Conor McGregor has just released some footage of his latest Jiu-Jitsu training session, and it seems like he’s hard at work in order to improve his grappling. It might also be a positive sign for the future of his UFC career, as McGregor hasn’t actually been seen in the octagon for well over 3 years now. At one point in time he was a reigning UFC world champion in two different weight classes and situated comfortably towards the very top of the promotion’s top pound-for-pound rankings. That was quite some time ago now though, and McGregor has only really been competing sporadically since 2016.
That was the year that McGregor engaged in his epic rivalry with Nate Diaz over two fights before finishing out the year by dethroning Eddie Alvarez as the lightweight world champion. That was when he took time away from MMA to compete in a boxing match against Floyd Mayweather and he was stripped of both of his titles due to inactivity. His next MMA fight was an attempt to regain his lightweight title in 2018 by defeating Khabib Nurmagomedov, but he was submitted in the fourth round instead. Since then McGregor has only had three other professional MMA fights and has gone 1-2 in them, putting his recent record at 1-3 in the last 6 years.
Like most fighters, Conor McGregor has still been training to some degree even though he hasn’t been fighting and it seems as though he’s chosen to work on his Jiu-Jitsu in that time. McGregor was actually promoted to BJJ black belt just last year and judging from the latest footage of his training, he’s clearly improved quite significantly from his most active period in the UFC. This could be in anticipation of a UFC comeback where he might want to shore up one of his previous weaknesses, or it could simply be down to the fact that grappling is much easier to practice long-term than striking is. Only time will tell whether McGregor does return to the UFC, and who he competes against if he does.
The footage of Conor McGregor in his latest Jiu-Jitsu training session was uploaded in a recent post to his official Instagram account, and has since been shared to YouTube:
