When Khabib Nurmagomedov Told Conor McGregor “He Has to Change How He Is Living”
Ahead of talk about Conor McGregor returning around UFC 329 on July 11, the sharper look back is at a moment in 2025 when Khabib Nurmagomedov, his fiercest rival, publicly said McGregor still had time to change his life. The controversial McGregor fell from peak UFC stardom into a long stretch of inactivity, legal trouble, and public backlash.
Khabib Nurmagomedov Urged Conor McGregor to Change His Life
In August 2025, Nurmagomedov said during a speaking engagement in New York that McGregor still had “a chance” and needed to “change how he is living”. He framed it in moral terms, saying, “This is punishment, [but] the most beautiful part of this is Allah always give the chance to come back,” before adding that if McGregor changed, “he can change with him so many other lives too” because of his reach and influence. That was the striking part: this was not trash talk, and it was not a replay of the old feud, it was Khabib speaking as someone who believed McGregor was still salvageable.
By then, McGregor had not fought since the July 2021 TKO loss to Dustin Poirier, when he suffered the broken leg that ended their trilogy bout, and he had re-enrolled in the UFC’s mandatory testing pool for a possible return. So Khabib was not talking about a retired figure from another era; he was talking about a famous fighter still circling a comeback while carrying years of baggage into the next chapter.
Khabib was not just any former opponent. He submitted McGregor in the fourth round at UFC 229 in October 2018, retained the lightweight title, and then the night spilled into one of the ugliest post-fight scenes in UFC history when the brawl continued outside the cage. Their rivalry had been deeply personal, Khabib’s 2025 remarks were a complete flip from his earlier stance, including a 2019 comment that their conflict would never truly be over.
A rival who once seemed to want nothing to do with peace was now saying McGregor’s life did not have to keep going in the same direction.
Conor McGregor’s Controversies
The story around McGregor in 2025 was bigger than a comeback rumor. He faced criticism in early 2025 after appearing at the White House on St. Patrick’s Day, and also a jury the previous year found that he assaulted Nikita Hand in a Dublin hotel in December 2018.
That legal picture sat beside another pending civil case in the United States. In January 2025 that a woman who accused McGregor of sexual assault after Game 4 of the 2023 NBA Finals filed a civil lawsuit against him, while prosecutors earlier had declined to pursue criminal charges in that matter. It wasn’t just sexual assaults, he has had several other controversies.
McGregor’s planned return against Max Holloway at UFC 329 on July 11 gives the quote a fresh fight angle, because it would mark his first UFC appearance since the 2021 loss to Dustin Poirier and put him straight back in against a proven former champion with name value and pace. If the bout goes ahead, it would be less about nostalgia and more about whether McGregor can still perform after a long layoff, years of turmoil outside the cage, and a stretch in which his activity and results have fallen well short of his peak.
