McGregor Ahead of His Return: "I've Entered My Prime, There's Still So Much Left to Achieve"

UFC's featherweight division is going through one of its most competitive stretches in years. Alexander Volkanovski remains champion, but the official rankings show a tightly bunched group of contenders: an unbeaten Movsar Evloev with a near-suffocating control-based style, Diego Lopes with the hardest punch in the top five, an also-unbeaten and rising Lerone Murphy, and established names like Aljamain Sterling and Yair Rodríguez who have already fought for the title.

What makes this division interesting is that almost any combination among those five names settles something: if Evloev stays unbeaten against a rival of that caliber, he becomes the mandatory challenger almost by default; if Lopes or Murphy score a dominant win, they push directly for a title shot.

For Volkanovski, every defense from here on out comes against a challenger with a real case for taking the belt — something that hasn't always been true in divisions that are deeper at the top than in the middle.

One of the most common debates among MMA fans is why a fighter who lands more strikes can still lose a decision to someone who spent much of the fight controlling against the cage. The answer lies in the official scoring criteria: effective damage matters, but octagon control and finishing attempts are also explicit criteria, not a minor afterthought.

A takedown followed by a minute of control, even without visibly damaging strikes, counts as positional dominance. For judges trained under the ten-point must system, that control reflects who imposed their game plan — which is, at bottom, what's being evaluated round by round.

The practical consequence is that fighters with a strong wrestling base still hold a structural edge on the scorecards over purely stand-up strikers, even when the crowd perceives the fight differently from the stands.

Weight cutting — shedding several pounds of water weight in the days before weigh-ins to compete in a lower division — has been under scrutiny in MMA for years, and the women's divisions are no exception. In recent competition cycles, several athletic commissions and promotions have added interim weigh-ins and hydration monitoring to curb extreme cuts.

The medical argument is simple: severe dehydration in the 24-36 hours before competing directly affects the body's ability to absorb impact, which raises the real risk of concussions. That's why the debate is no longer just about sport, but about safety.

The visible result is a shift in approach at several camps: instead of cutting aggressively fight week, more fighters are working with sports nutritionists to stay close to fighting weight throughout the entire camp, shrinking the margin they need to lose at the end.

MMA uses, with some nuances, the same scoring system as boxing: the ten-point must system. The winner of a round gets 10 points and the loser 9 or fewer, except for exceptionally even rounds, which can be scored 10-10.

The official criteria, in order of priority, are: effective striking, effective grappling and control, and effective aggression and octagon control. "Effective" is the key word: it's not just about throwing more strikes or attempting more takedowns, but the actual quality and impact of those actions.

This explains situations that confuse fans: a fighter who spends two minutes attempting an unsuccessful takedown can still lose the round to someone who landed fewer strikes but with clearer, more visible damage. Understanding this hierarchy of criteria is the fastest way to read a fight the way a judge does.

Ilia Topuria is going through the most difficult stretch of his career following his loss to Justin Gaethje on June 14 at UFC Freedom 250, the event held alongside the White House. The fight cost him his unbeaten record and left him with serious physical damage: a non-displaced double orbital bone fracture and a broken nasal septum, injuries that compromised his vision during the fight itself and required hospitalization in Washington.

Sixteen days later, Topuria made his first public appearance in a photo shared by his friend, singer Omar Montes, during a dinner at a fast-food restaurant alongside Topuria's son and several friends. In the photo, the fighter is wearing dark sunglasses despite being indoors — a detail his camp has confirmed isn't about style but medical necessity: light still bothers the area affected by the fractures.

The recovery plan covers several phases: absolute rest in the first weeks, progressive physical therapy afterward, and only if things go well, a gradual return to training after at least three months. His team has avoided giving concrete timelines for a return to competition and views a 2026 comeback as unlikely.

There's another layer to this story: as we covered earlier, Gaethje's own coach praised how Topuria's brother and cornerman, Aleksandre, handled the stoppage. You can read that full story in our UFC Freedom 250 reactions piece.

Update · when's he coming back?

Jesús Gallo, Topuria's physical trainer, has given the most complete update yet on his condition: "I've seen him day by day and he already looks like a different person," he said, noting the swelling and bruising have gone down almost completely, though sensitivity in his face remains. Per the medical report, the orbital fractures weren't displaced, which speeds up healing, but Gallo was clear on the timeline: Topuria needs at least two or three more months before he can train at full intensity, and didn't rule out December as a date for a hypothetical rematch if the process keeps this pace.

The UFC placed Topuria on a provisional 180-day medical suspension after the fight, putting any return, at minimum, in the final stretch of 2026 — with a real chance it slips into early 2027 if recovery hits complications. Not every expert agrees that much time is needed: maxillofacial surgeon Nacho Solís, consulted by Spanish radio station Cope, called it "too long to be unable to compete" and said an orbital fracture can typically heal in around two months. Whatever the exact timeline turns out to be, Topuria and his team's stated goal remains the same: get back in the cage and reclaim the title in 2027.

Before watching a fight, there are three questions that usually hint at how it will unfold: who has the reach and height advantage? who needs to set the pace and who prefers to counter? and what has each fighter done in the late rounds of their toughest fights, once they're already tired?

A technical boxer with a good jab usually tries to keep a shorter puncher at range; the puncher, in turn, needs to cut off the ring and work the body to close that distance without walking straight into shots. When both fighters manage to partially impose their game plan, the fight tends to be decided in the late rounds.

A hypothetical example that illustrates this framework well is one that's been speculated about at light heavyweight for a while: a forward-pressing David Benavidez against a Dmitry Bivol who boxes moving backward and counters with precision. That kind of style clash — constant pressure versus distance management — is usually what produces a division's most memorable fights.

A professional boxing camp usually runs eight to twelve weeks and is broken into blocks with different goals: an initial general conditioning phase, a middle phase of high-intensity sparring, and a final tapering phase where volume drops so the fighter is fresh on fight night.

Sparring is the component that varies most from camp to camp: some teams prefer a small number of very intense sessions against sparring partners similar to the upcoming opponent, while others opt for more frequent but controlled rounds, prioritizing technical repetition over physical wear and tear.

Strength and conditioning work has become increasingly specific: instead of generic gym routines, strength coaches now design sessions that mimic boxing movement patterns, aiming for the strength gained to translate directly into punching power without sacrificing hand speed.

Some rivalries transcend the result of any single fight and end up defining how a weight class is understood for years. The trilogy between Erik Morales and Marco Antonio Barrera (2000-2004) raised the bar for Mexican featherweight boxing to a standard that later generations had to match just to be taken seriously.

At super lightweight, the trilogy between Arturo Gatti and Micky Ward (2002-2003) redefined what fans expected from a war: three fights with almost no let-up that became the standard reference for punch-trading and physical and mental toughness.

And at lightweight, the 2005 fight between Diego Corrales and José Luis Castillo — with Corrales rallying back after two tenth-round knockdowns — is still cited as an example of what separates a technically sound boxer from one capable of winning a fight that was already lost on paper.

Not all strength exercises are equally useful for a combat athlete. The ones that transfer best to performance in the cage or ring share one trait: they train movement patterns similar to those used when striking, taking down an opponent, or defending a takedown — not just moving weight for the sake of it.

The deadlift trains the entire posterior chain — legs, glutes, and lower back — which is the foundation of almost any explosive throwing or takedown action. Weighted pull-ups build the pulling and grip strength used constantly in the clinch. The cable woodchopper specifically trains the transfer of force from the lower to the upper body through the core, the same pattern that generates real power in a cross or a hook.

The general recommendation is to prioritize technique over load: a poorly executed deadlift with heavy weight creates more injury risk than benefit, while the same movement done well with moderate load still builds useful strength safely.

Gym culture is full of shortcuts for "cutting weight fast": trash-bag suits, long fasted cardio sessions, extreme water restriction in the final days. Part of that tradition has some real basis, but another part is simply habit repeated without question.

What the evidence does support: a gradual, sustained calorie reduction combined with strength training to preserve muscle mass produces better mid-term results than drastic last-minute cuts. Water and sodium manipulation in the days before a weigh-in is a real practice in combat sports, but it works better — and more safely — when planned weeks in advance instead of improvised.

What the evidence doesn't support: that sweating more equals losing more fat (it's water weight, which comes right back once you rehydrate), or that extreme carb restriction improves performance; in most combat sports, the opposite is true, since carbohydrates are the main fuel source for high-intensity effort.

A deload week — deliberately lowering training volume or intensity — tends to raise doubts: won't you lose the fitness you've built? In practice, training physiology evidence shows that fitness holds steady over short periods of reduced load, while accumulated fatigue recovers noticeably.

The most effective way to structure it is to reduce volume (number of sets, sparring minutes, or rounds) while keeping some intensity: less total work, without completely losing the speed and technique your body is used to.

Sleep and mobility are usually the two areas that benefit most from that week: it's the time to prioritize rest and range-of-motion work that normally gets pushed aside when the training schedule is packed.

High-intensity interval training (HIIT) is especially relevant for combat sports because it mimics the real structure of a fight round: short bursts of maximum effort followed by brief rest periods, not the steady, moderate pace of long-distance running.

A simple, demanding protocol: four three-minute rounds (the length of a boxing or MMA round), alternating twenty seconds of maximum effort with ten seconds of rest within each round, with a one-minute break between rounds. That's twelve minutes of effective work total, which you can do with burpees, sprints, the heavy bag, or max-speed shadowboxing combinations.

What makes this format useful isn't just the calorie burn — it specifically trains your ability to recover between explosive efforts, exactly what's needed between exchanges within the same round, something steady low-intensity cardio doesn't train the same way.

Look through the list of UFC's all-time champions and a disproportionate number have an Olympic or collegiate wrestling background before moving into MMA. The reason isn't just the strength or conditioning that sport builds — it's something more specific: positional control.

A fighter with an amateur wrestling background understands, better than almost anyone else, how to dictate where a fight takes place: standing or on the ground, against the cage or in open space. That ability to control where the fight happens is, in practice, one of the hardest tactical advantages to counter in MMA.

Wrestling also builds a tolerance for repeated high-intensity effort — takedown entries, defenses, scrambles — that carries over directly to the pace of a three- or five-round fight, even for fighters who rarely look for a takedown once they're in the cage.

Professional kickboxing has been gaining ground as a standalone spectacle in recent years, built on a format that combines the accessibility of boxing (stand-up striking, no takedowns) with the added appeal of Muay Thai-style kicks and knees.

Part of that growth comes from MMA's own talent pool: several fighters use kickboxing as a showcase for pure striking skills before or during their cage careers, which creates crossover audiences between the two sports.

The challenge the circuit still faces compared to boxing and MMA is the fragmentation of organizations and rules — different federations allow or ban clinching, knees, or low kicks — which makes it hard to compare champions across promotions the way you can, with some nuance, in boxing.

No-gi grappling — pure submission grappling, without the traditional jiu-jitsu uniform — has grown as a standalone discipline thanks to formats that prioritize constant action: with no points for static position, competitors are forced to actively hunt for the finish.

For MMA, this format works as an almost perfect showcase: it lets you evaluate a competitor's submission game without the noise of striking, and several fighters use these tournaments to stay active and visible between cage fights.

The result is that it's becoming increasingly common to see MMA prospects compete first on the grappling circuit before making their pro debut, using those tournaments as a way to rack up high-pressure competitive experience without the physical toll of a full fight.