Conor McGregor Says UFC Wouldn't Allow Him to Fight WWE's Logan Paul in Boxing Match
January 25, 2025
Five weeks after claiming to have agreed to an exhibition boxing match with Logan Paul, former UFC champion Conor McGregor says the MMA promotion put the kibosh on the bout.
In an interview with MMA personality The Schmo (starts at 2:25 mark), McGregor said UFC wouldn't grant him permission to do what he called a "glorified spar" with Paul.
In a Dec. 17 post on X, McGregor said he agreed to an exhibition boxing match with Paul in India that would serve as a stepping stone for his eventual return to UFC.
There was no indication from anyone else involved that such a deal had been agreed to. They did have something of a face-to-face confrontation when they, along with Jake Paul, were in Washington D.C. on Monday to attend the inauguration of President Donald Trump.
There's really nothing stopping a McGregor-Paul boxing match from happening if everyone involved wants to make it happen. Even though McGregor is a UFC fighter and Paul is a WWE superstar, both companies operate under the TKO umbrella.
History has shown that UFC president Dana White will offer some leeway to fighters if there's enough money to be made. He gave permission for McGregor to have a boxing match with Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2017.
McGregor has a history of saying a lot of things that don't end up being true. He's retired from mixed martial arts at least four different times, most recently in October responding to a fan post on X that he has since deleted.
Even though Logan Paul has shifted his athletic career to professional wrestling, he did start out in boxing with a loss to fellow YouTube star KSI in 2019. He returned to the boxing ring in October 2023, scoring a disqualification win over Dillon Danis.
McGregor's status in UFC is seemingly always up in the air. He was scheduled to fight Michael Chandler at UFC 303 last June, but a broken toe suffered in training forced him off the card.
White has said he expects McGregor to fight at some point early in 2025. His last bout was a loss against Dustin Poirier at UFC 264 in July 2021. The fight had to be stopped after the first round when McGregor suffered a broken leg when his kick connected with Poirier's elbow.
Amid his extended hiatus from competition, McGregor has been embroiled in a series of legal issues. A civil jury ordered him to pay $250,000 to a woman who claimed he raped and beat her in 2018.
A civil lawsuit filed by a woman on Jan. 14 accused McGregor of sexual battery at an NBA game during Game 4 of the Finals between the Denver Nuggets and Miami Heat.
