Conor McGregor is fighting again. Max Holloway is the opponent. The date is July 11, the venue is T-Mobile Arena, and the broadcast home is Paramount+, which now carries UFC events as part of the promotion’s $7.7B US media deal.
UFC announced the booking as the headliner for UFC 329, slotted into International Fight Week in Las Vegas. The bout is set at welterweight, nontitle. Tickets go on sale May 29 through AXS.com. Fight Club members and UFC newsletter subscribers get pre-sale access ahead of the general public.
It’s been 13 years since these two shared a cage. McGregor beat Holloway by unanimous decision at UFC Fight Night 26 in Boston, August 2013. Holloway, then 21, was a late-notice opponent. McGregor tore his ACL in the third round and still won every card. Both men have lived several careers since.
McGregor, 37, last competed in July 2021, the trilogy bout against Dustin Poirier that ended with a broken leg at UFC 264. Multiple comeback dates since then, against Michael Chandler in particular, came and went. He withdrew from a planned UFC 303 booking in June 2024 citing a toe injury, then served an 18-month anti-doping suspension stemming from three missed drug tests in 2024, only becoming eligible to compete again in March of this year. Five years on the shelf is a long runway by any standard.
Holloway, 34, has stayed active. He knocked out Justin Gaethje in the final second of their BMF title fight at UFC 300 in April 2024, dropped a featherweight title bid against Ilia Topuria at UFC 308 that October, then made the move to lightweight full-time. He defended the BMF belt against Poirier at UFC 318 last July — sending Poirier into retirement — before losing the title to Charles Oliveira by 50-45 across the board at UFC 326 in March. The McGregor rematch is his first booking since.
The co-main is a lightweight contender fight between Benoit Saint Denis and Paddy Pimblett, both ranked in the top six. Saint Denis (17-3, 1 NC) is on a four-fight win streak after a rough 2024, capped by a second-round TKO of Dan Hooker at UFC 325 in Sydney at the end of January. Pimblett (23-4) is coming off the first loss of his UFC run, a unanimous decision against Gaethje in their interim lightweight title fight at UFC 324 a week earlier. Both want the winner of the lightweight title picture; this is where they fight to stay in line.
As someone who has covered McGregor’s promotional cycles since the Aldo build, the pattern is familiar: announcement, ticket rush, a quiet stretch, then the press tour. Whether this one runs the full route depends largely on how camp goes.
International Fight Week traditionally drives UFC’s biggest gate of the year. The 2024 edition, UFC 303 — which lost McGregor to the toe injury and was rescued by a short-notice Alex Pereira vs. Jiří Procházka 2 light heavyweight title rematch — still cleared a $15.9M gate and roughly 274,000 PPV buys under the old ESPN+ model. UFC 329 lands under the new Paramount+ structure, where main cards stream as part of the subscription rather than as à la carte PPV purchases, so the comparison won’t be apples to apples. A McGregor return card is expected to push the gate, viewership, and platform sign-ups considerably higher regardless.
For Holloway, it’s another marquee booking against a name that moves the needle. For McGregor, it’s the fight that finally has a date attached. The rest gets sorted between now and July 11.
