't think that at all, but it just isn't as popular here in USA as it is elsewhere and there is nothing wrong with that.

It is strange though that the return of the most popular and biggest money making fighter or all time in MMA is barely getting any press at all.

Hell, today I was looking at a sports aggregator website and there wasn't even an article about it on the main page at all. Most of it was about the World Cup as you would expect, but this USA-centric webpage featured articles about baseball, college football that is months away, and the WNBA. you had to dig pretty deep to read anything about UFC 329 at all. It is my fist time even knowing what the undercard simply was!

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it's actually a really good card and I will likely tune in for at least the main card and people who don't watch the sport really need to be on the lookout for the Green vs. McKinney fight because that has the opportunity to be absolutely massive even though most people don't even know who these guys are.

Just briefly, one of them has never gone to the judges scorecards - he Ricky Bobby's his fights in that he either finishes wins the race or crashes the car trying to. King Green on the other hand is supremely arrogant and seems to be extremely opposed to just putting his arms up to block incoming punches and kicks. Some people have been saying that "someone is going to get flat-lined here" and that makes for very entertaining fights for the most part. Let's hope that this lives up to the hype that I just created.

Pimblett continues to be a big draw and will be looking to get back on track. he was hand-selected by UFC to be the next up and comer only to get squashed in his last fight which was against Justin Gaetje. In January it appeared as though UFC was using Justin to big up other fighters and nobody really gave him a chance in that or his next fight. I guess he showed them since he is now the champ that nobody expected to have.

McGregor has been extremely quiet about this fight and that is really rare for the man with that never saw a microphone he didn't seem to want to absolutely scream into.

Not a lot of people even remember that Holloway and McGregor have actually fought once before but the reason they don't remember is likely because the fight was 13 years ago on a damn "Fight Night" card. Man how things have changed since those days huh?

So I don't think many people are actually going to care and it is surprising to me that UFC would even gamble with attempting to compete with World Cup fever. I'll likely watch it on my other TV in the corner so I can skip out on the endless commercials that are bound to happen. At the moment Max Holloway is a -200 favorite to win and it seems likely to remain that way unless last-minute betting swings it one way or another.