lol showing on the broadcast that Conor looked like he was struggling to get his shoe off before he got in the cage. Makes the last minute $900k bet on Max that they announced on the broadcast seem a little fishy.
Yeah his demeanor felt off the whole time, almost like he was preparing for disaster. It makes me think his knee was hurt already but he thought he could maybe get by for a while until he started getting kicked. Like he was just hoping for the best. He probably did not think it would give out in the first few seconds, regardless.
Yeah it's a weird one. There's all the talk online that the knee was already hurt. You could see he could hardly take off his flip flop in the walk out. But at the same time, he looked good throwing kicks in the dressing room. And then if your knee is actually already hurt, why would he throw that crazy kick? Unless his intention was literally to just hurt himself or give himself an excuse to get out of there. So weird.
Common sense would say it wasn’t injured beforehand if he threw something that wild, BUT this is the same guy who went out last time spamming leg kicks against Poirier and claimed he had “stress fractures” in his leg beforehand (and we all know how that worked out). Everyone asked the same question then, “If he was already injured like he claimed, why throw so many kicks with that leg?” So because of that, I still wouldn’t rule out a pre-fight injury, even if it was just minor. Either way, the dude looked mentally checked out and apparently he was physically checked out too without realizing it.
My best guess is that he probably felt something in his knee prior. Didn’t want to drop the fight and would push through it. As a result, probably wanted to try and get a quick finish but ended up finishing himself in the process lol Super frustrating as a fan. But can’t say I’m surprised it was a shitshow.
We will never know, it's equally plausible he just hurt his knee throwing the kick and his demeanor was off because he knows he's had 5 years out of the game and on losing streak.
Hopefully this puts all the nonsense to bed about him being injured coming in and it was a last minute hail marry, or Dillashaw situation. I think this was just a fluke, sad all around. https://youtube.com/shorts/oYuXDM3k-3A?si=Zfujy7EyHKg3hiwp