McGregor Planned Jumping Kick to Crack Holloway on the Jaw
Conor McGregor said his plan against Max Holloway was to charge across the octagon and crack him on the jaw with a jumping kick. He set it in his head because the last time the bell rang on that leg, the bone snapped in half. The kick missed. The knee went. The fight lasted 69 seconds.
“I just had to set in my head, I don’t care, when this bell rings, last time I had one leg snapped in half, I want to run forward and try fly across the octagon and crack him in the jaw,” McGregor said.
That is the first-step strategy for UFC 329, now told in his own words. On July 11 at T-Mobile Arena he ran at Holloway and left the ground. Holloway was not there when the foot arrived. McGregor landed on the right leg, the same one Dustin Poirier broke in July 2021, and the joint folded.
John Kavanagh had already said the jump switch kick was drilled daily for months and in the warmup. It never failed in camp. It failed on the first throw that counted. McGregor denied walking in hurt. He said he had been planting and jumping all through camp and backstage. The tape shows the buckle on the supporting leg, then two more kicks that put him on the canvas, then Holloway standing over a man who could not stand.
Referee Mike Beltran stopped it at 1:09 of round one. The official result is a TKO by injury. Dana White later said McGregor tore the ACL and damaged the meniscus. McGregor wanted to keep going. Holloway, to his credit, was not hunting a beating. The night was over before the first combination.
The psychology of the kick is the part McGregor is still selling. Five years and a day after Poirier, he decided fear would not set the range. He would fly. He would crack the jaw. He would prove the rebuilt leg was a weapon, not a memory. Instead the first athletic choice of the comeback became the injury. Joe Rogan called it a crazy move and said the supporting knee took the worst possible load. The Irishman called it the plan.
Holloway improved to 28-9. McGregor fell to 22-7 and is winless since January 2020. The five-round welterweight main event never became a fight. It became a medical. Surgery followed. McGregor has said he will take nine to 12 months this time and not rush the way he did a decade ago, when he came back from an ACL on a timeline that left him fighting on one leg.
He still has one bout left on his UFC contract, expected in 2027. A Holloway trilogy would be the clean narrative if the knee allows it. A different name would be the office protecting a star who just showed the world the first kick of a five-year layoff. None of that is booked. The only booked fact is the one he just explained: he meant to fly.
The Poirier break was a planted kick that snapped the tibia and fibula. This one was a jump that wrecked the ligaments. Two opening-night disasters on the same limb, five years apart, both born of McGregor trying to end a fight before it started. He said he did not care. The joint did.
Holloway did not have to be great for 25 minutes. He had to not be where the flying foot was. McGregor’s return is now a rehab calendar and a confession that the first thought in the cage was to gamble the reconstructed knee on a highlight. He wanted the jaw. He got the surgeon. The Mac Daddy still has one UFC fight to go. The kick that was supposed to start the comeback is the reason the comeback is on hold.