Conor McGregor is here to stay.
The former UFC two-division champion will maintain his ownership stake in Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC), at a time when most major partners and sponsorships have jumped ship. McGregor, 36, was found liable in a sexual assault civil case late last year and will likely find himself back in court for an unrelated lawsuit at some point in 2025.
“We don’t want to go into what happened but at the end of the day, we’re with him,” BKFC president David Feldman told MMA Fighting. “He’s our partner, and we’re going to grow this thing together. He talks, people listen. I don’t condone any bad things that may have happened but what I do support 100 percent is loyalty. You’re with somebody, you’re with somebody, and you’re with somebody through good and bad. Not just with them through the good. We’ve been with Conor McGregor the whole time. He’s been with us the whole time and 2025’s going to be an epic year for everybody involved.”
The promotion’s eight-man, $25 million tournament would certainly qualify as “epic.”
McGregor caused friction between BKFC and its streaming partner, DAZN, when he recently threatened to terminate the broadcast agreement for cutting off post-fight interviews. Turns out the decision to skip over fighter speeches came from BKFC executives in the interest of saving both time and money, thanks to the penny pinchers at Hard Rock.
“He’s dead right on that but that actually wasn’t a DAZN thing,” Feldman said. “At the Hard Rock for some reason, we’re always on a timeline and we have to get out of there. It gets crazy if you go over time, I’m talking like $100,000 an hour so we had to get out on time. He’s dead right. So we are making some adjustments, too. These guys do need to be seen and heard because that’s what [makes] them. That’s what made [Conor]. If they didn’t talk to Conor McGregor after the fights, you wouldn’t know who he is. So we have to take advantage of that and we will.”
BKFC first aligned with DAZN back in 2020 then re-upped for more dough in 2024.
“Obviously, DAZN is a great partner for us, and I wish he didn’t go out there like that but at the end of the day, everything’s ironed over,” Feldman added. “We understand everything, he understands everything and he’s dead right. We want to hear from the fighters. They just had a devastating knockout. I want to hear ‘I’m going to knock out everybody else that I ever face.’ They want to hear that. They want to hear why, and we’re going to tell those stories, and we’re going to let them talk.”
BKFC is expected to return to DAZN for BKFC: “Pechanga” on Jan. 18 in Temecula.
