Fighter Dustin Poirier defeated Conor McGregor early Sunday in a much-anticipated Ultimate Fighting Championship re-match that left McGregor down for the count in the second round.
The stunning defeat came after McGregor spent more than a year away from the UFC. He called that time a “wild ride.”
“I’m very excited to be back here,” he said during a pre-fight press conference on Thursday. “I’m very excited to have fans in here. I feel invigorated.”
McGregor first announced back in October he had accepted the fight against Poirier — in what was a rematch from 2014, where the Irish fighter took less than two minutes to knock Poirier out.
The American told CNN he learned a lot from that defeat and six years later, felt “more prepared now on the mental side.”
“Before, when I was younger, I didn’t put a whole lot into the mental side of fighting. I listened to critics. I listened to opinions of people. I listened to Conor,” Poirier previously said. “今, that’s just noise to me.”
