Conor McGregor’s UFC Return at Las Vegas Offers a Master Class in Marketing

No sooner had Conor McGregor sat down for a press conference to discuss Saturday night’s UFC comeback fight against Max Holloway at Las Vegas than he asked an assistant to bring him three cans of a new energy drink he is aggressively promoting.The former UFC two-division champion soon placed the cans prominently in front of himself, squeezing them into the camera frame so the label was easy to read. “MAC Energy Drink,” each said. The drink, which reportedly comes in flavors such as Proper Punch, Forbidden Green Apple, Honey Cream Soda, Orange Creamsicle and Blackberry Lychee, is set to officially launch on Saturday — the same day Mr. McGregor returns to the Octagon after a five-year absence to face Mr. Holloway in the main event of UFC 329 at T-Mobile Arena.Mr. McGregor, 37, hasn’t fought since suffering a TKO loss to Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 on July 10, 2021. The fight ended in the first round when Mr. McGregor suffered a broken leg, forcing the referee to stop the fight.While expressing his excitement over returning to the cage, Mr. McGregor seems just as excited to be promoting his new energy drink, raising questions about whether his return is about the love of sport or the love of sales — the same question raised when Serena Williams announced her return to professional tennis while promoting a GLP-1 product.“This Mac Energy is sensational,” Mr. McGregor said, while lifting a can for the cameras. “It’s going to blow this colossal industry wide open in this drink category.”He went on to list the ingredients, pointing out he had a patent on some of its ketones. “People starve and fast to get this,” he went on. “What I’ve got in the can, no other energy drink can have this. This baby is a rocket ship to the moon. Try it and enjoy it.”Certainly, Mr. McGregor spent much of his 22 minutes with the media talking about preparing for the fight, including abstaining from any “physical touch if you will” for the first time. He knows there are questions about his age, injuries, his time off and his lifestyle. But he remains supremely confident he’ll emerge victoriously from a repeat of a fight McGregor won by decision in 2013.“I plan to contort his body into certain uncomfortable positions and have my way with him,” McGregor said, adding, “I want to shake up the game. Shake up the business for sure. Prove myself to myself that I am who I say I am.”The rhetoric was familiar, but the tone was much more subdued and respectful than that of the brash brawler of 10 years ago, who caused chaos wherever he went. This week he often sounded more like an evangelist than a fighter.“I’ve done deep internal work,” he said. “There has been a whole sequence of events and divine coincidences that can’t be anything but a higher power and I connected to it. I’m not my body. I’m not my feelings. I’m not my thoughts. I’m my soul and my soul is connected to a higher power.”His religious awakening comes after what he admitted have been “a few tough years,” including being found liable in a civil case over a sexual assault that allegedly took place in 2018. Nikita Hand had accused the Irishman of assaulting her at a Dublin hotel and a jury awarded Ms. Hand damages totaling $271,742. Mr. McGregor claimed the incident was consensual and continues to proclaim his innocence; police investigated, but no criminal charges were ever filed.“I’ll stand on my innocence until the day I go out,” Mr. McGregor said this week. “There’s a reason it didn’t go [to a criminal trial] and it went to a civil trial. It stings deep. I know the truth, and I know that lying lips are an abomination to the Lord.”Whether his legal issues and absence from the UFC have impacted his popularity remains to be seen, but it’s clear that Mr. McGregor is eager to get back in the spotlight, if mainly for business reasons.There’s the business of the UFC, now showing on Paramount+. Subscribers won’t have to shell out a pay-per-view premium to see the fight, giving him a massive platform to debut his energy drink.“The business is on the rise,” Mr. McGregor said of the UFC. “The money is coming in. I’m grateful for the support of Paramount. I’m grateful for the support of my business associates, and I’m grateful beyond measure for my fans and their loyalty and their excitement here.”Mr. McGregor says his motives are pure. But when someone asked him about fighting in Las Vegas again, he also plugged Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship, of which he is a part owner. “I look forward to opening up the market for my bare knuckle fighting championship company, which will be an outstanding event,” he said. “Imagine a bare knuckle fighting championship in Las Vegas. We’re very excited about that.”He’s also excited about his energy drink, which doesn’t offer the same temptation as his first significant business venture. Mr. McGregor was among a group that in 2018 launched Proper No. Twelve Irish Whiskey, which became one of the fastest-growing Irish whiskey labels, generating millions in revenue. In 2021, Mr. McGregor and his partners sold their majority stake for an estimated $600 million.But that experience took him down a dark road of excessive drinking. “I didn’t drink heavily if at all at that time of my life,” he said. “I was an athlete at the top of my game. Next thing you know there are thousands upon thousands of bottles in my garage. People would say, ‘Go sell this, Conor’ and I’d leave my property with two bottles under my arm. That was it. I got trapped and caught.”At the end of his press conference, Mr. McGregor stood up to pose with a can of his energy drink as cameras flashed. It was good marketing.Whether Mr. McGregor, who has lost three of his last four fights, can get back to the top of his game after five years away from the Octagon sounds like a longshot. But his name, his status in UFC history and his appearance on a huge platform on a day his energy drink is launched nationwide has made it more than just a return for glory.

Conor McGregor’s UFC Return at Las Vegas Offers a Master Class in Marketing

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