There was once a time when many thought McGregor would go down the path of famed boxing great Mike Tyson, but McGregor says that isn’t going to be the case with him.
“Now here’s the thing: Yeah, definitely Mike Tyson has had his ups and his downs, and his money management has kind of led him to be in a position he shouldn’t have really been in. But if you look at Mike now, he’s got his money, he’s got his weed thing going, he’s well for himself. But, yeah, I don’t want to go down that path,” McGregor told Severe MMA (via Farah Hannoun of MMA Junkie). “I didn’t want to go down that path, and maybe I was heading down that path a little bit, so just listening to myself, listening to the close people around me that I respect, and just making amends with things. I know what I need to do. I knew what I needed to do and what I shouldn’t have been doing. I just listened to myself and followed my orders, and it’s just made me a better individual, just a better man. I’m just in a much better place.”
Tyson’s downfall and McGregor’s near downfall have been quite similar, with both being accused of sexual assault/rape (with Tyson being convicted) and being on the wrong side of the law multiple times.
Some have even suggested that people in McGregor’s camp have helped in the fighter’s potential downfall, but McGregor shoots that claim down.
“Oh, that’s baloney,” McGregor said. “I hear the way people try to twist the narrative. Like I said, those narratives that people try and spread have been irritating me, and that’s the kind of thing that causes me to react, and I get angry. The disrespect … it’s meaningless. These people do not know what they’re talking about. Like, how dare they say the people in my camp are ‘yes’ men? The people in my camp are actually masters, tacticians, master tacticians, across all ranges. Leaders among men are in my camp. It’s all baloney, so I just stopped paying attention to all that, and it’s just like – trust me when I tell you I do not have ‘yes’ men. We’re all on this journey together.”
UFC 246 takes place on Saturday, January 18 from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada with Conor McGregor and Donald Cerrone headlining. Fightful is providing live coverage of the event, with a post-show podcast to follow.
