Joe Rogan is surprised with Conor McGregor’s approach at UFC 329.
McGregor (22-7 MMA, 10-5 UFC) blew out his knee in the first jumping kick attempt he threw against Max Holloway (28-9 MMA, 24-9 UFC) in Saturday’s headliner at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. He tried to get back up multiple times, but his knee gave out on him. As a result, Holloway won the bout by TKO due to injury just 69 seconds into the fight.
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“He just tried a crazy move,” Rogan said of McGregor during the UFC 329 broadcast (h/t UFC on Paramount+). “He tried a crazy move. He tried a jumping roundhouse kick, and when you’re in that position when you throw that jumping roundhouse kick, if you don’t land in a good way with the supporting leg, you put so much pressure on that knee. The way he landed, he threw the kick, he jumped up, he threw it and he landed with his knee in the worst position.”
The speculation is that McGregor tore his ACL, and Rogan thinks so too as he watched the replay.
“That is just a crazy amount of torque on that knee,” Rogan said. “It pops right there. You could see it shift. He blew his ACL out with the very first move that he did. It sucks, but it’s just – you don’t do that, especially because Max was moving, so he’s adjusting. So as he’s throwing the kick in the air, Max is moving and it makes him land even more screwy.”
While Rogan is surprised that McGregor would start off the fight like that after such a long layoff, he thinks it was intentional. Coach John Kavanagh later confirmed that it’s a technique they’ve drilled on numerous occasions.
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“It might have actually been the game plan,” Rogan said. “It might have been the game plan to just charge out and, look – he threw the kick with the broken leg. He’s got this titanium rod through the center of his tibia, and that’s the kick he threw, maybe to prove that he could still kick with that leg. I don’t know. I don’t know why he did it that way. No one will know – only Conor knows.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Joe Rogan: Conor McGregor ‘tried a crazy move’ which led to UFC 329 injury
