MMA Fighting - UFC 329 Post Show | REACTION To Conor McGregor's DISASTROUS Injury, Paddy Pimblett Stealing Show

Episode Date: July 12, 2026

Following the chaotic ending to UFC 329, MMA Fighting's Mike Heck and José Youngs react to Conor McGregor's injury, Max Holloway and Paddy Pimblett's wins, and more from Saturday's International Fight Week card. Subscribe:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ http://goo.gl/dYpsgH⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Check out our full video catalog: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://goo.gl/u8VvLi⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Visit our playlists:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ http://goo.gl/eFhsvM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Like MMAF on Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://goo.gl/uhdg7Z⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow on Twitter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://goo.gl/nOATUI⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Read More: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://www.mmafighting.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Start your build at Chevrolet.ca. Details at J.D.Power.com. To the Vox Media Podcast Network. Well, unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, for Connor McGregor, a man who predicted the greatest comeback in sports history. It actually became one of the biggest nightmares. It could have possibly become for Connor McGregor. in the end at UFC 329. Not only did he lose his return fight, he suffered another leg injury on top of all that.

And it just couldn't have gone worse for the notorious Connor McGregor. I am Mike Eck. That is Jose Young's here at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, who just wrapped up UFC 329. We just wrapped up the press conference. Jose, we were on our way to an all-timer, an all-time event here in Las Vegas. Everything was living up to the hype.

Patty Pimbled gets this incredible win. Everything is coming up. UFC and then the damn bell rang for Max Holly versus Connor McGregor. Connor tried to do something outstanding, something memorable, hurts his leg, Max Holly gets the win, not in the fashion he wanted. Talk about how this night ended. This might be the biggest buzz kill in like the history of the UFC. Like what, what's what tops that?

The Ganderson breaking his leg was tough and Connor breaking is on the last time was tough. Nate Diaz getting the cut against Jorge and the inaugural BMF was really tough. These are all like, like, like recently, obviously recently biased. There's obviously been a lot of like freak injuries and disappointments and stuff like that. But this is about as I don't, I'm a lot of loss rewards. This is this is as weird as it gets, right? Because like we've seen Connor injured and we've seen him blow his ACL out, but it's quite literally the very first kick.

He threw one kick and blew his ACL out and then like that was a rap. Or we assume it's his ACL. According to Dana White, we obviously don't have official word, but it's about as strange and annoying of a finish as I can think of in the history of MMA, in terms of like magnitude to what happened. Because obviously we've had like weird things, like when Matt Mertrione fought,

I can't remember it, Bellatorre. He like low-blowed the guy on the first kick and the fight scrapped. This is a little different because it's Conn McGregor, rematch, it's his big return, he has two fights left, people think he's gonna go fight for MVP on Netflix. Now all that is gone for the foreseeable future. He's what, 37, 38 with one leg now?

Second catastrophic injury, third catastrophic injury. Second ACL, it's rough scenes in Ireland right now. 100%. And on top of that, when this fight was booked, the immediate reaction was like, why are we doing this? Max is going to claw up. And then the closer he got to this fight,

the more excited people got, the more people started believing in Conner's chances to do something crazy. It's 2026. We've seen nothing but craziness this year. And then for it to end like that, it's tough. But for Max Holloway, Like he wanted to sort of exercise some demons.

He didn't really do that. But literally, in the record books, he has a first round TKO win over Connor McGregor. I thought he handled himself incredibly well. Like you don't want to be too down. You just celebrate as much as you possibly can, but you can't do it overboard. And I thought Max handled himself incredibly well. And he feels like, hey, I'm going to be sitting out the rest of the year anyways. Probably going to run this back with Connor McGregor.

So it's kind of tough, man. Like, do you think they're going to go back to this well and try to do this again or do you think the UFC's going to move on from this? I think it just really depends A on how significant the injury is. The recovery, does Connor even want to come back anymore? Because like if he had lost, he got knocked out fine. He fights next April, fine. But like, he's not only does his next April probably out of the question right now, because say worst case scenario, it's like a complete tear and he has to go under surgery, rebuild it. He still has to rehab it. He still has to, this isn't boxing where you're only throwing punt.

and yeah you have to bounce a lot but you know your knee might be a little weak but at the end of the day you're still throwing this is Connor like his whole thing is his kicks were so powerful and it was such an integral part of his game that's taken away from him like whether it's the leg to plant or the leg to throw I don't know how he's ever going to be the same again after this because you know again he he's in he's blown his ACL before that was what 2013 2014 it's been a a long time I will running back, the world might be a different place like a year and a half from now. Like

earliest Matt, he could come back is probably a year. A year and a half, two years, like just in case he might be retired. Ilya might be back at Featherweight. Islam might be retired. Carlos Prates might be a welterweight champion. John Jones might come back. Like the UFC Bannamweight, women's Bannamweight Division might not exist. Like all of these things like, MMA might be just in a completely different world when Convigar is even possible to return again. So I have no idea. None of this is funny, but I kind of snickered to myself because I was thinking as I was walking from the arena back into this room.

You know what the biggest winner is tonight in all this is Michael Chandler? He might actually get the Conner-Megger fight with after. Crazy. That would be, if Michael Chandler waited two years to fight Conner-M-Megger, dude. You can wait another year. No. Don't do it, Michael. Don't do it.

I believe you can get this, Michael. I believe this is the best thing that could have happened to you in terms of getting that. fight but all joking aside max holloway gets the win nobody delivered more than patty pimble tonight the i was in the arena for the intro the entrance it was all electric it was as loud as i've ever heard an arena covering a card everyone was on his side people were booing the holy heck out of ben wasantini on the way to the cage and then the damn bell rang in this fight and patty pimbleau gets shot on by ben was santini locks in the dars choke of a ball dars chokes and ben wasantini 59 seconds 60 seconds into this fight drooling asleep

asleep what a performance from patty pimblit had an early day like decided to go to bed early i guess patty just tucked him in uh yeah sick performance patty's jituts who's always been like his thing obviously he's been in a lot of like wars he you know finished michael chanelieu ground and pound went to war with justin gajie justin jacchie obviously took him down and got poked in the eye but that was still a whole massive fight he you know he was a whole massive fight I just think people forget how good Patty is at grappling and choking fools out. Because that was a darts joke, but he broke it down at the press conference. It was like a Peruvian necktied darts choke where he got the darts choke,

but then also sat back and put his feet forward. It was very bizarre. I didn't know really what it was. And even Patty was like, I've never done that before. I just made it up. That dude is, if you're just making things up, if you're just making up submissions on the fly against a multiple-time French grappling champion, you're very good at MMA.

Yeah, outside of, like, yeah, Pat is the biggest winner of the night by far. Like, I don't think he's going to fight Justin right now, but Massive fight against Armin, who might be the biggest internet star in MMA right now, massive fight against Ilya. And then that third option would be like Justin Gagey for match. Like, fight Matt, or could fight Max at some point, if Max wants to go down,

it could fight Charles Olivera for the B&M. MF fight, dude, I'm down to clown with any of those fights. Patty Pimlet is sick and I want to see all of those fights. Yeah, he's getting Ilya, Armin, or Charles. Like, that is not, that's a terrific position to be in. And even though he just fought Justin, he goes out there and beats either of those guys, especially in any way close to how he did tonight. He's getting a title.

Well, yeah, if he beats Charles, he's also the BMF champion. So, yeah, Patty Pimlet is going to be fighting for a belt, either his next fight or within the next two fights. Absolutely unbelievable performance. We also got Mara Batista defeating Corey Sandhagen, exercised some demons. We had King Green and Terence McKinney just put on a one round fight for the ages. It was unbelievable.

And that wasn't even the fight of the night because Brandon Royval and Lonnie Cavanae decided, hey, we're two exciting flyweights. First round, we kind of felt each other out a little bit. We were trying to play around. And then the last two rounds is absolute chaos. Brandon Royval just doesn't stop. He's going to mean the fighters only,

fight of the year list forever and ever. What a fight that was. Yeah, the problem with Brennan Roy Vall now has become kind of, like, now this is what we expect. So, like, he just puts on a sick fight against Lonnie Kavanaugh. It's not even, like, his best fight. It's like top three Brennan Roy Vol fights, but, like, what does that mean? That's like being the fifth best Justice Gachie fight is, like, being the best fight of anyone else. The problem is we just saw Josh Hogue go to war with Curse Blades, and we just saw Justin Gagee go to war with Ilyt-Tiporia, and then Brennan Roy Vall just doing the goddamn thing and just putting people,

putting, knocking another prospect back down. That dude doesn't mean. And then calls out Asul Al-Mabai of it. Sign me up. No one wants to fight that guy, except Brennan Roy Vall, because he is a Flyway BMF for the ages. Flyway could not be more back.

Like every year, they're going to have two fight of the year contenders. That fight and Josh Van Tetsu Retire are probably both going to be in the top ten of like every single person's list. We're still going to have Van Pantosha coming. Oh my gosh, Flyway rules. absolutely rules. Robert Whitaker, incredible performance at 205 pounds. What a knockout. Did not, Alexander Ruk, Nikita Kraloff's jaw did not break. So that's good news coming from

Dana White. Gable Steven, what a debut against Elijah Ellison. Was absolutely insane. Didn't shoot a single takedown, like a legit takedown. And those two just beat the hell of each other. It was just a really fun card that ended with a gut punch. So that is a really interesting point. Is this the biggest buzzkill in UFC history? But all in all, What a crazy week it was in Las Vegas. This felt every bit of international fight week, did it not? Yeah, and it's one of those rare. I don't want to say rare, but I feel like there's been some international fight weeks

where you feel it in the city, because obviously there was no UFCX this year. There was no Radio Row. There was no fan expo. There was not a lot of heat between Charles and Max. It was kind of built around Connor's returning. But obviously, Connor fighting Chad Mendez's an international fight week, is about as big as you can get. We've had UFC 200 was International Fight.

We've had Anderson-Silvei International Fight Week. This felt, like I said, until the ceremonials, it was probably like kind of low-key, and then ceremonials ramped it back up. And then as the night went on, it was like, well, goddamn. Like, maybe you don't need heat to just put on a fight card of the ages.

So the White House card was sick. This card is sick, and hopefully it carries through into Oklahoma City, Philly, Shanghai, I believe. ensue. So yeah, a lot of fun fights coming ahead. Potential to be one of the biggest and most newsworthy years in UFC history right now. So what a time it has been, what a summer it's going to be for the UFC and in combat sports.

And what a week it has been here in Las Vegas. That is Jose Young's. I am Mike Keck. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you so much for joining us all week long here for UFC 329. We are out of here. You're listening to the Vox Media Podcast Network.